Starting an Ecommerce Business Website

Ecommerce is a unique and complicated online business. When you start a ecommerce business website and sell products online, this leads to new customer service issues that your brick and mortar business (if you have one) has likely never faced. Operating an ecommerce business requires consistent monitoring of emails, refund requests, and shipping status updates. Failure to respond to customer emails (especially from those who have already placed an order) in a timely manner (ecommerce customers usually expect a response in less than 24 hours) can lead to chargebacks, disputes, and BBB complaints. Ecommerce is not for the faint of heart! You need nerves of steel and excellent organizational skills to be successful. If you are considering an ecommerce business, you first need a product or products to sell. For those of you that have your own product or own a brick and mortar storefront, you are ahead of the game in this department. You already know what you want to sell, now you just need to know how to sell it online and be profitable. We will get to that in a moment. For those of you that have no idea what to sell, can't afford to stock inventory, or know what to sell but do not know how to get it at a good price, you have two options. One option is to be an affiliate. Affiliates are paid a percentage of each sale they generate. Most of the major affiliate networks have product feeds which allows you to add individual products to your site just as if you stocked them. Another option is to utilize dropshipping. Many manufacturers offer dropshipping programs. You will need a business license and tax identification number to establish an account with them. These topics are covered in our article links.

Once you know what you are going to sell you are ready to set up your ecommerce business website. You will first need a domain name and web hosting. Once those are secured it is time to choose a shopping cart. We recommend starting with opensource shopping cart software such as Zen Cart or osCommerce. Both of these offer a full line of features that allow you to track your sales, send emails, and update order statuses. Best of all, they are free to use. You can customize them with predesigned templates or create a unique look by modifying the templates. Learn how to install and customize your shopping cart in the Zen Cart Tutorials article.

If you are about to start a ecommerce business read through all the articles to the left and you will learn step by step how to establish your business, create your ecommerce website, and generate web traffic.