To start your ecommrce site you need to plan on what items would you like to sell. You then have 2 main options in creating your website:
1. To use complete hosted ecommerce site like BigCommerce
2. To use self-hosted ecommerce website using free shopping carts such as Magento, Zencart, Cubecart and OsCommerce.
For eCommerce site first you need to decide what products you are going to sale. Because You wouldn’t build a house without an architect and a blueprint. Now follow these steps:
1. Select the best development technique in which you will develop your eCommerce site. I have some suggestion regarding this eg. You can choose magento, Drupal e-commerce, Zen-Cart, osCommerce any of them.
2. Go through existing osCommerce sites and then you will get an idea from there.
3. Now make a plan for this means how you are going to manage all your products and customers.
4. Select the best and attracting theme and template so that user will stay on it.
5. Promote Your Brand and Enhance Your Brand Image.
This actually needs four steps/parts to start or plan an ecommerce website. They are as follows:
1. The first part is very important which involves developing your product and business plan like decide what you want to sell, find the perfect niche accordingly, make a business plan and the most important register your business.
2. This phase includes building your own online store which includes register a domain name, choose a web hosting service which is a must, design your website, choose an ecommerce software, and setup a merchant account.
3. The most important comes now which says using an all-inclusive eCommerce service that includes researching on all-inclusive ecommerce services which I personally assume that Magento is the best, then look into reselling products for profit and now consider tips for general sales.
4. Now last but not the least, moreover the important point comes that includes marketing and promotion, attracting and retaining customers using social media like facebook and twitter, start a blog and email marketing.
It's worth your investing in a book or paid video course on the subject. In addition to setting up the site, shopping cart and payment processing, you may find advertising to be the biggest expense, if you opt for not going the slow free traffic method. Try searching for ecommerce forums.
Using a marketplace like Ebay or Amazon to wet your feet and test the market would cost less and potentially get you more traffic than a new unknown site of your own.
At first decide what you want to do and define your niche. Then research who is your competition and how will you compete? Cost is another important factor before you proceed. What shipping services are you going to use or are you going to have local pick up? Then decide about shopping cart. There are many to choose from and they vary from a simple PayPal button to more complex retailing systems. For more insights please read useful stuffs here http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/8425... , http://www.tisindia.com/blog/the-ingredi...
Try looking for an e-commerce WordPress theme and install it on your server to get started. Then you can start adding products to the site before generating traffic.
If you're not familiar with WordPress, here's a video to help you get started:
hello,i want to start eCommerce site.but i need proper planning.please help me...
