To Create a Successful E-commerce Website you need to:

• Select an appropriate Domain Name
• Present your Company and Build your Website
• Build your Ecommerce store
• Establish credibility through valuable Content
• Promote your Website
• Start Selling and Communicating with your visitors and customers

We will go in detail about each of the topics in a few moments. But before we do that – you will save lots of time if you have a clear vision of your business goals, purpose of your company and so on. If you need to define your goals read this article from an experienced usability firm.

1. Choose a Winning Domain Name for your Business

• You can register a Branded Domain Name – like your company name, or a name with major keywords you want to rank for in search engines.
• Make your domain name short, easy to pronounce and easy to remember.
• Make sure you do not infringe any trademark laws. Because laws are not so interesting topic, watch a video about it. In just 5 minutes you will learn everything you need to know about domain name laws.

Links from the video:

To check if the name you plan to register is protected go to: United States Patent and Trademark Office

Instructions:

1. Select Search on the right side of page. New page opens.
2. Now select New User Search Form.
3. In the Field Search box enter name you want to check.

For more information read Icann`s Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy.

Register your Domain Name

Once you find your winning name go here to see if its available.

1. Enter your name in the search box.
2. Select domain name extension from drop down menu. Dot com – .com is best for commercial sites.
3. If your name is available – register it right away to prevent anyone from registering it before you!

Buying your business domain name will give you 3 key benefits:

• Unique place on the web – your domain name will become a synonym for your ecommerce business.
• Brand Protection – once you own your domain name, the value of your brand is secured with your domain name.
• Ownership – you become the sole owner of branded domain name and personalized email addresses. You can do anything you want with your domain name!

2. Create a Professional Looking Company Presentation

Be Professional

Your visitors want to feel they are dealing with a serious company. Give them this feeling with Professional looking Web Templates. You don need to hire a web designer. You get 100 HTML Templates with every domain name ordered with Hosting Residence.

Create a simple and usable Layout

Use tested layout with navigation on left, header (with slogan of your company) on top and additional information in footer.

Create a Company Slogan!

If you don`t have one create it now! Slogan is a short, up to 7 words long, unique statement about your business! This site is full of slogan examples and will give you inspiration for creating yours!

Make good first impression

When people will come for the first time – thats when they will decide if they will come back or leave and never return.

Give your visitors a way to contact you!

Put phone number and email address on every page of your site.

Bottom line is to build trust and credibility. If people wont trust you, they wont buy from you. It is as simple as that.

I found a great article about Building Trust on Ecommerce Sites you should take a look at.

3. Setup and Configure your Ecommerce store

You can not compete with Amazon, Ebay and other big players when it comes to selling online. But you can cover a niche and copy their successful techniques. Do you know why these sites are so good? Because they have so many buyers? No. This is a consequence. They are so good because they satisfy their customers and give them so many options!

You can learn from their success and provide your visitors with a pleasant experience:

• Add good product descriptions to your ecommerce store
• Back them up with photos and user testimonials – people love user testimonials!
• Offer various payment options – MasterCard, Visa, Paypal
• Use the power of outsourcing and let UPS or USPS handle delivery.

Remember: More options you give to your customers more likely they will buy from you.

I recommend all my visitors to try Quick Shopping Cart – because it is probably the best ecommerce store for beginners. No technical expertise is required. It has integrated syncronization with QuickBooks® and connects with platforms like Ebay and Froogle in real time.

Building in Quick Shopping Cart is easy and very well documented, so even a total beginner can set advanced features such as special pricing options or taxation.

4. Ecommerce Web Store itself will not get you sales!

One of the common beginner mistakes is to buy a fancy ecommerce store and wait for sales to come in. It doesn`t work that way! Whatever product you are selling – you are probably competing with hundreds of websites. So how can you beat them and get people to buy your products?

YOU CAN ONLY DO IT BY PROVIDING UNIQUE, VALUABLE CONTENT!

You have to provide content about the products you are selling. For example: If you are selling wrist watches you need to create content about them. Tell people how they will benefit from them? How to find a perfect watch for water sports, how to pick a watch for a gift and so on. You need to give your visitors something they are highly interested in, something they didn`t know yet.

The reason you want to do this, is because people will find your content valuable. They will tell their friends and write about your site on forums. You will get new visitors. Google will see people like your website and will eventually rank you higher for your keywords. This will bring you more visitors and what your goal is – more sales!

There is no way to get sales only by buying an ecommerce merchant account. So don`t waste your money with that. What also works is to register the same name as for your web store only with .info extension. You should setup a separate site and write about your products on it. This will definitely give you lots of exposure!

Remember: People Buy from sites they trust so keep adding content and building credibility!

5. Spread the news about your ecommerce website

Start by submitting to search engines

1. Google: Add your URL to Google
2. Yahoo: Suggest your site to Yahoo
3. MSN Live Search: Submit to Live Search

Continue with Directories

Free Directories

Try to get listed in DMOZ – it will get you backlinks and hopefully boost your pagerank. But make sure you read the instructions!

Paid Directories

Invest some money into paid ones like Yahoo! and Business.com.

Resources:

List of free and paid directories

Top Web Directories by Inbound Link Quality

Pay Per Click Advertising

If you are a real go-getter you should buy some traffic. Make sure your website can convert visitors into buyers, otherwise its wasted money. Start here to find out more about PPC.

Press Releases

Prepare Press Releases and send them to these websites:

www.pr.com – "Promote everything about your business. We get the word out."
www.prleap.com – "PR LEAP is a free press release distribution service to major search engines, web sites and newswires, since 2003."
www.i-newswire.com – "I-Newswire.com is your free press release distribution center."
www.24-7pressrelease.com – "24-7PressRelease.com is a free press release distribution service with the small to medium size Company in mind."

Here is a tutorial How to Write a Press Release.

6. Communication is the key!

Email is a powerful way to communicate

• Create meaningful business email addresses like:
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• Set signatures for all emails
• Answer your emails promptly, completely and with grace! People will remember if you reply them with a stylish email!

Create a Newsletter

Research shows you need to send your prospects over 7 messages before they will place an order. So you might be loosing 90% of your sales if you are not using newsletters.

Don`t be scared by the word newsletter. It doesn`t need to be a dissertation. Just put together a few useful articles of 300-400 words. At the end of newsletter include a link to a product you are promoting or anything you want them to do. Once people will get several positive experiences with you, they will become ready to buy.

Newsletter Software

The best tool for sending out newsletters is Aweber Autoresponder. It is a powerful but simple way to create newsletters. You can send email to 10.000 clients at once!

The tool I recommend to beginners, who don`t need so powerful tool such as Aweber, is Express Email Marketing. It is even easyer to use, but only a fraction of the price of Aweber

Thank you for reading!

Thats an Ecommerce website in a nutshell! I wish you big success with your ecommerce website! And remember: keep communicating with your customers and adding content!