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How to Build an Ecommerce Web Site
Copyright Herman Drost
You've got a brilliant idea for selling products online that's been festering in your mind for a long
time. This means you need to build an ecommerce web site or online store as others would call it, but
have no idea what is involved and how much it is going to cost you.
This article will put your mind at ease as I will try to give you the necessary knowledge for creating,
building and promoting your ecommerce store.
Steps involved in building an ecommerce website:
1. Do the necessary online research - you first need to see if your product is in demand. It's
no point spending time and money building your ecommerce store only to find out no one is interested in your products.
Enter the keywords or keyword phrases that visitors would use to find your web site in the
Overture Suggestion Tool
This will give you a good indication of the number of people that regularly search for that term. If
there are no search results, you may want to reconsider what you intend to sell or do more extensive
research on other types of keywords that may match your products.
2. Prepare your product information - if you organize your products ahead of time in an excel
spreadsheet, it will make it much easier for you (or your web site designer) to add them to the ecommerce web site.
Here are the columns to create in your spreadsheet:
a. product categories and subcategories ie horse supplies-horse boots
b. product options ie sizes, colors
c. product ID number ie SK105
d. product description
e. product image
f. product price
g. shipping calculations
h. tax calculations
3. Open a PayPal account - the paypal shopping cart is one of the easiest payment solutions to
integrate with your ecommerce web site. You won't have to bother with a merchant account, payment gateway
or shopping cart and signing up for a paypal account is free. Paypal integrates all these services
automatically and just charges you a small processing fee for each purchase. You can accept both paypal
and credit card payments online. Customers don't even have to open a paypal account to purchase products
with their credit card.
There is plenty of online documentation on how to set up your paypal shopping cart should you get stuck.
4. Register a domain name - choose a name that is easy to spell and remember. This makes it easier
for the customer to return to your online store without looking it up. You can register a domain name for
around $9.00 at Godaddy.com.
5. Select a web host company - here are some features to consider when choosing a web hosting company
for your ecommerce web site:
 web space
bandwidth
email accounts
autoresponders
site statistics
database (if needed)
fast customer service
reasonably priced
You can view some very affordable web hosting plans here:
www.isitebuild.com/hostingplans.htm
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