Online tools have evolved a lot over the past few years making it possible for anyone, to cost effectively, set up an online shop for your business.
Following are some tips from Lifehacker to help you take your idea towards a profitable online business.
Building your online store
Gone are the days of having to pay thousands of dollars to a web design company to put together your online store. With a platform like Shopify you can be up and running with a professional looking online store within hours, and all for a basic cost of USD29 per month.
Other great aspects of using Shopify include that you get the first 14 days for free, you don’t need any coding skills, it’s easy to scale and there are beautifully designed templates on offer.
There are also a lot of handy third party integrations you can take advantage of with Shopify to ensure your store is running smoothly, including PayPal (which handles payments easily, though you’ll pay a small cut of your transactions) and Shipwire (which will stock and ship your products if you choose to manufacture your own.)
Shopify works well however there are many other services out there with similar features such as Squarespace and WooCommerce for WordPress. The key point is that building your own system from scratch makes no sense.
Ensure you select a platform that works best for your needs. Research what is out there and try the free trials to see what works for you.
Hosting comes free as part of a Shopify account.
Finding customers
There are several ways to start building a passionate community around your store, and all of them require nothing but some hard work and persistence.
Here is what worked for Lifehacker:
- Start a Facebook page: Start attracting likes by promoting your store to friends and family and actively engaging with other pages and your own fans as you grow.
- Mailchimp: (Email marketing platform) You can start with a free account to begin a simple email newsletter to your store’s subscribers. Keep customers informed of new product offers and other promotions.
- Connect with bloggers: Try to identify where your ideal customers spend time online and reach out to those blogs/sites and offer to help them in some way. More often than not they’ll be happy to plug your site in return.
- Google Analytics is a great tool to measure your site’s traffic and the percentage of people who are making purchases — and it’s entirely free
Can Many Rivers help you?
Many Rivers is here to help people start small businesses and grow existing businesses. To find out if we are the right fit for you, complete our simple Small Business Self-Assessment form here.
Thanks for your time and we hope you have found these tips helpful.
If you found the above helpful, there are even more tips from Lifehacker here ‘How you can create an online store for less than $200’.
Read more . . .
