Buy a domain name.
Any company of your liking will do – nowadays buying a domain name for x amount of years is very cheap. It is always better if you keep domain name and hosting plan though under the same company so you don’t have too many people and bills involved.
Buy a hosting plan.
You need a company to provide you with a great service. There is nothing worse than going online and finding out that your site for some reason is down or submitting a support ticket and getting a lame answer after 72 hours. Not only all this reflects upon your business but can make customers flee. You also need a shop that runs fast when on high traffic so choose your hosting plan wisely
Design your site.
You probably got the skills to design a site. If not, someone in your circle might be able to help you if not then hire one. Make sure to invest a lot of time and if you have the budget then use it – don’t go cheap. The looks of your site is the A and Z of your business, it is like the screen of your shop. Your website needs to be attractive and clean in order to get people in and more important the site has to be easy to use. The shop serves as a tool for selling goods so people will want to find products quick and easy – this also reflects on your sales dramatically.
Build your website.
You can always hire a coder to make it for you by investing more money or build the site yourself if you got the skills. The choice is yours but the most important thing is that it has to have an easy to use administration back end and it works ok under most major browsers. It can be time consuming changing prices, updating info, changing pictures etc etc so the better the system the less time your spend on ‘keeping’ the shop – you will appreciate it in time especially if you are alone and running everything.
Receive payments.
PayPal is the best option to receive online payments especially after it was able to accept Visa and credit card payments. They have extremely competitive prices and no setup or annual fees and their service has been fine. They take a cut from each payment (PayPal Calculator).
