For anyone that has never set up an online store, it can be very confusing. There are many choices available so it is difficult to select what is best for your online business. Before creating a store you must first look at your business goals such as how much money you wish to make each month, types of products, a marketing plan and how you will accept payments.

How to create an online store in 8 steps

1. Register a domain name

Get a domain name that is short and easy to remember ideally a dot on ideally a dot com name is best because this is easily recognized as an online business. If the domain name you want is not available. Look at the key words associated with your business then try different combinations such as including dashes between the words.

2. Build your website

E-commerce software

The eCommerce software to build website must be hosted on your own web hosting plan. This allows you more control because you can create a customized website plus maintain it yourself through the login administration panel. Often you can build a website yourself by using the default template or you can hire a web designer to customize it for you to create a unique design. If you use the free open source e-commerce software such as Zen Cart your only costs will be the domain name, hiring a professional web designer and web hosting.

3. Web hosting

Select a web hosting service that provides enough disk space and bandwidth to host your website and e-commerce software. Shoot for at least 100 MB of space, and at least 5 GB of bandwidth per month. Make sure you can always upgrade your hosting plan, should you need more space and bandwidth. Make sure you can get technical support within 24 hours.

4. Add your products

If you have hundreds of products it may be a good idea to create an Excel spreadsheet to list all the variables of your products:

• product name
• product image
• product size
• Price
• taxes
• shipping fees
• SKU number

5. Accept online payments

The easiest solution for accepting online payments is to integrate your e-commerce software with the PayPal shopping cart. This enables you to accept online payments without purchasing a merchant account payment gateway or separate shopping cart. Once your store begins attracting lots of visitors and making lots of sales consider purchasing a merchant account that integrates with your shopping software.

6. Testing your online store

Once you’ve built your online store and added all your products it’s time to test its functionality. Act as a customer by going through the purchasing and checkout process to check for errors. Alternatively, find someone that is not familiar with purchasing products online and observe how easy it is for them to complete the sale. After sales have been completed log in to your admin panel to check if your software is storing and tracking the orders.

7. Promote your store

Your online store won’t generate any sales unless you drive traffic to it. Here are 10 effective ways to promote your eCommerce website:

• Add quality content on a regular basis
• Search engine optimization
• Article marketing
• Pay per click advertising
• Submit website to online directories and search engines
• Video marketing
• Social media marketing
• Press releases
• Blogging
• Newsletter

8. Monitor your site statistics

Your web hosting plan usually includes site statistics which shows you how many visitors your site receives on a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly basis. It will also display where your visitors are coming from and what keywords they are using to access your website. This helps you to monitor the progress of marketing your online store.