How to start selling online
We have written this post to help you understand what is needed before you can start selling your products online. Each business is different but there are components that are universal and this guide is intended to help you plan and get started with your E-commerce business!
This post is primarily for anyone wanting to sell physical products online.
We will be covering:
Company Information
Product Requirements
Delivery/Shipping & Fulfilment
Taxes
Fees
Payment Processing
Search Engines - getting found
Customer Communications
Legals
The challenges of selling products online are all in the preparation and understanding what is required.
E-commerce is a technical, structured, secure process, therefore there is a set criteria, that once understood, will make the process easy to manage for you and seamless for your customers.
General Company Information
This standard information will be visible to your customers and used on email communications.
As well as helping you look professional, hopefully it will help build long term customer relationships.
Company Name
The official name of your business
Store Name
This maybe the same as your company name or your store may have a name of it’s own (a sub-brand of your company name).
Domain/Website Address
This maybe a new or an existing website address. We cover tips on securing a domain name in the post
Company Email
The email address you will use for customer email communications during the sales order process
Company Address
The physical address of your store or place of business. If you don’t have a business address, enter the address from which you ship orders.
Phone Number
Your public facing number
Social media accounts
Specify your social media accounts to encourage customers to connect with you. These accounts will be displayed in email notifications sent by your store. List all the urls for example
instgram.com/username
facebook.com/pagename
Logo
Supply in JPG or PNG format and RGB colour mode
Your logo will be displayed in email notifications sent by your store helping to give brand consistency and instil confidence with your customers
If you don’t yet have this information available, you may find these posts we have written, useful:
How to choose a Company Name - this could save you time and money!
What is the difference between a Brand and a Logo?
Product Information
Product Name
If possible make this useful - could you use words that would help people find this product on a online search? The naming of the product is an art, but usefully explicit or memorable names are helpful in getting found.
There might also be a subtitle - space to further distinguish your offering and increase your product visibility in search results.
Price - This is key to your business and you will have to use a pricing model that works for your business, but do some research and align your pricing strategy with the way you are pitching your product: if your design and messaging are ‘cheap and cheerful’ you price must reflect this.
Every ecommerce shop incurs fees so you should be aware of these fees before setting your final product price. See below under ‘Fees’.
Product Description
What makes this product great? Help new customers find and learn about the product. Think of words they may use as part of an online search.
SKU/Reference Number
Usually for internal management - stock control, manufacturer’s reference etc but it might also be a product code that people search for - or a way for the customer to speak to you about a specific product.
Weight
Important if shipping is based on product weight (see below)
Images
Main image, different angles, close ups - what images will help to sell the product? Minimum of one image maximum of 5 unless more are required to show all angles/aspects of the product.
We recommend JPG format in RGB colour mode.
Product images look best on the web page when they appear to be the same size: use a consistent aspect ratio (height-to-width ratio) and orientation for all your product images regardless of category.
Define your ‘look’ and stick to it - it will make ongoing management easier and will look great on the web page.
Categories
Categories help to you group products together and help when you want to display them on the shop ‘index’ page. You can assign products to one, or multiple categories. Plan your categories before adding products to save having to reallocate later.
For example a clothing store may use the following:
Categories - Tops. Skirts. Trousers. Shoes
Tag - Red (all colours). Silk. Wide Fit.
Stock
To help you manage stocks and alert you of stock depletion we recommend you use the integrated stock control.
This will mark a product as ‘out of stock’ automatically, to prevent a sale you cannot fulfill.
Add your initial number of product available and update as appropriate.
Product Options
When you have one product available in two or more options.
For example, a Jumper in small, medium and large size options.
Or a Pasta in 200g, 500g and 1 KG weight options.
Note - each option will have it’s own SKU
File attachments
PDF documents that can be available to download upon order completion.
This could be assembly instructions or a guarantee contract.
Related products
Highlight products which may appeal to the buyer of the originally selected product. This prompts buyers to explore similar products and therefore could increase the overall sale value.
Known as “you may also like” products.
Delivery/Shipping Options
How will you dispatch your products? You can select one or all of the following options:
Customer pick-up
Local delivery
National delivery via Royal mail (UK) or Courier Service
International delivery via Courier Service
Drop Shipping (using a third party to fulfil your orders)
Notes:
Understanding your costs of shipping should form part of your business plan as this cost is obviously reducing your profit margins. Do the shipping research before setting your product price… it might be better to add some shipping costs into the price and offer cheap shipping (or visa versa)
Will you have any shipping location restrictions?
UK mainland only. EU only. Worldwide
Delivery/Shipping Costs
How will you charge for delivery? You will need to clearly communicate this on your website to prevent aborted sales.
