Are you a business that is ready to start selling online or are you a single entity establishing a start up to find a product and sell?
Maybe your not sure if this is even for you at all? Do you even know what type of website you need?
On this page we have given essential information for businesses looking to divulge into ecommerce!
By the end of your website creation journey Site Ninjas will provide you with an online shop that is ready to list products, find customers through marketing, sell your goods to your customers, and send your product to your customers completing the successful cycle of an e-commerce website sale. p
Are you a business that is ready to start selling online or are you a single entity establishing a start up to find a product and sell?
Maybe your not sure if this is even for you at all? Do you even know what type of website you need?
On this page we have given essential information for businesses looking to divulge into ecommerce!
By the end of your website creation journey Site Ninjas will provide you with an online shop that is ready to list products, find customers through marketing, sell your goods to your customers, and send your product to your customers completing the successful cycle of an e-commerce website sale.
1. When starting an e-commerce website you need to know your goals.
For any business owner we need set ourselves goals. This way we have targets and metrics to measure our success by. Give yourself an expectation for your product or service.
How do you achieve these goals?
A business strategy needs to be implemented to figure out what the best business practices are for your sector or niche.
How do intend to profit from your product or service is the question you need to ask yourself.
Some of the most important aspects you should be knowing of your business are the following points:
Don’t sweat it if you don’t know all the answers. Site Ninjas are here to help you discover this information that is decisive for your business.
2. How do I start an online business?
The very first thing you need is a name and an idea.
Once you know your business name you need to check the availability. To check this we advise two services to search.
Namecheckr checks the availability of your desired name across multiple platforms.
Namecheap are a domain broker.
Domain name
A domain name and hosting is essential to any website. This isn’t something you can just choose to have, you need them. Your domain name should reflect your ecommerce store name and should be easy to spell, so that visitors can find your website hassle-free. Avoid strange spelling and numbers or symbols within your domain name as these are difficult to explain and type into an address bar.
As part of your ecommerce website, you can choose to manage your own web hosting, or choose an option whereby your website design company manages your hosting on your behalf. For flexibility, managing hosting yourself is a better option and will generally be cheaper. Avoid incredibly cheap hosting as this can often indicate shared servers that result in slow website speeds and can negatively impact on your SEO (your website’s ability to rank in the organic search results).
Hosting
Next you need to secure is your own hosting. Don’t be fooled by signing up to GoDaddy, FourSquared etc… because they will own your online company. You use their hosting rather than using your own.
They will own your domain name and your hosting.
We can advise you on what hosting services to use. We tend to use a company called Hostinger. Their support and reliability is best to non and have always delivered amazing results since we started using them.
How will you be contacted?
You wouldn’t naturally think that this is something that you should consider in the early idea establishment stages of your business startup but knowing your medium contact at the start will help you structure your business strategy.
Will you be only offering mail support or do you want to give your customers a bit more of a personal feel by detailing a phone number?
Depending on your business it can help determine which method is best for you.
Is your business in store or drop shipping?
This means whether your business will store your own products in your own facility or somewhere else. Drop shipping is a type of company who stores your product and sends it off upon order. Or the other method which is still classed as drop shipping is made or order manufacture. A company who manufactures just enough products to compensate with your projected orders and then send your product direct to your customer.
How will you manage you business finances?
It is important to create a separate business account in the early stages of your business startup.
This helps for you to dedicate your business income directly to your business and not into your personal accounts.
It will ensure you stay organised, and will play a benefiting factor when it comes to taxes and accounts.
Does it cost to take payments online?
If you are wanting to take credit card payments, then yes it will. There is not a service online in which you can take payments on the internet for free.
There are however different pricing plans dependent upon the merchant in question.
One of the most popular companies around in order for you to take payments is PayPal but they take a percentage of every payment.
How do I Choose my pricing model?
You need to decide upon this. It is imperative to your business. We can help with conducting market research to determine a sensible pricing model that suits your business.
Think of Your Ecommerce Website as Your Store Front.
How many times have you walked passed a store or restaurant to go to the one a few doors down because it looks more attractive and better presented? We’ve all done it.
Think of this same concept when having your online store created. It is just as vitally important to have a visually attractive and easy to use website as it is to have it well developed and marketed.
Here at Site Ninjas when creating your online store we take all of these important considerations into account providing you with a 5* online website ready to start making you a steady profit.
Detailed Product Information
Your business website should have detailed information about what you are selling. Keep your customers informed. Make sure that they know exactly what they are buying, and how it can make their lives better!
Security
Companies who are conducting the majority of their business online through their website need to seriously keep in mind the need for extra security measures. You should be aware that you may need to invest in a strong and reputable security system at both website and server level, especially because you are dealing with customers personal details and bank information.
You do not want to be found liable to negligence through a security breach exposing this important data.
We can help you with that by finding the perfect software for your business type to give that extra peace of mind when taking details, payments and information from customers.
As part of the security measures we strongly advise choosing a hosting company who provides you with a managed SSL Certificate. This is the padlock icon you see in a web browser bar.
This is crucial for online businesses. You should never buy or conduct any business on the internet unless a site has one of these.
With Hostinger, our trusted Hosting server you get this when you sign up for your hosting plan.
1. When starting an e-commerce website you need to know your goals.
For any business owner we need set ourselves goals. This way we have targets and metrics to measure our success by. Give yourself an expectation for your product or service.
How do you achieve these goals?
A business strategy needs to be implemented to figure out what the best business practices are for your sector or niche.
How do intend to profit from your product or service is the question you need to ask yourself.
