Wednesday 2 September 2015

How Easy is it to Start an Online Store?

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If you want to make money on the internet, there are numerous ways to do it. Many of them actually do not involve selling physical products, but instead doing some kind of marketing or advertising for others. However, if you would like to start an online business that actually does have things to sell, then this can also be a very good way to make money – if you do it right.

Photo by Naypong at freedigitalphotos.net

Why is an Online Shop a Good Business to Try

Online stores can do very well because they have fewer of the running costs of physical stores (for example they don’t need as many staff or anywhere to display their goods), and they can sell to people anywhere they like, rather than being limited to people who can visit their location to shop. Online stores can also sell digital products like downloadable software and eBooks, which can make for an even easier business to manage as you can’t run out of stock, and you don’t have to worry about physical storage for the items you are trying to sell!

It is fairly easy to get started, so here we take a look at some considerations if you are serious about creating an online store.

Try PrestaShop as a Store Management System

In order to keep your product catalog up to date and support any e-commerce transactions, you will need to use a good store management system that plugs in to your website. One of the most trusted platforms for this kind of thing is the open source solution PrestaShop. PrestaShop has quite a lot of new features, including a module that allows you to manage EU compliance and convert tax and sales in different currencies. PrestaShop also updates the back office to make it easier to navigate and manage, and improves the performance of database queries, making the system run faster both for you on the admin side and for customers.

What Are You Up Against When You Start Up?

The main consideration when you start a new online shop is not setting up the website itself – that can actually be done quite easily with the right platforms and services. Instead, you need to worry about promoting your online shop so that the right people know about it or find it in web searches when they want to buy something you sell. This means that as well as having strategies for products and keeping your store stocked with things that will sell well, you also need to work on a social media and SEO marketing strategy. It is usually best, if you have no expertise in this area, to talk to a professional consultancy.

With the right platform to manage your store and a good approach to marketing it, you should find (assuming you have good products and provide a good service!) that customers will be really happy to browse your store and order from you!



from Darlene Milligan http://ift.tt/1KJfL75 via transformational marketing
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1KJTwOm

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