If you have never had any dealings in ecommerce before, it can be a daunting task to start your own online store. There is a lot to learn as part of setting up an ecommerce store but once you have gotten to grips with everything, running an ecommerce store is a very rewarding activity.

 

The following are a few things that we recommend thinking about when approaching ecommerce:

 

1) Think about what you are going to sell. There is very little that you can't sell online these days but it makes it that much easier to be passionate about selling something you are interested in or knowledgable about. If you have been selling something offline for years, great! You might be surprised as just how easily your experience and understanding of the market can translate online.

 

2) Think about how you are going to distribute your products. Whether you are an individual or a large established company, are you going to stock items and ship them yourself? Are you going to use drop shipping? Are you going to work on an affiliate or reseller basis? 

 

3) Managing your store. Any good ecommerce solution will be both comprehensive, but also easy to use. You should be able to easily manage your product database and information on your store to keep customers informed and up to date. You should also have a wide range of settings that allow you to configure your store to work the way that you want it to.

 

4) How you will accept payments. You might think it's a little early to start considering this if you don't even have a store yet but that isn't the case. If you are going to stick with Paypal or Googlecheckout then setting these up will be very fast, however most serious ecommerce stores will have credit card processing and this can take a little longer to set up. You will need a merchant number from your bank and a company to process the payments for you. This can be relatively easy to set up, but can take a number of weeks to get all the details sorted out so it pays to think about, and be proactive in arranging this as soon as possible.

 

Once you know what you're going to sell, how you're going to handle what you sell, through which platform you are going to sell it and how you will take payment for it you are more or less at home with ecommerce. 

 

It is important to remember that if you are buying into a tailored ecommerce solution, you won't be alone. You should be dealing with professionals who have a great deal of experience with ecommerce who will be able to help you with any aspect of your store.