An increasing number of people buy products via the Internet. In the future, the number of online purchases will continue to increase. So, it seems that starting an online store is a lucrative business. But how do you create an online web store? What should you consider? What should you pay attention to? The e-book below will help you get started.
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If you want to start an online web store, it is extremely important that you are aware that there is much more to an online web store than you might think. Let us begin at the beginning. How does your presentation look? When they are looking for a product, potential customers may also land on your web store. So, it is paramount that your online presentation looks professional, attractive and convincing enough, so that you can immediately build customer loyalty. It is indeed the way you display your products that will encourage customers to bookmark your web store. And that is the first step towards a successful business, because now you know that it is very likely that they will return to your online shop. So, when you start creating a web store, your online presentation is a crucial factor and something you should consider carefully before you start.
This e-book is an excellent guide that will help you get started with your online shop.
Download the Start your own web store e-book for freeYou have made up your mind. You want to create a web store. Now, you need to decide what software you are going to use.
Today, most webmasters go for WooCommerce or Magento.
One of these plugins for WordPress, which has now proven its worth, is WooCommerce. Adding your products is child’s play. You can also decide to have your customers leave comments about your products and your online web store. WooCommerce is integrated with WordPress.
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Magento also allows you to create a web shop. It is a software package that was especially designed to run a web store. Magento is open source. Magento is SEO-friendly, which means that it makes sure that Google can easily index your online shop. Besides Magento, which is the most popular shop software, Lightspeed and Shopify are worth considering too.
More infoFirst of all, you need to know the origin of your future customers. If you target Belgium and the Netherlands only, you can pick a .be or .nl domain. If you plan to reach a much wider audience, a .com will be the obvious choice. It is indeed the world’s most popular domain extension. The .eu domain extension is for Europe, but it is much less known. The same also applies to quite recent extensions such as .shop, .boutique, .bargain or .buy.
Click here for a complete list of domain extensions.
Choosing the appropriate name for your domain
In addition to the extension, the name of the domain itself is also very important. A good hosting provider offers a search feature on its website so that you can quickly see what domain names are still available. This way, you will see that when you enter the keyword ‘shoes’, most domains are already taken. But if you want to use the ‘shoes’ domain name at all costs, it may still be available with a new extension such as .shop.
Hosting means that the content of your website has a digital shelter. Your data are stored on large and fast servers. Many webmasters use shared hosting. This means that various websites run on the same server. If you are a newly established web entrepreneur, this kind of hosting usually does the trick. We make sure you can upgrade at all times if your site is used by so many visitors that the shared server can no longer handle the traffic increase. Your site would then require so many resources that the other sites that share the server would suffer from it. It is then time to switch to VPS hosting, which offers you your own virtual private server, or a cloud-based solution.
Click here and check out the various hosting packages
You cannot create an online shop without adding an SSL certificate to your domain. Perhaps you have noticed that sites where financial transactions take place always display HTTPS in their address instead of HTTP. This means that the site is secure and that you can be sure that the owner is the actual owner. SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer. It is a protocol that is used to secure transactions between your website and the user. It makes it impossible for malicious people and organisations to intercept important data such as credit card numbers and personal information. If you sell products, customers will usually leave credit card details, and they will probably not do this on a site that has no SSL certificate. Another benefit of this certificate is that Google will rank your website higher in search results. So, the extra investment is definitely worth it.
The information above gives you some idea of the things you need to consider when you want to create an online web store. Starting a web store is not something you can do overnight. You need to be well prepared, which is why we recommend you to read a guidebook that will give you a lot of information on how to start a web store. A work you should definitely read is the 'Start your own web store' e-book, which will tell you in a detailed manner what steps you need to take to start a successful web store. And the good news is that you can download it for free. Click here for a free download of the Start you own web store e-book.
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