It may seem like the main focus of building an online store lies in the coding. You need a website to make sales, your transactions are all online with different accounts, and all the deals and sales take place over computers and the Internet.
However, that really is only the skeleton of your business. You still need the meat to the structure in order to really have any success to it. Your product and how you get it to your customers are at the core of your store.
The best thing to do is to make sure that you are fully prepared before you even attempt to think about other details like hosting, the name for your site or what software you want to use.
Put your best foot forward by making sure you have a full grasp over what you plan to sell and how you plan to sell it, and you’ll be able to avoid trouble in the future. Make sure you have all the details in a row and you will always make a profit.
Page Contents
How To Preplan to Make your Online Store Complete
Send Products to Customers Reliably
If your product is made from any sort of physical material, obviously you are going to have to mail it to your customer after the purchase. Unlike programs that can be bought and downloaded immediately, you have to actually take time to send other products to those that buy it.
However, you still need to pick a good shipping service that can handle all of your needs, no matter where you need to send the items to. Keep a list of those price ranges around for reference. If you want your customers to cover their own shipping and handling, you will need to know how much you need to charge them and add that to the price of your merchandise.
After all, you don’t want to accidentally lose money if your asking price is too low and won’t cover the cost to actually get it to the buyer
Think of the Cost of Materials
When you want to make a business work, clearly you need to have an idea of how much everything costs. As with the shipping, try to have a good idea what the cost to actually get the product is. Even if it is handmade, you still need to account for the cost of materials and the labor used to make it.
Perhaps you resell movies or games online. Whatever your product, keep a record of just how much it cost you, and refer to that when you decide how much to charge for it. Don’t allow yourself to go overboard though. No one will buy it if it too expensive.
Try a simply markup or of 10 to 15 percent. This will usually keep the price reasonable and allow you to make money on the transaction.