A step-by-step guide for beginners.
| .COM domain name |  buy software |  add products |  choose design |  shipping, payment |  PROFIT! |
 hosted service | |||||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |
Creating your own online store is relatively easy and may take from one to several days (to actually create your online store, get acquainted with the software, and launch). This period will depend on the number of your products and your plans on storefront design. Well, what does it actually take to create an online store?
You are supposed to have decided on the range of products to be sold and have at least a general idea of what an online store is (if you ever shopped online, you know what it is). This tutorial describes the technical part of creating and running an online store.
1. Get a domain name.
If you have no website yet where you could open a store, then you need to find and register an appropriate domain name for it - www.your_domain.com (or .net, .org, .info, whatever). Get a domain name that you personally like!2. Create your online store: software or hosted.
The most noticeable step—the launch of your online store.WebAsyst Shop-Script offers two ways to create an online store: buy Shop-Script as software and install on your server (shared hosting) or sign up for the hosted service and start using. At the end, both options will give you same result—you will create your own online store—so pick an option that you like.
- PHP software: Shop-Script as a PHP software package is for running your store on your server (your shared web hosting account). The advantage of using scripts is that, once installed, the online store would be running on the hardware (server) managed by you—you have full administrative control of your store. The drawback is that this option is more complex: in order to launch a store, you will need to purchase web hosting, and then install the scripts on the server (see WebAsyst installation guide).
- Hosted service: Shop-Script is pre-installed on our servers. All you need to create an online store is signup. It is as simple as creating Gmail mailbox or Ebay account. The main advantage in this case is that after signup you already have a running online store, and you don't have to worry about software installation and web hosting. A drawback of this option is lack of FTP access and access to PHP source code. However, you woun't need those if you are not going to customize your store by altering PHP code.
Take a look at Software vs. Hosted comparison table.
It is a good idea to try Shop-Script as a hosted service because signup is free. You may then continue to use hosted, or buy Shop-Script as PHP software and move your data to your server later at any time. Or if you woun't like WebAsyst, just abandon your hosted account.
3. Add products.
Add products which you are about to start selling. With WebAsyst Shop-Script products can be added through a web browser one by one or imported in bulk from an Excel price list file (.CSV). Special attention should be paid to product images because, if well designed, they will greatly contribute to successful sales. Informational video on product description pages would be a good advantage, too.
4. Choose design.
Select one of 19 design templates included with the product, and fine-tune it to meet your needs using built-in design editor (see how design editor works video, 7 MB).When creating an online store, many online merchants strive to be extraordinary when ordering design for their online stores which sometimes costs them large amounts of money. If your primary goal is to get your customer excited about your storefront design, do make it really original. If earning money is what you are creating an online store for, put the unique web design aside for a while.
The most important things for a web store are a good page layout, well readable product titles and descriptions, clear product images, user-friendly navigation tools. That's all.
Tell your customers about yourself.
Don't neglect doing this. A visitor of your online store should be confident that he or she would be able to contact the store administrator, if it becomes necessary. Aside to the email address, provide other contact information: phone number (a cellphone would do), specify your postal address (if you also run a physical store), your ICQ/MSN/Skype ID etc. You may post a photo of your office or also your store personnel (even a single colleague).
Posting extended contact details would not result in a rapid increase of customer requests. It is rather a matter of trust and confidence for the customer that he or she is dealing with real people who can be contacted if necessary.
5. Set up shipping and payment options.
So, you have almost finished creating your online store! Now think over the entire logistics chain of your store. Add appropriate shipping and payment options for your customers.
In Shop-Script new payment and shipping options are added using specialized wizard: enter option name, and attach appropriate functional module to connect it to your payment gateway or shipping company. Shop-Script offers a set of modules to integrate with major shipping carriers (UPS, USPS, FedEx, DHL) and payment gateways (PayPal, Google Checkout, Authorize.Net, etc.). These modules implement entire technical side of the integration process.6. Profit!
That is all, your online store is ready for operation! As you can see, from the technical point of view, it is not that difficult to create an online store. What requires more time and efforts is its further maintenance and optimization, shipping arrangement, advertisement, processing of orders and customer feedback.What you would badly need is enthusiasm and patience. Earning money on the Internet requires hard work. If it were very easy, anyone would be selling something online. Be prepared to the fact that most probably you would not receive bunches of orders right after the start, that it would take some time for the online store to get indexed by search engines, that some customers will be displeased, that arranging the shipping of products would not be as easy as it seemed and so on. All those issues are, however, purely workflow related and will be settled with time. Start with little steps and keep good pace. Creating an online store is just your first step into the world of ecommerce!
We recommend you to read several useful articles:
Start-up costs
How much does it cost to create an online store with Shop-Script?
Let's estimate and compare start-up costs for creating an online store using two options: WebAsyst Shop-Script scripts and online hosted service.| WebAsyst Shop-Script scripts | WebAsyst Shop-Script online service | |
|---|---|---|
| Purchase the scripts | $299.- | $0 No startup expenses. |
| Web hosting | ~$10/mo Some average web hosting. | 0 to $9.95/mo Instead of ordinary web hosting you are paying a subscriber fee for the online services. We offer pricing plans varying from 0 to 99.95 USD/mo. To start selling online with WebAsyst Shop-Script a free or "Kiosk" plan at 9.95 USD/mo would be enough. |
| A domain name | 0 or $14.95 Ordering online service for one year qualifies you for free domain name registration. If you pay for a shorter period, registration of a domain name costs 14.95 USD. | |
| Web design | $0 The storefront design can be chosen from the 19 templates supplied with WebAsyst Shop-Script and customized by means of the built-in design editor (see a demo video to learn more). If you are planning to order custom design, the prices may vary very widely. Since the cost of custom storefront design can be very different and even might exceed the price of the software itself, and that, on the other hand, it can be customized by means of the built-in tool, including such costs into this table would not be fair. | |
| Initial expenses required to create an online store | $299.- | $0 |
| Total for the first year | ~$400 (~$1/day; $299 + ~$100 for one year of hosting) | 0...$99.50 (~$0...0.27/day) |
| Total for each subsequent year | ~$100 or more depending on your hosting provider | 0...$99.50 or more if you switch to another pricing plan |
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