Smarter Primate

Getting the ball rolling

Before setting up your online retail store you’ll need an office to run your business from. Make sure that you have enough space to deal with plenty of commands. Since you’ll be online for much of your work day, a powerful computer and a high speed internet connection (such as website hosting )is essential. Even if your shop is likely to be automated you will still be spending lots of time on the phone ,invest in a headset and consider a VOIP service like Vonage if you live in the U.S.

There are numerous online retail options to consider. Do extensive research into each and choose the one that best suits your budget, business goals and skill set.

On a shoestring with skills

If you are a web ( website hosting )developer or designer and are familiar with XHTML, CSS and PHP you might consider building your own website and using an open source shopping cart program such as osCommerce or its offshoots Zen Cart and CRE Loaded. This is the serious shoe string route and has its downsides, browse the forum posts on the os commerce site and decide if you’re up for the challenge.

On a shoestring without skills

If however you are like the rest of us, without programming skills you’ll need to take a different route. Hiring a web developer to build you a complete store can be very expensive – but it doesn’t have to be. Consider buying a ready made store such as those found at e commerce templates. These stores are basic template websites with a shopping cart already build in. If you have a basic understanding of html you can customize it site yourself, alternatively hire a freelancer from a service such as Elance to do it for you. Using this method you could start an online retail store for less than $500 (USD), including a domain name and website hosting.

Not on a shoestring

If start-up capital isn’t a problem life is certainly much easier. Research on shopping cart software by using a site such as Shopping Cart Reviews. As soon as you have bought a cart program hire a web design company to develop a front end for your shop and fix with the cart. This method can usually work out cheaper than employing a development company to build an complete ecommerce site.