Setup An Online Store

Shoppers are getting more accustomed to buying products or services online. US shoppers spent over $190 billion via their mobile devices in 2020. There is a growing opportunity for businesses to reach new customers online. Now is the right time to take your business online by setting up an online store. You can setup an online store without any web development or coding experience. Their are ecommerce platforms that make it easy to setup and customize your own store. Online stores now have very heavy competition. You will need to invest in an ecommerce platform with features that will help you compete with other stores in your niche.

Online Store Setup

How To Setup An Online Store:

  • Choose a popular niche
  • Develop a business plan
  • Purchase a domain name
  • Choose an ecommerce platform
  • Customize the look of your store

How To Launch An Online Store:

  • Add a payment gateway
  • Setup the shipping costs
  • Promote your store online
  • Launch social channels
  • Add coupons and discounts

You need to use an ecommerce platform to launch your online store. This is something that can’t be overlooked at all. Competition is fierce online. If you are offering products or services online that are popular, then you can expect to go up against a lot of competition. Without using an ecommerce platform, you will not be able to compete against popular online stores.

You need to choose your niche, put together a business plan, decide what products that you’ll be selling, who will supply them, and how much you will sell them for. Once you have all of the regular business details together, then you need to buy a domain name. The domain name should be your brand name or it should be a name that describes exactly what you are selling.

Domain Name Advice:

  • Use your brand name
  • Use a short keyword
  • Under 12 characters
  • Read it aloud

Domain Name Mistakes:

  • No hyphens or numbers
  • No misspelled words
  • No compound words

Once you’ve purchased the domain name, then it is time to decide on an ecommerce platform. The ecommerce platform will be able to guide you through the process of setting up the online store, customizing it, adding payment options, configuring the shipping costs, and adding all of your products or services. You can get setup rather quickly with an ecommerce platform. They offer plenty of features to help you configure, customize, and assist customers. If their is anything that they don’t offer, then you can hire a web developer to help you customize the store further, once your store has successfully launched and you are bringing in sales.

Store Checklist:

  • Optimize all page titles
  • Properly listed products
  • Test the checkout experience
  • Well optimized images & videos
  • Examine the website navigation
  • Make sure all images are HD
  • View on mobile & desktop

Check & Verify:

  • Check for missing products
  • Verify all taxes are correct
  • Check that all forms work
  • Verify all shipping is correct
  • Check if coupons work
  • Verify that all links work
  • Check your support helpdesk
Shopify

Shopify

Shopify is the leading ecommerce solution with over 800,000 online stores and over $63 billion worth of online sales. It is definitely the best ecommerce solution for webmasters that want to get their own online store up and running quickly. All of the development for your online store can be done in just a few clicks. The platform is quite flexible and you can easily scale up your store with more products or features. Shopify has an app store where you can find free & paid add-ons for your store.

Ease of Use

Flexibility

Presentation

Payments

Shipping Fees

Shopping Cart

SEO Features

BigCommerce

BigCommerce

BigCommerce is a leading ecommerce platform that offers extreme scalability for large online stores and government agencies. It has more features and sales tools than any of its online competition. BigCommerce offers very unique SEO features and multi-channel integration that can help your online business make it to the next level. This is a great ecommerce solution for businesses that need complex features or those that focus primarily on selling products through other major platforms.

Features

SEO Support

Channels

Payments

Processing

Shipping

Ease Of Use


These are the best ecommerce platforms to use when setting up your online store. You need to consider this as a long-term purchase. Both of these ecommerce platforms come with a load of unique features for your store. If you go with a free ecommerce platform, then your store may be limited in what it can offer and how well it can compete with more established businesses in your niche. Shopify is the best ecommerce platform for small to medium sized businesses. It is very easy to setup and it offers many important features that you can use within your store.

BigCommerce is an excellent ecommerce platform for large businesses because it offers more complex features that these businesses will need . If you are setting up a large store that will need many different features, then you should definitely go with the BigCommerce platform.