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When you’re starting an e-commerce business, there are a some necessary things that you need to get started. These include various accounts, software, scripts, and more. The goal of this post is to show you all of the things you need to get your e-commerce business off the ground from a technical point of view along with some recommendations for where to get these fulfilled. Some of these are obvious, and some may not be – take look!
This is a good checklist, but every business is different. If you have any questions about starting your e-commerce business OR about Magento in general, call us at 10888-335-2747 and we’ll be glad to help you out!
Ok, let’s get started!
Of course, you need to choose a platform for you business to run on. For many reasons, we highly reccomend using the Magento e-commerce system. Magento is extremely scalable, open source, easy to use and quickly becoming the most popular shopping cart system around.
You’re going to need a design that connects with your customers and properly shows your offerings. You can find a TON of Magento themes and templates all over the web on blogs and forums. Our recommendation is to get a professional web designer to create a custom look & feel for your website.
Ok, this is the shameless self promotion but as you read on you’ll see that there are a ton of core business things to be focusing on as you grow your online company. You shouldn’t be focusing on the technology when there are experts that can assist you. We can design, develop and provide Magento Support for your site while you are doing the important business growth actions.
Your site needs an easy to remember, targeted, dot-com domain name. You can get away with a dot-net domain if it’s necessary but it’s highly recommended to brainstorm and get a top level dot-com name for your website. Here are a few excellent websites to use when trying to find a domain name.
http://ajaxwhois.com
AjaxWhois lets you search the WhoIs database with a nearly instant Ajax search. It searches as you type so you never have to hit enter and you can search faster than one domain at at time.
www.domainexposer.com
Domain Exposer is awesome because it will append your keyword to a huge database of themed words and tell you if they are registered or not.
There are hundreds if not thousands of web hosts out there. Trying to find the exact right host for your business can be an overwhelming project. You want to avoid having to move your website from one host to another after your website grows. If you are starting a serious e-commerce business, start with the right web host to ensure that your website will be fast, reliable and properly supported.
We are specialists in getting your Magento E-Commerce site hosted correctly from the beginning. For more information about Magento Hosting, call us at 1-888-335-2747.
You probably know what you want to sell with your e-commerce website. However, it can be hard to source the products so here are a few recommendations.
http://www.thomasnet.com
Thomasnet can get you linked up with manufacturers so you can source directly without any middlemen.
You can test a product line by dropshipping products to test, pricing and forecast sales volume without having to purchase inventory. We have been partners with http://www.dsdi.com for a long time and they are by far one of the best drop shipping companies we have ever worked with.
When you are searching for product sources, do extensive research so you get as high on the supply chain as possible so you can save as much money when you are buying inventory.
Other places to search for product sources is to obviously perform a Google search for your product + “wholesale sources” or “manufacturer”. You can go to trade shows and conferences as well as make calls directly to companies to try to make connections.
Having your products shown clearly on your website is extremely important to the overall look of the site as well as the conversion rate of the site. If you are selling clothing, make sure that you have models showing the clothing off. If you’re selling electronics, furniture or even sneakers, you need multiple angles of very clear photos. It might cost a bit more than you expect to have professional photos of your products taken but from over 10 years of e-commerce experience, it can really separate the websites that get sales from those that do not.
Be sure to write captivating, accurate and titles and descriptions for your products. It’s a time consuming process, but as your website matures and the search engines pick up the long tail pages you’ll be happy that you optimized these textual elements of your website.
Not only are the titles and descriptions important for SEO but this text sells your product! There are a few sites that really go above and beyond with their descriptions. You can use these for inspiration. One is http://www.thinkgeek.com, and the other is http://www.woot.com.
When someone buys something, you have to send it to them. Make sure that you sign up for UPS, USPS and/or FedEx.
In order to print labels and ship your products, you’ll need a service like www.shipworks.com. Luckily, Shipworks conveniently works with Magento!
Don’t for get about boxes and packing peanuts! You’ll need a shipping scale and heavy duty packing tape as well.
We were always a customer of www.uline.com. These guys are great. They are extremely reliable and their pricing is the best we found. Great discounts for large orders so as you grow you save!
Your website is going to need an SSL certificate to encrypt credit card transactions. All modern web browsers will alert their users VERY intrusively if this isn’t set up right. We are partnered with Comodo and offer various levels of SSL certificates if you need one or go to www.comodo.com. You can get set up with other certificates too from Godaddy.com, Verisign.com, and many others.
