Main Idea
How to Sell Products or Services Online for Your Business
Are you new to the ecommerce game? Are you wanting to create an online store for your business? Great! Let’s cover what you need to know about ecommerce before you start to create an online store for your business so that the process is as smooth as possible!
Pick Your Service
There are a lot of different services out there that can help you create your online store. Right now the two main players in the ecommerce space are Shopify and WordPress (with the WooCommerce plugin).
I’ll be honest that I’m primarily a WordPress developer, so I have a bit of a bias. But both platforms are good for different reasons. If you want to start right now, Shopify can help you get started quickly. If you’re in it for the long run and want to control every aspect of your online store, using WordPress and WooCommerce is the option for you.
No matter which option you choose, make sure you look through all of the documentation to know what you need to do to set it up before you actually start to create your online store.
Select a Payment Gateway
How are you going to take payment for your products or services online? Through a payment gateway of sorts.
Even if you’ve never thought about payment gateways, you’ve probably already used at least one of them in your time online. And there are a lot of great options. You’ve got Paypal and Stripe as the main players in this space. There’s also Square and Braintree, which are also good options.
Personally, I use Stripe as it's a bit easier to work with and integrate into my website, but definitely take your time to figure out which payment gateway is going to be the best for your online store.
Figure Out Sales Tax
Sales tax is the bane of any business owner. And figuring out the sales tax for an online store can be a massive headache.
I am not a lawyer or an accountant, so I can’t tell you specifically what the sales tax situation is going to look like for your online store. But I highly recommend that if it’s confusing that you reach out to a professional for help and guidance.
Just make sure you know and understand the sales tax situation before you create an online store. It’ll save you from a ton of headaches down the road.
Create Your Plan
If you’re going to create an online store that helps your business, you’re going to need to create a plan for your website. Otherwise you’re setting yourself up for failure.
Your plan doesn’t have to be complicated. But you do need to have a few things.
First, make sure you know what the goal of your website is. Keep that in mind for every decision that you make.
Next, figure out what content you’re going to need for your website. This won’t just be pages, but also product or service descriptions, photos and maybe even videos. Whatever you need to create the perfect website.
Also, figure out the budget you have for your website. What can you spend on this website? And when do you want or need this website to be live by?
And finally, figure out whether you’re going to hire an agency or web developer to build the website or if you’re going to build it yourself.
These are just a few things to help you get started with your planning.
Create Your Content
Once you’ve created your plan, you need to work on your content first before creating your website. It’ll make creating the website easier in the next step.
For your homepage, you’ll want to talk about your business, what you do and how you can help people. If you sell products, you can display your latest and/or top products on the homepage.
You’ll also want an about page to tell the story of your business as well as a team page if you have employees. Also, you’ll want to have a contact page so people can get in touch with you.
If you’re selling services, you’ll have a service page for each service that dives into what the service is and has a lead generation form.
If you’re selling products, you’ll need to have product descriptions and images for all of your products.
And finally, make sure you have photos of your business to catch a visitor's eye. And a good video, if you can create it, is great as well.
The content is going to be the most important part of your website.
Build Your Website
Now it’s time to build your website.
How your website gets built will depend on what tool you’re using or if you’re hiring someone else to build it for you. But you’ll want to keep the following in mind.
Functionality is better than design. You need to make sure that your website can be used by others over just looking pretty.
Also, make sure your website is accessible. All images should have alternative text, headings should be structured correctly and the contrast between text and background colors should be high so the text is easy to read.
Finally, make sure that you test your website to see that it works. Test out any forms and the checkout process so that there aren’t any issues when you launch the website.
Once you’re ready with your website, it’s time to take it live!
Tell People About the Website
Once your website is built and launched, it’s time to tell people about your website. Obviously.
Post about it on your social media profiles. Put a sign in your physical store to let people know about the website. Make sure people know that they can buy your products and services through your website.
Also, make sure to submit your website’s sitemap to Google through Google Search Console and Bing through Bing Webmaster tools so that your website can get indexed quicker and start to show up in search results.
But make sure people know about your website since it’s live!
Iterate on Your Website
Finally, you’ll need to iterate on your website to make it better and easier for people to use and buy your products or services.
That means that you need to test it out every now and then to make sure that it works and to see where pain points are that you can fix. It also means having analytics set up on your website so you can see where people might be falling out of your sales funnel so you can fix it.
Your website is never truly done. You’ll have to continue to work on it to make sure that it’s running the best that it can and helping your website.
If you can do these things, you’ll be well on your way to creating an amazing website to sell your products and services.