Some of the most important aspects you should be knowing of your business are the following points:
Don’t sweat it if you don’t know all the answers. Site Ninjas are here to help you discover this information that is decisive for your business.
2. How do I start an online business?
The very first thing you need is a name and an idea.
Once you know your business name you need to check the availability. To check this we advise two services to search.
Namecheckr checks the availability of your desired name across multiple platforms.
Namecheap are a domain broker.
Domain name
A domain name and hosting is essential to any website. This isn’t something you can just choose to have, you need them. Your domain name should reflect your ecommerce store name and should be easy to spell, so that visitors can find your website hassle-free. Avoid strange spelling and numbers or symbols within your domain name as these are difficult to explain and type into an address bar.
As part of your ecommerce website, you can choose to manage your own web hosting, or choose an option whereby your website design company manages your hosting on your behalf. For flexibility, managing hosting yourself is a better option and will generally be cheaper. Avoid incredibly cheap hosting as this can often indicate shared servers that result in slow website speeds and can negatively impact on your SEO (your website’s ability to rank in the organic search results).
Hosting
Next you need to secure is your own hosting. Don’t be fooled by signing up to GoDaddy, FourSquared etc… because they will own your online company. You use their hosting rather than using your own.
They will own your domain name and your hosting.
We can advise you on what hosting services to use. We tend to use a company called Hostinger. Their support and reliability is best to non and have always delivered amazing results since we started using them.
How will you be contacted?
You wouldn’t naturally think that this is something that you should consider in the early idea establishment stages of your business startup but knowing your medium contact at the start will help you structure your business strategy.
Will you be only offering mail support or do you want to give your customers a bit more of a personal feel by detailing a phone number?
Depending on your business it can help determine which method is best for you.
Is your business in store or drop shipping?
This means whether your business will store your own products in your own facility or somewhere else. Drop shipping is a type of company who stores your product and sends it off upon order. Or the other method which is still classed as drop shipping is made or order manufacture. A company who manufactures just enough products to compensate with you projected orders and then send your product direct to your customer.
How will you manage you business finances?
It is important to create a separate business account in the early stages of your business startup.
This helps for you to dedicate your business income directly to your business and not into your personal accounts.
It will ensure you stay organised, and will play a benefiting factor when it comes to taxes and accounts.
Does it cost to take payments online?
If you are wanting to take credit card payments, then yes it will. There is not a service online in which you can take payments on the internet for free.
There are however different pricing plans dependent upon the merchant in question.
One of the most popular companies around in order for you to take payments is PayPal but they take a percentage of every payment.
How do I Choose my pricing model?
You need to decide upon this. It is imperative to your business. We can help with conducting market research to determine a sensible pricing model that suits your business.
3. Your Website Shop…
Think of Your Ecommerce Website as Your Store Front.
How many times have you walked passed a store or restaurant to go to the one a few doors down because it looks more attractive and better presented? We’ve all done it.
Think of this same concept when having your online store created. It is just as vitally important to have a visually attractive and easy to use website as it is to have it well developed and marketed.
Here at Site Ninjas when creating your online store we take all of these important considerations into account providing you with a 5* online website ready to start making you a steady profit.
Detailed Product Information
Your business website should have detailed information about what you are selling. Keep your customers informed. Make sure that they know exactly what they are buying, and how it can make their lives better!
Security
Companies who are conducting the majority of their business online through their website need to seriously keep in mind the need for extra security measures. You should be aware that you may need to invest in a strong and reputable security system at both website and server level, especially because you are dealing with customers personal details and bank information.
You do not want to be found liable to negligence through a security breach exposing this important data.
We can help you with that by finding the perfect software for your business type to give that extra peace of mind when taking details, payments and information from customers.
As part of the security measures we strongly advise choosing a hosting company who provides you with a managed SSL Certificate. This is the padlock icon you see in a web browser bar.
This is crucial for online businesses. You should never buy or conduct any business on the internet unless a site has one of these.
With Hostinger, our trusted Hosting server you get this when you sign up for your hosting plan.
This very informative video below by Dan Wright 5 years ago. At the time when the video was filmed Dan was in the lead role of international advertising for Amazon. This video explains how ecommerce was becoming the new shopping concept sweeping the globe.
Let me stress this was 5 years ago. This is key information into how e-commerce was started and how it is evolving.
Dan has predicted the future with this video.
If the video above was a bit hard to grasp then the video below has broken e-commerce down in a more easily digestive approach.
Helping you succeed in your objective is our mission but being by your side throughout your business growth is equally as important to us. We have formed a close relationship with clients we have helped achieve their goals.
Your Business needs a Privacy Policy and a Terms and Conditions Page
Your business should always have a Privacy Policy and a Terms and Conditions page at least on your website. This helps to highlight your business practices such as how you store users data.
If you are transparent and adhere to the Privacy Policy in which you have written yourself, you should be able to stay free of any legal issues in the future.
The same can be said for Terms and Conditions. These are important to create so your customer knows their rights as per your business practices.
There are many templates and easy to access information available in order to create the perfect Terms and Conditions for your business.
Our Branding Manager can help you with this if you do not quite know how to approach it.
As a quick tip we can recommend in having a section to your Policy Page and Terms and Conditions regarding shipping and returns.
For example if you deal with international customers you need to have a policy in place on their payments, deposits, returns etc… The shipping will be more costly. If the customer is overseas the delivery may be more expensive. You need to state this in your Terms and Conditions. Maybe not all countries will accept the product in which you intend to send.
These are important elements to the legal sphere of your business.
