There is no question that a company’s online presence is just as important as the brick and mortar storefront. And much like starting a real-life store, starting a business online takes research, patience, and a lot of persistence.
1. First things first – do you need a license to sell online?
The short answer is: most likely, yes. Although licensing requirements vary from county to county, state to state, chances are you do need some type of paperwork to let the government know that you’re operating a business and that you will pay taxes.
If this is your first business, we strongly recommend you consult an attorney and/or a tax specialist for advice as to your particular situation.
However, there are some steps everyone needs to take:
- If you do not have a name yet but have an idea for one, check the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s trademark search tool to make sure it’s not taken. Once you have chosen a unique one, register it with your state’s Secretary of State.
- Obtain an Employer Identification Number (EIN), a federal identification number issued by the IRS that identifies you as a business entity. You can obtain this online in less than 15 minutes.
- Check if your state requires that you register with the state labor board, as some states mandate this even if you’re the only employee.
- Finally, it’s extremely important to get acquainted with state tax regulations before you start selling online. Make sure to check your state's requirements and obtain a sales tax permit.
2. Building Your Store
Once your paperwork is taken care of, it’s time for the fun stuff: the actual building and designing of your site.
There is no longer a need for coding or programming knowledge to have a professional-looking site. Many eCommerce sites will do most of the heavy lifting for you, with designer-created templates and step-by-step wizards that could help you have a beautiful, functional site in no time.
There are many other advantages to going with an eCommerce site, one of the most important ones being the ability to process payments securely. Since your site will transmit confidential, extremely sensitive information like customers’ credit card numbers, it’s essential that the system processing your payments has the ability to encrypt the information that’s being transmitted, in addition to other more advanced security features. To be specific, look for payment processing with SSL Certification, a security technology that encrypts information, and PCI DSS compliance. The PCI DSS, or Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard certifies that payments are processed within a secure environment and that confidential data is not kept in storage within the system.
As far as the site design, it’s important to keep your navigation simple and to make it as easy as possible for the customer to process their order and check out. If possible, make it so the customer is never more than two clicks away from the checkout page.
3. Setting up your delivery method.
Most online stores are littered with abandoned shopping carts and, as it turns out, it’s often due to shipping charge sticker shock. Of course, “free shipping” are some of the most attractive words any website could have; unfortunately, delivering things without charging the consumer can also seriously cut into your profit margins. Some companies that offer free shipping mark up their prices a bit to cover for it. If you choose this route, make sure you really know how much each of your products costs to ship so you can price them appropriately.
If that’s too big of a sacrifice for your bottom line, offering free shipping for orders over a certain amount can be the happy medium you’re looking for. As a side benefit, it can also make customers buy a little more just to get that free shipping.
Other options are to charge what you get charged for shipping, using a flat shipping rate, or dropshipping. The use of dropshipping, or having your supplier ship directly to your buyer, is becoming increasingly more popular. The key, however, is to find a supplier with a rock-solid reputation and credentials, as the product’s quality and delivery will be up to them, not you.
4. Getting foot traffic
So, you have your website, your products, and a solid strategy to deliver them out to people. It’s time to hang out your shingle and open your doors. To get the widest customer base - in other words, the most virtual foot traffic - you have to know what search engines look for.
First, you have to tell the engines you’re ready to be found by submitting your sitemap. You can do this yourself, or you could use a search engine submission service, which will take care of submitting your information to each search engine and provide you with reports of your rankings, tips, and keyword suggestions.
Second, you can either buy pay-per-click (PPC) advertising and/or implement Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques. Although PPC advertising can be effective (placing the link to your website prominently on the right side of the page), most people will click on the so-called organic results, that is, the ones that naturally come up when they search.
SEO involves tactics anyone can use to have search engines find, index, and raise their rank in the organic results. Whole books have been written about effective SEO techniques, but a good place to start is by learning the basics of what search engines are looking for:
- The age of the site, that is, how long as the site been up. Google and other search engines will give preference to older, well-established sites over new ones. But, if you just started your site, there are plenty of other ways to get search engine attention.
- Using the right keywords is one such way. Search engines scour your site, including the meta information, looking for keywords that match what a particular user searched for. This makes it extremely important that you research the words most commonly used by your target audience and use a variety of them. Google has a free keyword tool that can show you how often particular words are searched for. It’s good practice to create a list of commonly searched terms and integrate them into your website copy, but only where they naturally fit. Overdoing the keywords will sound unnatural and, sooner or later, Google catches on when someone is gaming their system.
- Google and other search engines love links, especially to well-established, authoritative sites. Links are so attractive to search engines, even links to content within your own site counts.
- Because most people now browse the web on their mobile phones instead of on a desktop, responsive design – pages built with the ability to adapt to the device they’re being viewed on – is a necessity and will reward you with higher rankings in search results.
- Search engines also seek out relevant, fresh information so regularly updated content could do wonders for your search rankings. And, if you want a steady supply of fresh content, there’s no better way than by setting up a blog. Blogging helps you in a number of ways. First, people love stories. Blogging is an engaging way of providing valuable information and establishing a connection with your audience and potential customers. Second, sharing your knowledge helps establish your expertise and adds to your credibility. Third, adding interesting content might lead to other sites linking to yours (see Google’s love for links above). And last, but certainly not least, the more content, the more variety of keywords search engines can pick up on.
5. Getting the word out
Social media is one of the most effective – and least expensive – ways of getting the word out about your business. A strong and responsive social media presence lets customers get to know you and your product. It can also let you hear from customers directly, respond to issues quickly, and often resolve customer concerns before they become a problem.
Setting up a business online, if you haven’t had one before, can seem like a daunting and expensive task, but it really doesn’t have to be. If you truly believe in what you have to offer, and have the patience and persistence, there is always enough help and inexpensive options to help you succeed.