How to open an online store - a step-by-step guide from A to Z. How to open an online store for free - step-by-step instructions SEO - promoting an online store in search engines

How to open your online store from scratch and without investment? On which platform is it better to create it? What are the advantages and disadvantages of this business?

Hello, dear readers! With you are the founders of the site HeatherBober.ru Alexander Berezhnov and Vitaly Tsyganok.

Today we will consider such a popular topic among many novice entrepreneurs as an online store. This is the most popular and affordable way to make money for beginning online entrepreneurs.

In this article you will find step-by-step technology for launching your online store and answers to frequently asked questions.

Make yourself comfortable, let's go!

1. What you need to know before opening your own online store

If you are thinking about opening an online store, then first you will need to find out general information on this topic.

Online store- a virtual trading platform on the network offering certain goods (services). Most often, an online store sells several products (tens and hundreds), structured in the form of a trade catalog with a description and price.

Many beginning entrepreneurs naively believe that opening such a business is very simple: create a website, fill it with goods and make a good profit.

But how do things really stand?

Is it true is that an online store is a complex business like any other and creating it is not so easy.

Selling online through a website is not without its advantages and disadvantages. Let's look at them in more detail.

Advantages and disadvantages of opening an online store compared to an offline store

Below is a comparison table between a regular grocery store that we see every day when we leave home and an online store:

Business assessment criteria	Regular store	Online store
Initial investment in the project	from 500,000 rubles	from 50,000 rubles
Number of staff	from 1 person	from 1 person
Monthly costs	from 50,000 rubles	from 20,000 rubles
Paying taxes	Yes	Yes
Opportunity to comprehensively evaluate a product	Yes	No
Ease of ordering	Comfortable	Comfortable
Delivery	Eat	Eat
Payment in different ways	Yes	Yes
Buyer Confidence	Good	Weak
Product cost in %	100%	50-95%
Difficulty in establishing business processes	Difficult	Difficult
Scalability	Yes	Yes

As you can see, both types of stores have both advantages and disadvantages.

Regular store:

Online store:

Promoted online stores are practically free of the problem of low customer trust.

For example, the largest online store in RuNet, ozon.ru, has gained a good reputation and millions of satisfied customers over many years of existence.

The online shoe store zappos.com is successfully operating in the American market. When the company first entered the market, many said that the project would fail, because shoes needed to be tried on before buying.

However, today this company is worth a BILLION dollars!

All the founders of such large-scale businesses have gone through a difficult path, but to become so, their creators needed years of hard work. If these difficulties do not frighten you, then continue.

The main question is what to sell?

Below we will take a closer look at the issue of choosing a niche for your online store. Now let's give some basic tips:

1. First, try to find a niche with high and constant demand. Creating demand from scratch with small investments (typical for beginners) is more expensive.
2. Secondly, limit the range of products. Hundreds of items with dozens of suppliers will come later - at the start it is better to start with a maximum of 10-30 items in the catalog. And 1-2 suppliers.
3. Finally, what is more important is not the product itself, but how you will differentiate yourself from your competitors.

Let's give an example. Cell phones are an old, very competitive niche. It would seem that only such market monsters as Svyaznoy and Euroset can make money here. But in fact, there are a large number of online stores on the market that successfully sell mobile phones.

For example, Video-shoper.ru is a well-known online store. Built from scratch, without large initial investments. Now the average site traffic (per day) is 12,000-15,000 people. There are more than 100 employees on staff. The founder’s first purchases were made literally “from his salary,” and today shipments come directly from China. This is a good example of how, with the right approach, you can work in almost any niche.

The owner of Video-shoper, Nikolai Fedotkin, says that the main thing in the successful start of his store was precisely the successful construction from competitors - an unusual description of goods, a focus on video reviews, as well as a large number of bonuses and gifts upon purchase. Already in the first year, the site sold more than 100 pipes per day.

In fact, there are thousands of ready-made ideas around you. In order to find them, we advise you to communicate more often with successful owners of existing online stores (this is logical).

Moreover, now nothing is simpler. For example, the same Fedotkin created a large club of online store owners Imsider. Among its participants are the owners of a wide variety of websites selling almost any product: cosmetics, shoes, fur coats, small electronics, furniture, children's products, and so on. Some come to the club with already existing projects, others start from scratch. The club constantly organizes online and offline gatherings, shares interesting developments and ideas for new products.

Enter the phrase you are interested in for analysis in the search bar. For example: "!baby!strollers"

Write the words the same way as in the example - in quotation marks and with exclamation marks! So the search robot will give you the exact number of requests per month in exactly this wording.

If you see that people request this phrase several thousand times a month, it means the niche is in demand.

Here in the settings you can analyze this request by region and look at its history in order to find out whether this request has seasonality.

After all these actions, you have a fairly complete picture of the niche itself and the main players with whom you will compete.

So, you have decided on a niche, but if you have a question about where to get the product itself for your online store, watch the video from the training center “Your Start”

Greetings, dear reader, to the InetSovety.ru blog. In this article I will tell you in detail how to make a website yourself from scratch and practically for free. I will share with you practical information and experience acquired over the past 5 years.

Having received ready-made step-by-step instructions for creating a website from scratch yourself, you will be able to develop and open a website not only for yourself, but also for a company, or a freelance customer.

Where to start creating

Before you open your website on the Internet, you need to clearly understand why you need it? For what purpose are you creating it? Your further actions to implement the project will depend on this.

Let's look at the needs for which websites are usually created:

• for the purpose of making a profit - commercial websites;
• non-commercial projects for communication and exchange of information among themselves, rare, but they do occur;
• information and educational portals with limited access to content (for a subscription or monetary payment, access to information is provided for a certain period of time);
• online stores for selling goods and pages for ordering services;
• thematic information Internet portals for collecting target audiences in order to make money on advertising and affiliate programs.

