How do I go about starting up my own website?

I am looking at selling home wares online but just need some advice on setting the website up.

Hi James, and welcome to the forum.

I've been selling my training products on the internet since 1995, so I think I can help you with some advice. First of all, there's only two ways to get started: do it yourself or have a website development company do it for you.

Do It Yourself
There are definite advantages to both. If you decide to do it yourself, you'll need to get yourself a web program like Adobe Dreamweaver (the industry standard) or Microsoft Frontpage (used by beginners). They'll be a definite learning curve involved and you should have some creativity in your genes. You'll also need a program like Photoshop or Fireworks to manipulate your images. The pros on doing it yourself are that you have total control and can change it whenever you want. The cons are that unless you know how to make your site look great, it can look very amateurish. You could also purchase a template from templatemonster.com, which most are very professional looking, and start from there.

Hiring a Web Company
If you have the money, you can hire a company to create it for you. The pros are they do it for a living and can get it right the first time. If you're going to sell your products to the world, they also know how to get your site ranked high in the search engines through search engine optimization, and set you up for ecommerce. The cons are, it's going to cost you. A typical site can cost you from $5000 and up depending on the amount of content, and time to set it up. Also, you're at the whims and time schedules of the developer if you need to change content quickly.

eCommerce
Along with these, you'll need to get a merchant account to take credit cards online. This is a must - no credit cards, no sales. You can go to your bank or an online merchant account vendor, but the easiest way to accomplish this is with Paypal. There sign-up is easy, rates are comparable, and the process is simple.

Marketing
And finally, if you want to do a profitable business, you'll need to learn how to market your site. This means you have to study online and offline marketing to get people to come to your site. eBay will be a great place to start. Though you will incur additional costs, you'll be able to market your wares to the entire world.

Keep in mind that an ecommerce website is a living, growing thing, especially if you don't just have an informational, static site that doesn't change much. Yours will. You'll be putting new products on, changing prices, updating descriptions. So you'll need to do a lot of study if you want to take this serious. All the information you need can be found on the internet.

Hope this helps get you started. I'm sure you get more information from future replies.

Hi James,

I'll just add my two cents worth.

First of all, whether you design the site yourself or have someone else do it, do not use Form Mail to process your orders. If you do, you're setting yourself up for big problems down the road.

One web site I service, but didn't design, was recently attacked by high level hackers who began running thousands of fake orders each day, effectively shutting down their store.

This could have been avoided if they had initially invested in a decent shopping cart system rather than using Form Mail. I am now retrofitting their site with just such a system at far greater expense than if they had gone that route in the first place.

Secondly, make sure whatever shopping cart you use has a simple, intuitive Admin system. The majority of shopping carts out there were built by techies, not business people. As a result, they have an unnecessarily steep learning curve and lousy documentation.

You'll also want a cart that's scalable enough to grow with your business over time. And, make sure it can be adapted to your company's graphic needs. Some popular carts, like Shop Site or Miva for example, are limited (in my opinion) and do not allow for unrestricted growth or seamless customization.

Here are a few things to keep in mind when shopping for a do-it-yourself system or a custom designed, turn-key solution.

Your shopping cart should:

• Be user friendly from the customer's point of view.
  
• Be user friendly from the administrator's point of view.
  
• Have an easy to understand User Guide.
  
• Have easy to access tech support (I can't overemphasize this).
  
• Be scalable.
  
• Allow for graphic customization.
  
• Be search engine friendly (with special fields for Meta tags).
  
• Have special settings that allow newsletters and other email communications between you and customers.
  
• Be Paypal friendly.

Oh, and by the way, $5000 is not a set base price for an ecommerce site. If you have limited web development experience, and limited funds, you might consider having a web designer develop the look and feel of the site, get the functionality in place, and then train you in so that you can populate you own site (fill it with products). This option would be closer to $2500 - $3000.

Best of luck with your new store!
-Chris

Felt the need to give my opinion as well as i will be starting an online business of my own (cause i cant sell when i sleep haha)

first take a look around for website design companies the company i work for does websites (very good ones too) for only a few hundred bucks and thats because we can build them quite quickly... as far as using dreamweaver etc... im pretty computer literate but my concepts and ideas for my website are far beyond what im willing or would be able to construct on my own even with frontpage or dreamweaver...

I would sit down and ask my self what do i want to do? is it a niche website that will cater to a very focused crowd? or will i be competing in a flooded market of big boys?

I believe marketing is your best friend and sales skills are crucial to many web based businesses... If your concept is not a very "unique" or un-heard of niche then i strongly recommend using your selling skills and focusing on a local marketing strategy... For ex. Cars.com is going to blow any Ad budget you most likley have out of the water and it will take millions in SEO(search engine optimization) money to even make the first page of google..... but does cars.com make calls and market locally to its consumer? Not exactly which is where you could albeit maybe more slowly build a successful business....

