Online business is a good way to expand existing retail stores, test new products or supplement existing income Essence More than two -thirds of Americans are shopping online, and this number continues to increase -the best time to join the shopping cart!
According to the correct track of this guide or click the link below to jump to a specific part.
Define your audience
Select your product
Create your business
Establish a store Complete the order
Marketing your product
1. Define your audience Take time to complete the process of finding a suitable audience. It will improve every step you take in the entire business life cycle and will help you determine your niche market to improve future marketing.
If you do not consider specific products, start with what you care about. Are you passionate about small business owners? Do you like to work with your children? Are you a car enthusiast attracted by car enthusiasts?
Once you choose your audience to determine their problems or needs. Do they need better and more comfortable clothes? Are they looking for solutions to reduce stress? Are they looking for a way to establish contact with people who are like a person?
您可以通过以下几种方式了解您的受众：
[123 ] Take time where they spend time -industry forums, social media groups, Subreddits.
Learn more information about them through investigation.
A face -to -face interview.
The more you know about their motivation, you can better serve them.
2. Select your product
The next step is to determine the exact content you want to sell:
Handmade products
: These are you The items made by yourself, such as jewelry, clothing, paper products, wooden decorations and food. If you are cunning, want to completely control production and find a lower startup cost, this is a good choice. But remember: success may be more difficult -when you make every product in person, it is more difficult to expand the scale.
Products : These are items created internally or by third parties and stored, sold and transported by you, such as tableware, shoes, cosmetics, electronic products or automotive parts. If you can’t actually produce products or want to expand yourself, this is a good choice, but it does involve higher startup costs because you must obtain inventory in advance.
Digital Products: These are
Online delivery items without physical formats, such as e -books, music, online courses, membership plans and exercise videos. Digital products have scalability, usually with low startup costs and minimum continuous production costs.
Direct sales products: These are items made, storage and transportation by third -party, such as T -shirts, stickers and mobile phone cases. This option eliminates the trouble of storage inventory and transportation products, but also eliminates a lot of control.
Services: These are tasks performed for clients without any physical components. Examples include counseling, consulting, graphic design, activity planning, hotel reservation and interior design. You execute these services in a virtual way or yourself.
Please keep in mind that your company does not have to choose one of these five options -some of the most successful online stores break the routine. Kawaii is not a manufacturing or hand -made product, but to choose the best cute items from Japan and pack them into the theme box.
Photo https://www.kawaiibox.com/ ] or you can combine multiple types of products. You can make and sell original paintings and direct selling posters featuring your design. Or, like a one -stop map, sell digital products (vector maps) with service (custom map design). The sky is the limit!
3. Create your business Once you decide a product, it is time to build your business.
Take all necessary legal steps
The law requires that the position of your business is different, but you need to consider the following steps:
Select you to select you The business structure and register your business. This will affect all aspects of your legal responsibility and taxes to daily operations.
Get the tax number and understand the tax framework.
Generally, the structure you choose will affect your taxation method.
Get any necessary license.
Some areas need permits to sell regulatory products, such as guns, Alcohol or CBD.
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If your company is located in the United States, then this guide from the Small Enterprise Association guides you to complete everything you need to know.
Opening a commercial bank account Although it seems to be from the existing bank account Easy, but there are many reasons to separate your corporate account from personal account: Professional spirit. Business partners and customers can open checks for your company instead of your personal.
Protection. Separation accounts help protect your personal assets from the influence of commercial responsibility.
Simple. The consolidated account makes accounting and tax more complicated.
Extraordinary benefits. A separate commercial account allows you to set up a credit card to establish a credit record for your company and apply for a loan and credit limit.
When selecting a bank account, please pay attention to interest rates, transaction costs and minimum account balances. You may also want to talk to other business owners to see what they like their banks.
Set accounting
Set your books correctly at the beginning to save time and trouble. Learn the basic knowledge of small enterprise accounting, and consider hiring accountants to deal with your finances when the company is developing.