You’re probably going to want to get a toll free phone number for your customers to call if they have a problem. You can use VIOP services to reduce the costs of this feature or call your local phone company for more information.
If you are going to build a list of e-mail addresses on your site so you can send out promotions and other mass communications, you should use a 3rd party service like Aweber.com so ensure the highest delivery rate and ease of list/email/contact organization.
Don’t forget to sign up for your social media accounts. Definitely claim your brand on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, etc…
You can use this awesome program NameCHK to check 72 sites at once! http://namechk.com/
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Wow! That was a ton of stuff. I might have forgot something too. If you have any other recommendations, please leave a comment below! Thanks for reading!
Here at Redstage, we are huge fans of Magento (obviously). We asked a few of the guys around the office what their favorite parts about Magento are and why they Love the system. We got a ton of great responses. Read below for a few reasons that drew us to the system, and what makes it so exciting to work with. Most of what we hear about from developers is working within the framework is challenging but powerful. The community of developers is large and growing as well. End users love the out-of-box feature set and the extensibility / scalability that Magento has due to the number of available extensions. In the comments section below, write why you love Magento!
First, take a look at a few of the our answers! Here is why we Love Magento:
Antonio Says:
“The best part about Magento is that it’s free/open-source. The support community is knowledgeable and they’ve been a reliable source of solutions. The Admin Panel is comprehensive, managing orders and customers has never been easier, and with the help of readily available modules, I can easily integrate the cart with external systems.Frontend javascript is cross-browser compatible, SEO friendly URLs look clean, and the One-Page Checkout is neat. All in all it’s a solid system, no hacks or spaghetti code. I see Magento being the leading shopping-cart platform on the web in the very near future.”
Brian Said:
“I love Magento because it is scalable for the smallest of mom and pop shops to fortune 100 companies.”
Adam Says:
“I love Magento because it comes with an incredible feature set that you would normally only get from an expensive proprietary shopping cart or a hosted solution with hefty monthly fees.I love Magento because of the large community of already existing extensions that can greatly enhance the already powerful out-of-the-box of features.”
Another Adam said,
“Magento lends itself to the design of beautiful, usable websites that allow sellers and customers alike to have a better experience on the web.Also, “Magento” sounds like the name of a magician/superhero.”
Tim Said:
“I love Magento because of its development flexibility. The code is organized in a consistent and sensible manner which allows for complex customizations and changes to be made with relative ease. Anything is possible with Magento!I love Magento because of its active open source community. Whenever a question arises or a feature is requested, nine times out of ten, another Magento developer or user has experienced the issue before. A solution or at least a tip is found simply by reading the MagentoCommerce Forum or browsing through the vast set of extensions from MagentoConnect. This helps produce a better product in a shorter timeframe.”
We want to know why YOU love Magento! Leave your favorite feature or any comments below. Remember, if you need anything from us, you can call any time at 1-888-335-2747!
One of the earliest conversion lessons that I was ever taught was to add eye-contact and humanization to a website to build trust. Over the years, these trust building tactics have been seen all over the place with huge 1-800 numbers and of course, the standard customer service girl.
Here’s an example:
Well, one of the best ways to build trust is to add a live help function to the site. This shows customers that there actually are living, breathing people behind the site and it’s not just code, text and pictures that transact their credit cards. It gives them a sense of reliability that will boost their likelihood to purchase significantly.
The MagentoLiveModule made by Fabrice Beck, will help you achieve just that! Without needing a 3rd party application with monthly fees etc… you can use this module to chat with customers who have questions about your products or policies.
Most people won’t go searching for a shipping policy but they will chat for 30 seconds and get an answer they want. -This builds conversion. And conversion is the name of the game!
Here’s a link to the module on MagentoConnect:
http://www.magentocommerce.com/extension/808/livechat
There you can see that the module has excellent reviews and up to date support, so you won’t be abandoned by the original developer. It’s an excellent addition to any Magento site!
We can help if you need too! You can click here to get Magento Support or call 1-888-335-2747. Or visit out Magento site for more information.
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Fox Studios launched a new e-commerce website called Fox Connect! Not only does it look great, and is extremely functional but it showcases another huge brand/business using Magento for their eCommerce needs.
This was first noticed this mentioned on the official Magento Blog:
http://www.magentocommerce.com/blog/comments/fox-connect-on-magento/