Starting your own online shop
Introduction
In case you haven’t been paying attention – the internet is an incredibly huge place these days. Millions of people use the internet every day and more and more people are becoming comfortable with the idea of shopping online. With the vast amount of customers at your finger tips world-wide, running an online E-commerce store is a good way of extending your business, or even starting a new business for extra cash. Online shops can be used to sell physical products, digital products or even services.
What are your options?
So, you’ve found a gap in the market, you’re sure that your product or products are going to sell like crepes in France and you’re ready to get the show on the road. But where do you start?
There are a few different options to consider when going about starting an online shop – all of which depend on your store requirements, budget and experience. These options include: building your own website from the ground up, hosting your own shopping cart system and using a remote shopping cart system. You may be wondering what on earth a shopping cart is, so lets get that out of the way before we continue.
Shopping carts are used to assist people making purchases online. This software allows one to browse products and place items in a basket or cart (this is a digital basket which serves the same function as a physical basket). Upon checkout, the software calculates the total for all items in the basket, including shipping and handling (i.e. postage and packing) charges and the associated taxes, as applicable. Data (products, categories, discounts, orders, customers, etc.) is normally stored in a database and accessed in real time by the software
Now, let’s take a brief look at your main eCommerce options and see which would best suit your situation.
1. Using a remote shopping cart host
Remotely hosted shopping carts, such as ShopDirect (a leading shopping cart provider) offer e-commerce solutions that enable you to build a successful online store with no web design or development experience required! Their shopping carts offer all of the features and functionality that you need to develop and market a successful online storefront without any programming!
The ShopDirect shopping cart software is beneficial to small businesses and large companies alike. They come with training manuals and online store builder reference videos to get you started.
Features included with ShopDirect’s packages include:
·        Shopping Cart Setup
·        Search Engine Optimization
·        Merchandising/Inventory
·        Payment Options
·        Reliable E-commerce Hosting
·        Shipping & Tax
·        Sales Analysis
·        Database & Systems
·        Customer Service
·        Design & Layout
·        Repeat Customer Accommodating
·        Security
These are extremely helpful features and having these included in the shopping cart will save you an enormous amount of time and energy.
With all these features available, one can go about setting up an online shop from scratch, manage the site, send newsletters and track orders etc. without having to be technically inclined at all.
Advantages and Disadvantages:
Obvious advantages are that with this sort of package, you do not need to be technically inclined.
Everything is done easily in a WYSIWYG environment and it takes only a fraction of the time to get started with your shop as it does with the previous options. You do not have to set up your own E-commerce hosting website which saves more time.
The main disadvantage is the fact that you will need to pay for the service. Be it an upfront payment or a monthly payment, this option will most likely be the most expensive of the three options, however not unaffordable.
Secondly as with osCommerce software, you are slightly limited as far as design options go as you have to stick with templates provided with the shopping cart. This is not a massive problem though as any worthy shopping cart comes with plenty design templates to choose from and are quite flexible in enabling you to create a near unique online store.
2. Build your own website from the ground up
If you’re experienced with web development and have the ability to create your own website from scratch, then you will probably be considering this option. If you have the time and lots of energy, this option might save you a little money, but it will be a lot of work.
You will have to do everything from registering a domain, finding somewhere to host your site and then still write your own source code to connect together the various database, shipping, tax, fulfillment and page-serving modules that will constitute the finished site. These are time-consuming tasks, and your store will take much longer to build than some ready-to-use systems.
Advantages and Disadvantages:
The main benefit of creating your own site is that you will have the freedom to design a website that is truly unique and caters perfectly for your shops requirements.
It could take you anything from a month to a year to develop your site and get it working correctly.
Once your site is finally up and running, you will then be responsible for maintaining, securing and updating the site yourself which is a full time job all on its own.
3. Hosting your own shopping cart system
If you do not have the technical abilities to create your own site form scratch, but still have a decent knowledge of computers and the internet, then should be able to easily enough set-up your own shopping cart.
Hosting you own shopping cart means that before you can download anything, you will need to have an existing website. As mentioned above in “Building your own website from the ground up,†you will first need to register a domain name and find a hosting account to host your website before you can start setting up your shopping cart.
You will need a hosting account that allows scripts to be executed and allows you to use one or more databases. The most popular hosting accounts run with these basic configurations:
• Linux operating system with Apache
• Php/Perl script execution
• MySQL databases
Because this is a very common setup for web hosting accounts, many free and paid shopping cart systems will run on hosting accounts with these features.
Once you have your hosting account set up, only then you can start searching for a shopping cart system that suits your requirements and budget. There is an enormous amount of shopping cart software available on the internet, so be sure to take the time to research as many as possible to find the one that best suits you.
Once you have found the ideal shopping cart for your website, you will have to download the software to install on your own hosting account. The software can either be purchased for a once off fee, or you can simply download one of the many free software packages such as those available from osCommerce.
What is osCommerce?
As defined on the osCommerce website: “osCommerce Online Merchant is an Open Source online shop e-commerce solution that is available for free under the GNU General Public License. It features a rich set of out-of-the-box online shopping cart functionality that allows store owners to setup, run, and maintain online stores with minimum effort and with no costs, fees, or limitations involved.â€
Basic shopping cart software comes with templates that you use as well as step by step setup “wizards†that assist you in getting your store up and running. Running your own shopping cart system is easily seen as a convenient solution when you are offering multiple products or services online. Choosing the right setup for your business requirements should be based not only your budget, but also on your own technical capabilities.
Advantages and Disadvantages:
osCommerce software is free of charge which is always going to be a huge factor. The only expense you have to worry about is the cost of your hosting account.
Although setting up your own shopping cart does require a certain amount of technical ability, it is not nearly as tough as setting up a site entirely from scratch.
A shopping cart can be downloaded, installed and ready for use in a fraction of the time it takes to develop an entire site of your own.
The main disadvantage of using someone else’s software is that you are limited by the software’s capabilities and will not have a site that is truly unique and perfectly moulded to your needs.
A certain level of technical ability is necessary.
Conclusion
As you can see from the above information, anyone can start and run an online shop regardless of their technical ability. Whichever option you decide to choose depends solely on you and your requirements.
If you are not technically inclined or do not have much time to set-up and manage your own shop, then it would be a good idea to go with a remotely hosted shopping cart such as those offered from ShopDirect.
If you are able to set-up your own hosting account and download and set-up your own shopping cart then this particular option could save you a bit of money, however you will need a certain level of technical knowledge and would be solely responsible for the upkeep of the website.
If you are extremely technical and decide to create your very own online shop from scratch, then chances are you are not even reading this article. This option is probably the cheapest as you would do everything yourself, however a lot of time, skill and energy are required to get the site up and running.
I hope that you have found this informative. The world of E-commerce is an exciting one and can prove to be extremely lucrative if you have the correct ideas and tools. Good luck!
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