Starting Your Own Online Shop

One of the greatest things we get to do online is doing business differently than how our parents did their businesses. Once upon a time, you must get face to face with the other party to make a dealing. You don't even think a person a friend unless you are well-acquainted with them often and regularly, face to face. Right now, by just a click of a mouse you get to friend or unfriend someone. Even the term used to befriend someone is much different. Have you ever said that that we start to requesting to "add me" and  you "follow" a friend or a person to befriend them online and break off the friendship via removing them from your timeline. This is also beneficial to businesses as the costs of networking through social media is often free.

With the advent of technology, we can even conclude deals through online chat and followed by some formalities (i.e agreement etc) through emails and perhaps the only thing you need to do is send a hard copy agreement to seal the business arrangement.

You can accept payment via some online instructions and most online shop-owners never deal directly or ever met their customers. Great for the introverts who want to do business but lacking in savoir faire.

There are a number of very successful businesses that runs entirely online; get an idea of the best e-commerce retailing companies at here 

Some of these companies are brick and mortar businesses which extended their services online through the online stores. There are a number which are purely operating through entirely online shop. Amazon and Zappos are good examples of very successful online retailers. Read the inspiring stories of these two giants; Zappos history and Amazon.

There are a lot of benefits to online business compared to the conventional means.

You save a lot on setting up and operation costs such as paying for sales assistant who sometimes  does not function as he/she is supposed to be. The cost of renting a shop is most often high in hot commercial areas. You can get cheaper lots but either they are facing the back lane or at the upper floor and is located in dead areas. In my experience in doing both ( online selling and a commercial office/shop outlet) it is also more time saving compared to as you do not have to attend to too many sales queries as there are already answers on the websites and even some do not materialize as a sale. It is best that you maintain your current or biggest customers in order to sustain your business and minimize the cost of selling when there  you know about the 80/20 principle in selling or marketing. Read about it here). In doing business, a small deal or a big deal, you still have to put attention as if they are of the same value. In reality, as a person who wants to start and maintain and grow a business you will have to know your priority too.

By integrating a payment system with your stock, you can also close the deal faster and lower the costs of processing the order as customers can handle this part on their own through the website. Saves you plenty of time from having to repetitively follow up or check on payments when they can do this automatically once they confirmed the orders.

If your business is dealing with products which can be marketed globally, your potential of revenue generation increases too.

The availability of your online store being 24 x 7, can add convenience to your customer to make order anytime any day from anywhere too ( as long as they have computer, internet access and the payment mode you incorporate )

Most of the shopping cart systems have built-in functions and allow you to track the databases which can be used to make informed decisions on your next step or promotional  strategy.

Instead of printing out and spend money on flyers and promotional catalogue, your online shop is also a readily made catalogue which can be updated easily at the click of the mouse!

What kind of products can be sold online? Here are some ideas if you haven't started thinking yet.

- Think about services or products that can be repetitively quoted  and priced specifically - the only difference is dealing with different customers, then, online selling is suitable. Think about services which can be categorized in this; for example cookies, books, t-shirts, web packages, jewelleries, clothings, bags... there are so many. Just search and you will get more idea. You can also look at the listing I mentioned earlier on about the most successful internet retailers.

In doing this, you have to think about selling it with the least intervention from you as the store owner. In other words, automate your shop!

The pricing for each of these items should be pretty much fixed and have no variances..if you allow for this e.g. in web packages, you will have to deal with a customised solution for the particular enqury. This is OK if you are prepared to deal with many enquiries which may not be converted to sales anyway.

- In most shopping cart system, you will need to specify the delivery time for the item. Here you will have to know a bit about the logistics. Especially if your products are tangible items which are supplied by another party or delivered by a logistic company.. This is not very complex if you are just starting up a cookie online store. But gets more complex if you planned to sell furniture online.

Stocks can be costly too you. If you planned to buy stocks and keep them, make sure you  have some idea how to "dispose" them without much losses if the stocks are not moving for a few months.  If the product you are selling is your very own making, you need to figure out if you are keeping stocks, or if not, how long you need to make it, and send it over. If it comes from a supplier, you will have to make sure you have some clauses in your website about situation when stocks are not readily available immediately. With regards to stocking items, you may not even have to do it if  your store is selling a physical product such as a t-shirt or a book or a quilt,and you have a good  connection with the suppliers.


You will need to decide also on how this is done for intangible items which are dealing with design and creative field ( e.g, web design services). Package them well so you will not have to answer to too many repetitive queries on the packages.

When setting up an online shop, it is best to think of yourself as the customer and emphathize on the experience they will encounter dealing with the website navigation, interaction and information readily available.

These are some of the most important considerations in starting your own online shop.

1. What are the equipment and facilities you'll need - computer and internet access. Check out the best packages and review the options before buying or choosing.

2. What you need to create - email account ( easily obtained through free email such as gmail or yahoo) and most importantly a website ( may be your special domain or using some free web spaces) with internet merchant account.

At this juncture, think also about who will build the site for you? Are you using a blog as a shop which looks easy to set up but difficult to manage as compared to a shopping cart system which looks harder to set up but easier to manage.

Also, the differences between one online stores to the others even if they carry similar product lines, can be due to this important element of websites; Users may have difficulty navigating the product catalogues , the ease and simplicity in order and paying options and the looks and concept of your website/online store. You, as the owner of the online store,  may also want to know how to update your shopping cart inventories and pricings.   A web shop with pages that loads quickly with easy navigation, integrated with a reliable and globally accepted payment system with simple administrative features and functions for ease of maintenance are the ingredients of a good shopping cart system.

3. Where to host the website - e.g. web hosting. There are many type of hosting package and varying quality of service you may encounter. Find out more about this as it may also break your business later if the service is poor and downtime is high. Never contract the hosting for more than 12 months at one time as you may be stuck with a lousy hosting provider and at the losing end if you decide to terminate it.

4. How to market the online store? Learn about search engine optimisation. Get into social media and online ad campaigns such as facebook ad campaigns or adwords. There are plenty of new ways but you just have to think about this as it is useless to have a pretty looking site and amazing products but no visitor too.

5. Other? a camera to capture the images of your product/items if it is tangible.

6. Extras : learning about editing images and computer basic security such as firewall for your computer with internet access.

If you think this is tedious, try building a brick and mortar business..It is way easier to start and try starting to sell cakes or bakery online than starting up a brick-and-mortar cake house. To give you an idea, if you feel like having a successful farm , don't jump into buying up agriculture land to start plowing.  Testing it out on online can give you an idea -  Farmville is much less tiring than the real farm, but you still will need to have the effort, the determination, the consistency and the passion to complete and upgrade your farm.  You get the drift.. there is no shortcut to building a business. Just that it gets simpler doing it online.