An online store is a website through which the customers can place their order and purchase a product online. If you are planning to start an online store, let’s know why to start an online store and how to start it.
Advantages of having an online store
- Remotely Accessible
Being online 24/7 hours 7 days a week, your store can be accessible at any time. People can purchase your product at any time they would like to purchase. Your customers can get access to your store from a mobile or computer device where there is an internet connection.
- Customers Feedback and Testimonials
Customers can review and give feedback on your products. They can rate your services and products. So that new customers can analyze and have insights about how good the products are and your services. The customers gain more trust and may recommend your products or services to other people as well. By taking into consideration of customer feedback you can improve your services better and grow your business successfully.
- No geographic limit
You can sell your products to any place with no geographic limit. If you have a physical store in Chitwan then it is not easily accessible for people from other places. But if you have an online store at Chitwan, people from any location can easily access your store and buy your products.
- Analysis
All the orders and purchases made in an online store will be recorded in the system. You can know which products are purchased more, at what time more products are purchased, from which location more products are ordered, and many more. You can analyze any customer purchase behavior. If you have a plan to run any campaign you can conduct targeting your potential customers.
How to Build an Online Store ?
- Choose a perfect platform for your online store
You can build your store on a hosted(Saas) or self-hosted (Open source) platform. There are several popular hosted and self-hosted platforms where you can build your store easily, depending on the following factors you can choose a platform for your store.
Self Hosted vs Hosted:
Self-hosted (WordPress) platforms are open source applications that enable a vast range of customization. If you created your stores on a self-hosted platform then you have full control over each element of the store and can customize it as you want. To set up store and customization you may require a skilled developer. You can set up your online store on a website builder(hosted platform) like Wix, Shopify fast and easily. You can simply set up a store without any specific technical skills.
- Select the best theme/template for your store and customize:
Depending upon what features you want on the store, You can select the theme for your store. And can customize text size/font, color, images, the position of products, etc.
- Get domain name
You need to register a unique domain name for your store which redirects your customer to your site.
- Add your Products
The main things you need to add a product are:
- Name
- Image
- Price
- Category
- Weight (for physical products)
- Setup payment methods
After adding products and prices you should set up payment methods (payment gateways) so any customer in your store can make payment easily. For your online store, you can set up multiple payment options like Cash on delivery, Credit card, Bank Transfers, Ewallets. So your customer can easily make payments as they want.
- Publish your site and promote it
After you finish all the setup, publish your site. Also, you have to do promotion so that your potential customers can find your products online. You can promote your website on different social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Linked In, etc. Similarly, you could write different kinds of blogs regarding products.