Determine how to charge the product
Before the establishment of your website, please determine Your pricing strategy. How much do you want to charge the product? How do you want to arrange payment? There are several options here: One -time payment. For your products when buying. Subscribe. Regular income is generated by monthly or annual charges.
Payment plan. Allow customers to pay the purchase fee over time.
For more information about the development of business, please understand some of our online store owners who want them to know before starting.
4. Establishing a store
With a solid business practice, it is time to establish your website.
Starting from your website foundation
Purchase domain name and hosting
Your first step is to purchase domain names -customers visit your website to visit your website And the input URL. Select the content that represents your business and is easy to remember,Try to avoid using numbers and unsaturated words. This is a guide to guide you to understand other important precautions.
Your host is where your website is located -it stores all your website files and and Show it to visitors from all over the world. Your host has a great impact on the security and speed of your website -a good starting point is WordPress.com e -commerce hosting plan, including everything you need for your online store. For other options and price points, please check the complete list of the hosting solutions we recommend.
Install WordPress WordPress is a free website construction platform, which aims to visit people with level technical experience. It includes a highly visual editor that enables you to build pages without code experience and be completely customized. Use a plug -in (providing additional components with additional functions) to turn your website into anything you want. This flexibility and ease of use are why it supports 37% of the network.
Most hosting service providers provide one -click WordPress installation, while other hosting service providers ( For example, WordPress.com) is pre -installed with WordPress. Read the complete instructions of installing WordPress on all major hosting service providers.
安装WooCommerce WooCommerce 是一个专门为WordPress 创建的电子商务平台，它为您提供在线销售所需的所有工具：添加产品、收取付款、 Set up transportation, create customer accounts, etc. It is scalable -selects from hundreds of extensions to expand your store function -and can expand as your business grows. In addition, it is fully implemented for free. Woocommerce is a plug -in WordPress. To install it, please go to the \”plug -in\” section of the WordPress instrument board, search for Woocommerce, and then click \”Installation\”. The setting wizard will guide you to complete the entire process.
Note: WordpreSS.COM e -commerce plan is pre -installed with Woocommerce, so you can directly start creating your website.
Select a topic WordPress theme define the design and layout of your website. Thousands of free and paid options -a little browsing will guide you to find the option that is best for your store. Choose to look good on various sizes, integrate with WooCommerce and look very professional. Storefront
Theme is a good choice, both intuitive and flexible.
View the complete precautions list and view some options provided by Woocommerce.
Select the payment gateway
The payment gateway is a device that handles credit card payment and transfer money to your bank account -you may have heard of PayPal or Stripe, this It is two common choices. Woocommerce integrated with more than a dozen payment gateways, so the setting process is seamless. When choosing one, please ask the following questions:
What fee do they charge? Are they paid or monthly? How easier they make the customer’s checkout process?
Do they allow customers to stay on your website or redirect to their platform?
Do they accept international currencies? Do they allow regular payment? Consider the specific needs of your business. If you sell subscriptions, you need a gateway that receives regular payment, but if you only need to pay at one time, you don’t need it.
A good choice is WooCommerce Payments, which is a completely free tool that allows you to manage payment, refund, etc. in the same instrument board in other parts of the store.
Understand more information about choosing the correct payment gateway.
Set taxes
According to your local regulations, you may need to collect sales tax. Although you can use Woocommerce to define your tax rate by default, expansion procedures like WooCommerce Tax will automatically determine the correct sales tax based on the cities, states, and countries that you transport to, and you can set it for free.
Expand your store
Hundreds of free and advanced extensions in the WOOCOMMERCE market, which can provide additional functions for your online store. You can:
Subscribe to subscriptions, membership qualifications, courses or reservations. Accept deposits or reservations. Custom your product or checkout page. Set email marketing and connect to social media accounts.
