| E-Commerce Newbie |
| Page: How To Build An Online Store |
There are hundreds if not thousands of options for building web stores online so finding the right one for you can be very confusing. However it breaks down quite easily into 2 categories.
If you are a Brick & Mortar store thinking of developing a web site or an internet marketer selling products from home via mail or dropship. You need to make 1 decision, do you intend to sell 1 product at a time (like this site) or allow your visitors to purchase multiple items via a shopping cart. I highly recommend option 2 for physical products.
I am going to assume you are interested in the shopping cart option if not please see Selling Digital Products
Hopefully you haven't jumped ahead & rushed out to buy website design software. If your site is going to be a store then it needs designing with software developed to build online stores.
Using purpose built web store software, you will design a professional looking site with all the backend features required to run it.
Don't waste your time on free or inferior
scripts - You are going to spend allot of time uploading all your products &
designing your site - You will find yourself having to do it all again if you make the wrong decision now!
You may not know what you need right now but these are just some of the features you want your shopping cart
solution to include.
You are now faced with 3 options a locally hosted shopping cart, a hosted shopping cart, or a remotely
hosted shopping cart.
Locally Hosted Shopping Carts - Are programs that you install on your own hosting account.
You usually have the option of purchasing future updates at an additional cost.
Hosted Shopping Carts - Your website is hosted on the shopping carts server you pay a monthly fee depending on the amount of products you have.
Remotely Hosted Shopping Carts - Similar to Hosted Shopping carts except your site is on your own hosting account.
If you don't already have a website or a hosting account I would recommend a Hosted Shopping Cart, the server is
configured correctly to work with the shopping cart, SSL is included (required for credit card transactions) &
any changes or updates are included.
Two of the best Hosted - Online Store Solutions I have found are..
3D Cart - Offers FREE "Switch" Move an existing Web Store to 3D Cart
NOTE
I have featured these 2 providers based on ease
of use & for being SEO Friendly. Check any of the existing site demo's & you will see Category's &
Product descriptions in the URL's.
If you don't want to pay a monthly fee, or already have a hosting account then buying the software & installing on your server is the next best option.
Your main decision here will be cost based as software updates will be offered in addition to the script. Most
will offer 1 year free or paid Lifetime upgrades.
Recommend Locally Hosted Shopping Carts
Note..
You may have picked up that I consider Search Engine Optimization very important.
Unless you have a completely unique concept or niche, your Online Store is going to have products similar to many
other sites.
Having product descriptive URL's will give you a major advantage over your competition.
The only time you should consider a remotely hosted shopping cart is if you already have a website & you
wish to integrate a shopping cart into it.
It is much easier to build an online store using the purpose built carts i have already featured.
Saying all that if you do already have a site & wish to incorporate a store I recommend these solutions..
E-Junkie - Recommended for Digital Products as well as Physical Products
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How to Build an online store for Digital Products
You may like & can use any of the above shopping cart builders however for delivery of digital products you can simply add "Buy Now" buttons into your website & use paypal. Sign-Up for a Paypal Merchant account, once you have an account you can generate the Buy Now buttons there. If you still want a Cart to sell multiple products then I recommend you consider Paypals own shopping cart or take another look at E-Junkie . To secure your download Url's I recommend you look at DLGuard.
First you need a website! As the website doesn't need to be primarily configured as a store you can utilize any web site building software, then add your products & buy now buttons.
Recommended Web Site Building Software