Trading online – what you need to figure out

The online trading arena is booming. More and more people are hitting the web to do their shopping and to hunt for products and services. It’s easy, they have the world at their fingertips – and can get stuff delivered to their home from all over the world. If you run a business, isn’t it time that you sealed a slice of the action? Here’s what you need to be thinking about when launching your virtual storefront.

ECommerce facts

If someone mentioned ECommerce to you, would you know exactly what they’re talking about? Back in the day, everyone used to head down to the shops to buy products off the shelves or have a home delivery catalogue, with a phone ordering service. Things have moved on rapidly since then. Whether it’s a website, app or social media platform, customers are buying from their sofa, or on the go, from wherever they want to, and whenever they want to.

For you running your business, this technological revolution, which goes from strength to strength, offers great prospects. It opens up the question: do you need a shop front? Or can you just trade online? The latter could help keep your costs down and revenue up.

How do I set up shop online?

The first thing you need to do is to establish your company’s online presence. You need to get a great-looking website designed. Don’t just jump in quickly with this. Take time to get to know a web designer, who really understands your products and services. Work closely with them to produce the content for your site, which needs to reflect the image and ethos of your company.

Depending on what you’re selling, you’ll want to think about getting some eye-catching photos and videos into your site, alongside some simple and catchy product descriptions, which give potential customers all they need to know. Your site needs to be easy to navigate around and easy to find on the web. Ask your web developer about giving your site the SEO (search engine optimisation) treatment.

To be able to sell through your website, you need to get a payment gateway installed. A payment gateway is simply a service which takes payments from your customers and completes the authorization process.

You’ll also need to look at getting a merchant account, which is a bank account that processes all the transactions going through your site.

Short on cash?

If you don’t have loads of spare funds in your business to splash out on your online store, you can always have a look around for ECommerce website templates, which have already done some of the work for you.

Plug it!

Once you have your online store ready to go, make sure you give it a good push across your social media channels, advertising networks and e-marketing tools. You’ll want everyone know about it. Otherwise, it’s like having a shop front down a back street that no one ever discovers! And that wouldn’t be good for business, would it?