If you want to sell products online, you’re going to need to know a little bit about e-commerce. E-commerce simply means that you are conducting a commercial transaction electronically, so the concept itself is pretty simple. However, actually setting up the space to do e-commerce transactions can be somewhat complex.
What are the key things that you need, as a seller, to start setting up ecommerce to sell your products online?
Products and all of the information about them
The first thing you want to get together is a list of all of your products and all of the pertinent specifics about them. If you don’t have these specs put together already, we would recommend that you start one right away! Record information like:
- Name of product
- Brand of product
- Make and/or model of product
- SKU
- Description of product (both a long one and a short one, if possible)
- Cost
- Weight
- Dimensions (length, width, height)
- All of the possible variations or options of the product… Do they come in different sizes and colors? Are there price variations that go along with these?
- Are there any customizable features of the product and do these cost more than the base item?
- What else does your customer need to know about the product?
What payment methods do you want to use?
Online shoppers expect to see some familiar payment options when they check out. If you want your shoppers to be able to use their credit or debit card, you will want to use an online payment processor. Some common examples of these are PayPal, Stripe and Square. Your bank may also have an online payment processing solution, so you should check with them and see if that might be an option.
When you use an online payment processor, you will need to connect a bank account to the service, so be prepared for that. Also, these services are not free. Commonly, many payment processors charge between 2% and 5% of each transaction amount. Online marketplaces can charge as much as 35% of your transaction to help pay for their platform and services. (If you have a narrow profit margin, you may want to ask yourself if you’ll need to modify the prices of your products to make up for that cost.)
Do you want to use other payment options, like check, in-store pick up, special delivery or COD? Those are also options to make sure you have acknowledged and accounted for.
Where (and how) do you want to ship?
Shipping is perhaps one of the most complex pieces of setting up your ecommerce store. If you ship by weight and/or dimensions, many e-commerce solutions have features to automatically calculate shipping rates. But if you ship by flat rate packages and boxes, it can be tricky to determine how many of each item, or which combinations of items will fit into one of those boxes. (We’ve set up a lot of ecommerce sites and each site usually requires a custom solution to this problem!)
Do you ship to other countries? Make note of what countries you would like to ship to and know that shipping to other countries can be far more expensive than domestic shipping.
How do you want to handle taxes?
Taxes can be a complex bit of business, since every state has different rates and requirements. Many e-commerce solutions include tax calculations built in, but a lot of people will include some base amount for taxes into the price of their product. Either way you go, it is good to have considered taxes when you are putting together your product and store requirements.
What to do once you have all of your product and store specs together
At this point, you should choose your approach to selling. Would you like to have your own store? Or would you like to sell in an online marketplace?
What are online marketplaces?
Online marketplaces are essentially kind of like online malls. Your store is but one of many stores in the marketplace.
The upside is that, just like an old-fashioned mall, shoppers are attracted to that marketplace because they can find lots of different options and competition among vendors is high, so prices are lower. This means that you will get a lot more eyes on your products, and right away.
The downside is that marketplaces charge higher fees than payment processors, and you’re constrained by what you can do on your site (and often what products you can sell). Your site design is also usually limited by what the marketplace will allow.
Online marketplaces are really good for people who don’t mind selling for low profit per transaction, because they know they can make up for it with higher volumes of sales. (Amazon and Walmart marketplaces are good examples of these.) They can also be really good tools for people who make their products as a hobby and just want an easy way to sell, or for professional craftspeople who have other ways of selling their product as well. Bringing awareness about their products to a new audience is worth losing a little in profit. (Etsy would be a good example of this.)
Stand alone e-commerce sites
If you want full control of the look, feel and functionality of your store, you’ll probably want to have your own stand-alone e-commerce website. You could still have a store on a marketplace, but at a certain point in your business’s development, it will make sense to have your own store. (Read more about comparing the cost and benefits of online marketplaces vs having your own online store.)
What to do after you make the decision
Remember that the decision that you make for your business should be expected to be the best solution for you for 3-5 years, but don’t be afraid to reassess at any point. The best solution for you now, won’t always be the best one down the line. Like I mentioned before, some businesses have both an online store of their own, as well as a store in a marketplace for the added visibility.
If you need help starting up your online store, just reach out to Roost Web Strategies to see if we can be a great web design partner for your project!
