Thinking of starting your own business? Here’s what you need to know before setting up your online store.

Mom-and-pop shops and small businesses have suffered profit losses in recent years. Online stores have been a lifesaver.

But building an online store isn’t as easy as it seems. Where do you start, and what do you need to know?

How To

Part of establishing your brand name and credibility is having a seamless website that looks good and makes shopping easier.

Surveys show that if a website looks too complicated, or its checkout shopping cart is too glitchy, bounce rates increase. Sales become lost for your business. 

Many elements need to come together to make the checkout, inventory, and shopping experience effortless. 

Whether you’re starting, upgrading, or expanding your online business, you need a platform that gives you powerful customization options. Sometimes, business owners want access to specific tools, features, and workflows that they can carry over to their online store. Their platform needs to accommodate them and expand to allow for more integration.

Pillars of Store Design

The host needs to therefore have that reflected in the store’s design as well. 

• Responsive design (a website that works on desktop and mobile devices), 
• Customizable design (how the button actually looks),
• Content managed well (including where, how, and what your products look like and how they are placed), 
• Your site supports language translations, making it available in many languages (a must in today’s globalized e-commerce age).

All these factors are integral for the platform you choose to use to create your online business. 

Necessary Features

Brick-and-mortar stores are hard to manage with their unique complications. Digital versions of the same thing also bog down online stores.

• A platform for your online store should have flexible products (a seamless way to catalogue a product with various size and color options),
• Inventory management (a count system built in that lets you know when it’s time to restock your most popular products)
• An up-sell feature (a menu of related products on display on the page of the original products the customer has chosen)
• Smart filtering (provide an easy way for a customer to find the product they need)
• The ability to accommodate extras (e.g., packaging choices).  

In addition to having an excellent system in place to help you manage your business is great. However, the platform must have ways to easily add discounts or special sales campaigns to your online store. 

Once you’ve established what you want, getting started is simple. FutureEcom guarantees to give you the best platform while protecting your data and increasing your sales. 

Now that you’re equipped with a checklist of what you’ll need for your online store, it’s time to get started.