Each extension contains detailed documents and unparalleled support, so you will never find what you want to know about the next step.
Establishing website content
Create page
Page contains the key content of your website -about you, your store and your policy information Essence Although the specific page will be different according to your products and mission, each website needs some pages:
Overview your company and product’s homepage.
A page about your business, mission and historical information.
Help customers get a contact page for contact.
A common question answering page containing common questions.
The privacy policy page about how you process customer data.
Use WordPress block editors to add text, images, videos, buttons, etc. to your page. For step -by -step information on the creation page, see the full document.
Create a product
Unlike the page, the product is not Created with block editors. Instead, they include specific settings for online sales: price, inventory level, size, category, etc. You can add the product to the page so that they can show them on your website.
You can set a variety of products, but the most common type is:
Simple products: simple products without options, Such as a book. Variable products: products with options available for customers, such as T -shirts with a variety of sizes and colors View the complete list of product options, and in our Learn how to set them in the document.
If you sell services instead of physical products, the setting process is very similar. UnderstandMore information on sales services using WoOocommerce. 5. Transport the product and complete the order
Once your store is almost ready, your next step is to determine how you will manage and transport the product. There are things to consider here:
Inventory management
How do you want to store products? The options include:
Self -storage
. Store the product at home or business venues. This is very useful for new or small enterprises.
Traditional storage
. Stay the product in a dedicated space, such as warehouses or storage units. This provides you with more space and control, but more expensive than self -storage.
Direct sales
. Storage products with third parties, third parties will also be manufactured and transport them to customers. This is a affordable solution, but you will lose a lot of control.
Then, take the time to establish an inventory management system to ensure that you will never sell without inventory products. Here are some techniques to improve inventory management.
Shipping
If you sell physical products, you need to send them safely, fast, and economically to customers. You can set up fixed prices, provide free delivery or charges for factors such as weight, size, distance or delivery speed. You can even automatically get real -time update rates from public operators such as USPS, UPS or Fedex.
To create an ideal transportation settings, please perform the following three steps:
Understand the transportation method and performance options.
Determine the transportation strategy.
Use Woocommerce and any necessary transportation expansion to implement your transportation strategy.
Picture Teabento.com
Spend some time to consider your packaging, too. If you sell fragile items, make sure they are protected during transportation. If you sell items that are easy to rot, please use dry ice to package them or use refrigerated trucks. Packaging is also an opportunity to please customers -considering brand packaging boxes, thanks, and interesting surprises.
6. Sales your product
Finally, it is time to display your products and stores in front of potential customers. There are many marketing methods that need to be tested repeatedly to find a suitable combination for your products and target audiences. Here are some common (and valid!) Options:
Search Engine Optimization (SEO): When someone is looking for your product or searchWhen related words, pop up on the search engine (think: Google).
Paid Search: When someone is looking for a term related to the products you sell, it is visible to visible to search engines.
Content marketing: Create written and visual content, educate your target audience, attract them to visit your website, or persuade them to buy. (Blogs are very suitable for this, and the WordPress website is very suitable for publishing blogs!)
Social media marketing: share blog articles, prompts and recommendations with followers on websites such as Twitter or Facebook, or pay for them.
Email marketing: Follow up existing or potential customers, share discounts and discounts, and restore abandoned shopping carts.
It may take time and experiments to find the correct marketing strategy, so if you do not get positive results immediately, please do not feel frustrated! Focusing on attracting your audience through related and useful content, you will impress people and promote sales.
Starting online sales
As the owner of an online store, you can do what you like to do, solve customer problems, and establish contact with those who have the same hobbies as you. Opening online stores is not necessarily complicated -Woocommerce provides all the tools and information needed to start the store and attract new customers.
Began to use Woocommerce or meet other shopkeepers at a party near you.
View the complete precautions list and view some options provided by Woocommerce. 
Email marketing: Follow up existing or potential customers, share discounts and discounts, and restore abandoned shopping carts.