Now that you have done the majority of your meetings to strike the deals according to the best-suited terms and conditions for your venture. It’s now time streamline your online and offline process.
It’s time to find a good platform and hosting service for your online store.
There are a lot of e-commerce hosting avenues that you can look into like Bigcommerce.com or Shopify.com. They both help you in having a platform with dedicated themes that will suit the needs of your online store. They will also help you with shipping (if in case you require it), or once you get the order, to save cost in clothing and accessories store you can always forward the product information by mail to your manufacturer to deliver the product to your consumer. (As mentioned in detail in the first part)
With this, you will also get –
- Site friendly and cool widgets and plug-ins.
- Unlimited hosting
- Applications
- E-Commerce online store themes.
It’s wise to choose your e-commerce builder with a more ‘thorough research’ approach as to which one will best suit the needs of your online store.
To help you decide which one is better for your needs read the following article –
http://www.websitebuilderexpert.com/bigcommerce-vs-shopify/
Some other sites like Shopify and Bigcommerce are -
- http://www.volusion.com
- http://www.3dcart.com
- https://www.pinnaclecart.com
- http://www.highwire.com
- http://bigcartel.com
- http://www.storenvy.com
There are many more e-commerce builders available, but just because Shopify is easier, does not mean necessarily it will cater to your specific needs. So choose wisely.
Once you have chosen the platform builder, now it’s time to take out your creative brush and paint your website theme. And, let the creative team member (developer) work the magic and give the website the uniqueness and panache by adding your flavor to the website.
One of the most crucial things to remember is that you are a newbie and accept that. There is absolutely no shame in taking inspiration from current e-commerce giants.
It’s important to integrate what they are doing to attract customers and make them stay online on the website. There is absolutely nothing wrong with knowing how they have designed their platform and how they have made it a strong, attractive and user-friendly site, and incorporate that in your online store.
It’s more like making a hybrid mimic model of the design that will suit your online business. But when we say, hybrid mimic model, we are not saying you should directly copy code-by-code and design-by-design. That’s not going to get your credibility up and you might just end up being a dimwit knock off. And trust us they don’t attract genuine customers.
Get to know what your competitors are doing and do it better than or on their similar level.
So once you have mitigated, researched and developed the online platform. It’s time to systematize the offline process.
It’s important to plan out the crux of your offline planning on a very low upfront cost system. Being a startup, you can’t afford to cross your budgetary expenses.
For instance, if your are making a 'specific shoes' based online platform that will cater to all types of footwear from adult to male and female, and even kids. It’s imperative that you spend minimalistic without harming the quality and feel of your products online.
Some of these costs may include:
- Photographer’s cost
- Stylist cost
- Models cost
- Studio cost
So without harming the creativity and feel of your online portal, you need to concentrate on strong and affordable networking. You can probably approach your friend who is good looking and ask him to model for your products. In that way, the only cost you will be bearing will be of the stylist and makeup artist.
You can certainly close on a good deal (as mentioned in part one) with your manufacturer to lend you the products for free to shoot.
If your relatives, business partners or friends have a plush apartment then you can ask them or rent it for a day to shoot which will cancel out your studio cost.
So, overall what we are trying to say here is to make your networking more strong, to reduce the upfront costing to your offline work. You have to be Chatur to reap out more benefits from focused networking and resource management.
Stay tuned for the final and Part three edition of Make your own E-Commerce website with Zero experience: Be a Chatur!
If you too have entrepreneurial dreams, you need to have faith in your Chatur Idea. You will always wonder who will fund this idea and from where will you find investors. In that case, you can participate in the #BeAChatur Contest and not only be mentored, but also stand a chance to win a whopping Rs.10 Lac funding for your dream startup idea.