Another large consideration is where is the money gonna come from? the niche websites tend to be the ones that can actually generate affiliate dollars worth your while but you must focus on the quality and content of the site before you start posing ads everywhere....

Bottom line as a sales rep for a webdesign company i can say the biggest mistake i see is that people (some) come looking for a super elaborate website with crazy backgrounds and loads of crap that is usually what makes the websites expensive to build and its all for nothing.... the internet is not a highway its a directory... get a clean, professional, and easy to view style and focus on providing content and information... you dont get customers with flash and by standing out in most cases like you do with a billboard or other "brick and mortar" ads.... you must give them a trouble free and interactive experience especially if you want them to come back... biggest example is the big guys myspace, facebook, ebay, google... take any advertising off of the page and what do you have? a white background with a plain text logo and a generic color scheme...its the content that counts...

all of that being said go to godaddy or a similar site and buy that domain name.... the rest is really up to you...(hosting etc. can be related to who builds the site yourself or a company) If your going to drop ship especially find a product that you will like to sell because i can say you have a slim chance of getting any real search engine traffic so make business cards,do a little conventional advertising and tell everyone you know to tell everyone they know that will build your traffic and be a major key to success...

hope this helps...

Thanks Mike. Really helpful information.

Can you brief me a bit more on marketing.

Originally Posted by Mike Whitty Hi James, and welcome to the forum. I've been selling my training products on the internet since 1995, so I think I can help you with some advice. First of all, there's only two ways to get started: do it yourself or have a website development company do it for you. Do It Yourself There are definite advantages to both. If you decide to do it yourself, you'll need to get yourself a web program like Adobe Dreamweaver (the industry standard) or Microsoft Frontpage (used by beginners). They'll be a definite learning curve involved and you should have some creativity in your genes. You'll also need a program like Photoshop or Fireworks to manipulate your images. The pros on doing it yourself are that you have total control and can change it whenever you want. The cons are that unless you know how to make your site look great, it can look very amateurish. You could also purchase a template from templatemonster.com, which most are very professional looking, and start from there. Hiring a Web Company If you have the money, you can hire a company to create it for you. The pros are they do it for a living and can get it right the first time. If you're going to sell your products to the world, they also know how to get your site ranked high in the search engines through search engine optimization, and set you up for ecommerce. The cons are, it's going to cost you. A typical site can cost you from $5000 and up depending on the amount of content, and time to set it up. Also, you're at the whims and time schedules of the developer if you need to change content quickly. eCommerce Along with these, you'll need to get a merchant account to take credit cards online. This is a must - no credit cards, no sales. You can go to your bank or an online merchant account vendor, but the easiest way to accomplish this is with Paypal. There sign-up is easy, rates are comparable, and the process is simple. Marketing And finally, if you want to do a profitable business, you'll need to learn how to market your site. This means you have to study online and offline marketing to get people to come to your site. eBay will be a great place to start. Though you will incur additional costs, you'll be able to market your wares to the entire world. Keep in mind that an ecommerce website is a living, growing thing, especially if you don't just have an informational, static site that doesn't change much. Yours will. You'll be putting new products on, changing prices, updating descriptions. So you'll need to do a lot of study if you want to take this serious. All the information you need can be found on the internet. Hope this helps get you started. I'm sure you get more information from future replies.

Your website design must be professional in appearance and capable of handling, capturing and managing the traffic/business you generate from your Internet Marketing plan. Do not waste time or money on a website unless you have a plan in place on getting people to the website and the ability of tracking how and why they went there.

Please visit my companies website www.ProspectMX.com for some more useful tips and do not hesitate to contact me if I can be of any further assistance.

Success,

Rory Wilfong

Your website design must be professional in appearance and capable of handling, capturing and managing the traffic/business you generate from your Internet Marketing plan

To me that is exactly why you would not want to try to start building your own website. It is too tough when you know nothing about it. You will spend hours and hours learning a new language and doing something that is probably not your cup of tea. In the end your website will reflect this lack of knowledge.

Let a pro do it.

Hi jamestodd15,
Your website will have to SELL. That is a multi faceted process in Internet Marketing. I strongly suggest this. www.sitebuildit.com. Spend some time there, it will be invaluable. Next, got to www.supertips.com. Download his free book. These two items will get you started without spending a lot of time or money. Good Luck. Jeff

Cool recommendations Jeff (Win Win).

FNG making some rounds...

Better late than never, right? Another option to consider is finding a hosting company which offers "one-click" installs through the user control panel. I've not set up a store on any of my sites, per se, but I know there are options to do so. I do not know how common such features are among hosting companies, but Dreamhost provides this service at no extra charge. You can also set up a wiki, blog, picture sharing site, etc. in similar fashion.

Since these one-click installations are of mainstream tools and applications, it is fairly easy to not only install the framework you need to begin selling your wares on your own site, but to also seek technical assistance in both customizing and maintaining your new site through forums like this one.

Hope this helps someone, if not the OP.