How to Build an E-Commerce Website

An ecommerce website is a great way to make an online income. There are many advantages to setting up an ecommerce website, one of them of course is making money, another is that once you learn how to make an ecommerce website, you can make more than one, and thus make even more money, and a final advantage is that making your own ecommerce website is a good way to learn some basic HTML coding.

Part 1:

Select the company that you want to host your website with, and register for an account with them. Consider a company that has free hosting with no forced ads such as Freehostia for example. This can be one way to save money on website hosting until your ecommerce website gets off the ground and then once you are making money you can choose to upgrade to a paid hosting package.

Part 2:

Select and buy your domain name. Choose your domain name very carefully, you want something that is not too long but which personifies the products you sell. For example, if you are selling t-shirts, you might choose a domain name like lillystshirts.com. You don't want a domain name that is much longer than ten letters. This way it will be easier for people to remember it.

Part 3:

Create your website using an ecommerce website template. Many hosting companies provide users with website templates, if your web hosting company does not offer them, locate one online. There are a few websites with free ecommerce website templates. During this process also add your products to your website.

Part 4:

Set up a Paypal business account. Paypal is one of the best ways to accept credit and debit card payments, as well as direct transfer from Paypal account to Paypal account payments. It is free to set up an account. Once you have done so and your bank account has been verified by Paypal, create Paypal Buy Now buttons for your products and add the code for the buttons to each of your products on your ecommerce website.

Tips:

Choose how you are going to ship your products. If your products are digital then of course this isn't a problem, however, if your products are actual physical products such as t-shirts, or mugs, or posters then you will need to have a way to ship them that is economical. You may want to consider getting a business account with UPS or Fedex if you will be shipping items from your home. Also, if you are storing your products you will need to decide exactly where to store them, especially if you don't actually have room at your home.

Learn a bit of basic HTML coding so you can make small changes to your ecommerce website which will make it more your own.

Advertise your ecommerce website in free classifieds such as Craig's List for example, and write articles that relate to the products you sell with a link to your ecommerce website. These are both great ways to get free advertising.

Set up categories on your ecommerce website so buyers can easily find what they are looking for.

Warnings:

When you're just starting out don't invest a lot of money in setting up an ecommerce website because if you do and then for some reason products don't begin selling right away, it is very easy to rack up a lot of debt. This is especially true with pay-per-click programs.