Web Design & Development Company - Atlas Softweb: September 2017

Create your Ecommerce website

There is a plethora of platforms available for building an Ecommerce website, However Magento is known for its flexibility, customization & expandability and hence is the first choice of many store owners. Magento is backed by a supportive and robust community of developers who are focused on making Magento an enterprise grade ecommerce platform. For the small and medium scale businesses, Magento offers a cost-effective way to overcome the ecommerce technology hurdle.

The most convenient and best way is to hire a Magento development company to handle your project, however, if you wish to do it yourself, below are 8 steps for you.

Get latest Magento installation package

The first would be to get an appropriate Magento installation package that suits your needs. Packages are available on the official Magento website.

Hosting

After you have downloaded the Magento installation package, then you would have to upload and install the package on your hosting server directly or through your FTTP client.

Create Database

You can sync MySQL database with Magento. You would need to assign a user to it via

cPanel -> MySQL Databases.

Create Categories

Create broad categories and subcategories in your website for easy navigation for users. Categories is an important since users will be navigating throughout your website to finally order something.

Example, if you an online book store, then bifurcate categories like,

Broad Category - Fiction and Non-Fiction

Category for Fiction – Drama, romance, thriller

Sub Category under romance – Nicholas Sparks, Cecelia Ahern, John Green

Product Information

Users usually buy those products which have adequate information. Clean, crisp yet informative product information is important to attract users. Some important product information that you should fill out

Name of the product

Short description

Status (availability)

Price

Images etc.

Design

You don’t need to be an expert designer to make your website scintillating. Magento provides you with thousands of themes to give your site an amazing look. Both free and paid themes are available in Magento. However, some points you should consider are;

Theme in sync with your products

User friendly

Consistency

Call-To-Action

Blog section

Responsive

SEO friendly

Authentic content etc.

Configure shipping methods

Alternative shipping methods available in Magento are;

Flat rates

Free shipping

Table rates

Online rates etc.

Integrate Payment methods

Payment Gateways fulfills the major role of processing and authorizing the payment between merchant and customer.

Extra tips for further enhancing your Magento Store

Always keep an eye for updated versions – Make sure your website is updated with the latest Magento version to fix bugs and performance issues.

Custom theme – Customize your theme according to your products, requirements, trends, etc.

Use analytics tools – Study consumer behavior, demographics, study which products are working the most for your website etc. by using tools like Google Analytics.

Use content delivery network- Use CDN so that CSS, images, content etc. loads faster hence, reducing your overall page load time.

Keep your website optimized- keep your website by keeping pace with the latest search engine updates and algorithms.

Keep your website secured – SSL certificate encrypts all data between the browser and the server. SSL certificate also helps to gain visitor’s trust and appear higher on search engines.

Before you start selling online, make sure the following aspects are fulfilled

Where & How to Sell Products Online?

Costs

Online business involves various costs. It is important to find out if you can make good profits after incurring all the costs. Your costs may include;

Shipping cost
Packaging cost
Payment gateway cost
Storage cost
Marketing cost

Understand your profit viability

Now that you have an idea of the costs involved in selling online, you can calculate your profit margin.

Profit Margin = Selling price – costs

Always try to be profitable per product level. If your profit margin is positive, you are good to move ahead.

Create your digital catalogue

Unlike a physical store where you only need a product and a sales staff to sell it, an online store will require a digital catalogue. This digital catalogue will contain produce description, product image, name, price brand, features, extra info and other applicable attributes.

End to end process

Before you actually start selling your products, you need to have a mental practice run i.e. lay out the entire process from getting an order to shipping goods. You can formulate a checklist for doing quality check, invoicing etc and follow the same end to end process every time you get an order

Inventory management software

As your business grows, managing your inventory manually will become difficult. Hence, make sure you have a good inventory management software in place.

Online visibility

Customers are most likely to research about your business before making a purchase. Hence, if they can’t find reviews and business information online, they can also drop off their plan of trading with you. So, a company website, social media presence, etc. are important facets.

Selling on Market place v/s own web store

Once you have decided to sell online and taken all prerequisites, you are most likely to ask yourself, “should I be selling on an online marketplace like Flipkart or Amazon or should I set up my own webstore?

If you decide to sell on an online marketplace, all you have to do is submit your business details on the seller registration pages. You will need to keep VAT registration number, PAN number and Bank details handy. Some sites need address proof as well. You can upload scanned copies of these documents. Verification is completed normally in couple of days.

If you decide to set up your own web store, then you’ll have two options, Hosted and Self Hosted options. Hosted platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce are hosted on someone else’s server. It’s a lot like renting a space to sell your products. A self-hosted platform like WooCommerce and Magento on the other hand, requires you to run the software from your own machine.

Hosted platforms are very easy to use, even for beginners but a self-hosted platform gives you more opportunities to customize your store.

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