How to setup an online store in a week

Do you own a local business and want to start selling online in domestic or international market?

Are you looking to start a new ecommerce business?

If you want to setup your own eCommerce store and don’t know what to do next, we’ll help you guide in every aspect so you can start selling in India and abroad. You can also ask any bigcommerce web design expert, in case you need extra hand. 

These are the primary things you’ll need in-order to setup an eCommerce store.

1. A domain name
2. A shopping cart software
3. Payment Gateway
4. Shipping & Order Tracking Service
5. Online marketing / promotion of your products

Cost Involved

1. Domain Name: Rs. 500 to Rs.800 per year.
2. eCommerce software: Around Rs. 600 per month ($10/ month for standard package) + 1.5% transaction fee.
3. Payment Gateway: No setup fees. Just pay per transaction depending upon what credit or debit card they use. Refer to CCAvenue pricing .
4. Shipping / Order tracking: Depending on what provider you choose, actual shipping and tracking cost will apply. Refer to ShipRocket pricing .

Domain Name Registration

Domain Name is the address for your online store, so if you’re selling sarees, you might want to register your name as www.sareeboutique.com or something similer. These are the domain registration companies that you could use to get a domain from. http://www.godaddy.com or http://www.hostgator.in

Choosing a right Shopping Cart software

There are many shopping cart softwares available, but If you are a single shop owner or a small team, don’t want to invest too much up-front in setup and development cost, than hosted eCommerce solution is your best choice. The hosted eCommerce software is developed and maintained by shopping cart providers and has following advantages:

1. No worry about upgrading the software or any security aspect of it,
2. No huge upfront cost
3. No IT team required to maintain the store.
4. Quick & easy setup
5. Has most features that you need to sell your products online
6. Small monthly fee, cancel it anytime

We recommend BigCommerce software. BigCommerce is most reliable Australian eCommerce giant serving the world now and has gained significant popularity over the past few years. It has most features that any eCommerce shop owner would need. Plus it has many Free readily available templates to choose from.

Create your FREE trial

Create your 15 days FREE trial store here and see if you like it. And then upgrade to whatever plan plan suits you best. They charge about Rs. 600 per month ($10 per month)+ 1.5% transaction fee. BigCommerce pricing And If you’re looking for a custom design that suites your brand or need help with setting up your store, you can contact bigcommerce development services like us Contact us to know more about how we can help you.

Payment Gateway

Once you setup your store, you’ll need a payment gateway. Payment gateway collects the payments from your customers online and deposit it into your bank account securely. They charge a transaction fee depending on various parameters like what credit/debit card customer pays, what’s your monthly sales etc.Transaction fee ranges from 1% to 5% of total order. You can opt for CCAvenue, which works great with BigCommerce and for Indian merchants and has no deposit or setup fees. They only change based on the transaction.

Shipping and Order Tracking

You will need a shipping service to deliver your products to the customers. There are many providers in India as listed below.

1. Bluedart
2. Fedex
3. DTDC
4. Aramex
5. GoJavas

And if you want to offer the Shipment tracking to your customers, these are some good companies.

1. Aftership
2. ShipRocket
3. Mypacco

Online Marketing and Promotion

That’s not it. You’ll need to do online marketing and promotions or hire a digital marketing agency, so your potential customer can find your products online. You need to make sure that when customers are searching online in google or bing for products, your website have to show-up. When customers want to buy any product online, they might not come directly to your website unless they already know about your website. This would be a search engine marketing, also known as SEM. You could also consider Social Media Marketing. You can create a Facebook page for your business to attract your potential customers, put a badge on your website footer. And then just keep posting useful information around your products that might interest and attract your potential customers. You can also show your store within the Facebook tab, so you anyone can browse your products from Facebook itself. Another option is PPC. That is Pay Per Click. You can signup with Google Adwords and advertise your products online. And pay based on the clicks you’ve got for your eCommerce store. You could also advertise with Facebook. And pay based on your daily or weekly marketing budget is.

Legals and Taxation

You don’t need to set up a company to sell online. You can just register your firm as a sole proprietor and that’s enough. However some payment gateways required a company documentation, so registering a LLP is a good option. And it’s easy to setup. You can ask your Lawyer or a CA for more detail.

Get Expert help

We’re certified BigCommerce web designers. Contact us today and setup your 15day FREE Trial store.