Free pick-up
Free delivery (accounted for within the published product price)
Flat rate
Automatic rates, per order, from Royal Mail (UK)
Custom rates from your chosen courier
Weight based (total order weight calculated)
Notes:
Free delivery is a great way to prevent any confusion for your customers - the price they see is the price they pay, but you will obviously need to account for this within the published product price. There are strong trends regarding free or low cost shipping and the cost on the customers doormat is the price they are paying so be aware of competitor models.
Taxes
Does Sales Tax/VAT apply to some/all of your products?
Zero rate all your store
Standard rate (20% in the UK)
Set tax to be calculated at the customers location - as required for certain products sold into the EU and US states, for example.
Set individual tax rates per product
Fees
Note - the following covers the ongoing hosting and processing fees, this does not include having your shop professionally designed or built
Ecommerce is a series of specific technical processes - handling your customers personal information and transferring funds between bank accounts. You will incur fees to ensure these processes are handled legally, securely and seamlessly - these technical processes do not come for free!
The fees you will incur are:
Secure website hosting, including SSL - fees vary depending on platform and level of service you need or choose.
The SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) process ensures that data in transit between users is impossible to read (impossible to hack!).
Payment processor fees - these fees are for securely and legally processing credit card payments and online payments between your customer and your bank. These fees also vary and are often a percentage of the transaction plus a fixed fee per transaction. See below - follow the links to understand which solution suits your business model.
Customisation/bespoke requirements - some shops have bespoke needs, unique requirements that may require some specific software integration or an additional software plugin. Some of these integrations may incur additional one-off or ongoing fees.
Payment processors
You may add one or multiple options to your store. All payment processors charge a handling fee - flat fee, percentage or both. Understand how they differ and decide which option/s suit your business and your customers expectations. This is a secure, legal process so these fees are unavoidable if you want to take payment online.
The most common solutions are:
Credit or debit card - via stripe
You will need an active stripe account, linked to your bank account. Stripe fees and terms will apply, see https://stripe.com/PayPal
You will need an active PayPal account. Paypal fees and terms will apply https://www.paypal.comSquare - offers a way to accept payment in person and online. We would usually only recommend this option if you will be taking payments in person, for details see https://squareup.com
The following two options would not be used in place of the options listed above but offer an additional payment option.
Apple Pay - this requires no account set-up by you, Apple Pay is set-up by the customer. Offering this option gives users of Apple Pay, via Safari on macOs and iOS, an easy, quick route to pay you.
Google Pay - as above but for users of Chrome on Android devices.
Many other payment processor methods are available, please contact us to discuss, if you have a specific preference.
SEO
Meta data (the information Google likes) is generated from your product title and description. Also from your product image file names - product-name.jpg
We offer the option to fine tune this with advanced SEO settings
Customer Communication emails
Communication with your customers, during the sales process, helps form a trusted relationship and helps them feel that they are dealing with a professional company. The following emails are sent automatically upon a successful (paid for) order, if appropriate to your business set-up. All can be enabled/disabled on most platforms.
Theses emails are automatically customised during the set-up process of your shop build using the company information and logo you supply. Make sure you test all forms of communication prior to going live.
Order confirmation
Sent to customer after successful order placement to acknowledge its receipt. This email contains information about order items, shipping, billing, and order status.
Order status changed
Sent on the order’s status change to inform the customer about the progress in order fulfillment.
Order shipped
Sent when a tracking number to the order is assigned or when the order’s status is changed to “Shipped” to notify the customer that the purchased items are on their way.
Order is ready for pickup
Sent when the order status is changed to “Ready for Pickup” to notify the customer that purchased items are ready for pickup.
You can choose to have copies of the above emails sent to the store administrator/manager.
Admin Notification Emails
Emails that are sent automatically to the store administrator/manager. You can specify multiple email addresses.
New order placed
Sent to admin when an order is placed. This email contains information about order items, shipping, and billing.
Low stock notification
Sent to admin when a product in the store has reached a low stock limit.
Legal pages and policies
Your store’s legal documents are displayed on your website as separate pages. These necessary, legal pages inform customers about various aspects of your services and protect your business from violating rules and regulations.
Terms & Conditions
Describe the legally binding rules, terms, and guidelines that everyone has to agree with in order to use your services.
If you have any product specific terms? For example - customised products cannot be returned and fall outside the standard legal returns timeframe.
Privacy Policy
Describe how you collect, handle, and process data of your customers and visitors. This may already exist if you have an existing website
Delivery & Payments
Describe how you ship or deliver your products the delivery costs and how you accept payments for the orders.
Return Policy
Describe how you make the returns, exchanges, or refunds if customers are not satisfied with their orders. Specify your returns timeframe and any exceptions.
Contact us for a free 30 minute consultation
Isoblue have built many E-commerce websites using:
Squarespace Ecommerce, Shopify and Lightspeed. We offer a free 30 minute consultation as different platforms offer different solutions, we can help match the best platform to your business or discuss how to embed an E-commerce shop onto your existing website.