If you own a store or want to start selling goods, switching to online shopping is easier than ever. You don’t need any tech skills or know-how to start selling online. All you need is a website builder with an eCommerce template. You can use tools to do everything from setting up the shop itself to actually shipping the items.
Setting up your eCommerce site requires just a few steps. Here’s what you need to do.
Build a website
You need to start by building your eCommerce website. Doing this is as easy as choosing a template on a website builder. The template will have all the fields you need to input your product pictures, descriptions, along with any other information you want to share.
Go with a theme that is both attractive and functional. It should look welcoming, while being easy to navigate. Once you have the bare bones set up, you can move onto the next step.
Photograph your products
You need to display your products so that they look as appealing as possible. To do this, you need more than your phone camera. Ideally, you should get a professional photographer to take pictures of them for you. They will get the lighting and framing right, which is tough to do with no experience.
This will also save you the expense of buying a professional camera. Instead of spending hours learning how to take the best photos and then stressing over whether they are good enough, you can leave it to the pro.
Write product descriptions
Product descriptions serve a dual purpose. They describe the product to the potential customer and make your product searchable on Google. For this reason, you need to use the best search engine optimization (SEO) practices. This involves including all the right keywords people will use when searching for products like these.
You can hire an SEO expert to write product descriptions for you. This will save you some time, and can relieve you of the stress of finding your inner penmanship. However, it is not strictly necessary and short, concise product descriptions will do.
Write your story
People will want to know why they should buy products from you rather than your competitors. This is why it helps to tell a story. In all likelihood, your story is that you’ve decided this is the best way to make money! Romanticising this takes just a little bit of effort. Explain why you are selling these products and what you want to contribute to the market.
It helps to bring your personality into the story. People prefer to buy from other people than from faceless brands. Show them that you are not just a pawn of a big corporation and rather a real human being providing products and services.
Marketing
You are going to need to market your store. In 2021, this means using social media and Google adwords. Create social media accounts which showcase your products while allowing you to interact with potential customers.
You can target audiences on social media, getting very specific about where they are, what they are interested in, and many other factors. This is a cost-effective way of reaching the people most likely to buy from you.
Set up payments
Your website builder will help you with setting up a secure payment portal. Since it is run by third-party providers, you don’t have to do much more than provide a bank account where payments can go. You can choose what kind of payments to allow, and there are even tools to facilitate buy now, pay later plans. With these plans, you get the payment immediately while the buyer pays the payment processing provider in instalments.
Set up shipping
If you want to start selling goods immediately, you don’t even need to have goods of your own, let alone shipping services. Dropshipping allows you to facilitate sales from third party providers to customers.
To ship your own goods, you can decide to use shipping providers you trust in your region. They will have their own rules, including charges and the service they expect from you. However, since millions of products are shipped around the world every day, they have excellent processes in place and make it easy for sellers.
Building an eCommerce website in 2021 is easier than it has ever been to start a store. You can get a website set up in hours, and with the help of a pro photographer, you can upload quality images. Write your descriptions and you’re ready to go!
