With today’s business climate gearing more towards eCommerce stores, an abundance of options and features have become available for those looking into starting their own online business. Here are 4 tips to building your eCommerce store.
4 Tips on Building Your eCommerce Store
There are so many things to think about when building an online store. With today’s business climate gearing more towards eCommerce stores, an abundance of options and features have become available for those looking into starting their own online business. To help navigate through the influx of information, we have 4 tips to building your eCommerce store.
Tip #1: Choose your platform
To start your eCommerce store, you have the option to either go with a self-hosted solution such as the Amazon AWS, which means you are renting the server to a third party, or the Software as a service (SaaS) route like Shopify where they take care of the hosting for you.
If you want more control over the software and options of customization, self-hosting is the way to go. However, we believe that the SaaS route is good enough for most eCommerce needs. Unlike self-hosting, SaaS systems have more predictable pricing structures with fixed monthly fees and free support. FlagShip’s online shipping system is supporting Shopify through our free app. It is worthwhile to note that our shipping system also supports WooCommerce, Magento, OpenCart, PrestaShop and we have our own API for customized eCommerce websites. Create a free account and start shipping right away.
Tip #2: Build your catalog
Carefully plan the items that you will be offering on your eCommerce store. Make sure to properly manage the categories of your products and their pictures. Whether you choose to purchase photos, hire a professional photographer, or even take your own photos, don’t forget to include a good product name and description to ensure that your products can be easily picked up by search engines like Google.
Tip #3: Select your payment processor
This is where your customer will checkout and pay for the items, so it is important to choose a reliable payment processor. WooCommerce offers a Paypal option, which we think is an advantage because a lot of people already have a credit card saved on Paypal. This will lead to less abandoned carts and a faster checkout process.
Tip #4: Pick your shipping options
A poor shipping strategy is one of the main reasons why people abandon their carts without completing the purchase. Free shipping is one solution, but high shipping charges are definitely a setback. A flat rate is another option where it will require a marginal increase in the price of your products.
Real-time rates are now an option as well, FlagShip’s Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, OpenCart, and PrestaShop plugins give you the capability to get fantastic shipping rates in real time to make sure that you don’t out-price yourself when it comes to shipping for your online store. We know how frustrating it can be to be quoted a shipping price only to have that price increase afterwards due to dimensional weight. That is why FlagShip’s online shipping system considers the dimensional weight of packages to ensure to most accurate rate as possible. Sign up for a free account to see our great rates and easy to use online shipping system.
Building an eCommerce store requires work but don’t worry, take your time and find the solutions that work best for you and your business. On our end, we’ve got you covered with our shipping for eCommerce – click here for even more tips on building your own online store.