For example, you want to make money by providing your services. In this case, you will need a business card website. A place where you can post your portfolio with examples of work, a description of the services provided, their prices, contact information, and customer reviews.

The next task is directly related to commerce – trading goods via the Internet. A simple website using a website builder will no longer work here. And you will need a multifunctional portal, where it will be possible not only to conveniently place descriptions of the goods sold for the user, but also to accept orders, provide consultations and answer customer questions. Such sites are called online stores.

If the goal of creating your own website is to share your thoughts with readers. A blog powered by WordPress is just right. I will talk about it in more detail later in the article.

If you want to create a platform for people to communicate, a type of website such as a forum is just right.

A separate article is devoted to the issue of making money on various types of sites -.

First, decide why you need a website and what tasks it should perform, then choose one of the types of projects to implement your idea. Next, the main types of sites will be considered and their characteristics will be given.

Overview of the main types of web resources

Different types of sites have their own special names, due to their focus and the tasks they perform. You, as a future webmaster, should know what features each of them has.

Despite the similarities between Internet projects, we will classify them according to commercial criteria. The first will be those that are created directly to receive money from sales, and the second will be projects for the provision and exchange of information that receive indirect income from advertising.

Commercial websites

Online store for selling goods

It is not just a multi-page website with pages describing goods, but also additional services (online consultant, order form and online payment for goods via plastic cards or electronic money).
The application for the product completed by the buyer is sent for processing to the manager, who processes it. Payment is often made by cash on delivery upon receipt of the order by the client.

Developing a high-quality online store from scratch will cost at least 50,000 rubles.

Its main purpose is to provide potential clients with information about a private specialist or small company providing their services.

Such an Internet project contains pages with information about the company, services provided, prices for work, customer reviews and contact information.

Since the site is very small and consists of 4-5 pages, the cost of its creation is from 5,000 rubles. If you have free time and a desire to understand designers or CMS engines, you can make a website with ready-made templates with your own hands and almost free of charge. And you won't have to pay anyone.

Corporate project

This is a more complex version of a business card website. It is created by large companies. The corporate website publishes not only information about services, the company, and contact information; it may additionally contain a product catalog, news feed, product selection services, calculators, and an online consultant.

Development of a corporate resource will cost at least 30,000 rubles.

Langing Page

A one-page website for selling one product or advertising one service. In some cases, the landing page advertises a line of products that differ in more sophisticated characteristics.

The cost of ordering from web developers will cost at least 20,000 rubles.

Next we will talk about projects that primarily provide information to visitors and earn money indirectly, through placement different types of advertising, through which products and services are advertised to users. Such sites receive money for bringing customers through advertising. Most often, clicks on ads are paid, and much less often certain actions (purchase of a product, registration, subscription to a newsletter).

Information projects

News portal

A site about events in the city, region, narrowly niche (the latest gadgets, cars, etc.) or about all events in the country and the world. Only large websites with a whole staff of journalists can afford to write about everything at once. Beginners should start with narrowly themed projects if the budget is limited and there is little experience.

The main feature of these web resources is the frequent publication of notes. Visitors go to the site while the news is relevant. After a short time, she loses the public's interest. And if you don’t continue to fill the Internet project with new articles, people won’t visit it.

Creation will cost from 40,000 rubles.

Blog

It is believed that a blog is a personal page of one person, on which he shares his thoughts and expresses his attitude to various events and things. In addition to the fact that it is created for the personal expression of the author, it is possible to receive income from advertising and collect a subscription base for sending them advertising offers of your own or partner products and services.

Despite the fact that there have long been special blogging platforms where you can start your own blog for free on the Internet (the most popular is livejournal.com), it is better to spend about 1,500 rubles a year and purchase a beautiful domain and offline hosting.

Now there is a lot of information on the Internet on how to make a website yourself from scratch on the WordPress platform. Check this one out. It describes the entire algorithm for setting up a project with a second-level domain on paid hosting.

For freelance programmers, setting up a simple blog without a unique design will cost you 2000-3000 rubles. As for the development of a unique design and functionality, be prepared to pay an additional amount of money for a high-quality design.

Information sites

In recent years, the direction of information sites on which visitors find answers to their practical questions has been actively developing. The creators of such projects analyze the statistics of requested key phrases and write articles with information that meets user requests. And the income comes from advertising.

Unlike news sites, where traffic depends on the frequency of publishing new materials, information materials do not become outdated as quickly. A high-quality article brings visitors for several years in a row. People are constantly looking for answers to the questions “How?” How? What?" on the Internet.

You can open an information site on your own, devoting 3-4 hours a day to learning the necessary skills and applying the experience gained in practice. Or delegate setting up an Internet project, creating a semantic core, writing and publishing articles to freelancers. A minimum of 30,000 rubles will be required. to pay for the services of various specialists. But in order to be confident in the result and control the activities of the team, you need to understand how it should be done correctly. I recommend watching courses on creating websites and making money from them.

Internet portals

To understand what we are talking about, go to major sites about real estate, finance or cars. As a rule, such web resources contain a feed of the latest news in the industry, a catalog of companies or products, and a forum.

Without a serious base of knowledge and experience, as well as financial resources, it is difficult to create, much less manage, such a project. As for the cost, get ready to shell out a large sum of 200,000 rubles.

We have looked at what are the features of certain types of sites. Now you must think about what tasks you plan to create an Internet project for, and decide on the type. After this, you can move on to the next stage of creating a website from scratch - technical implementation.

Sequence of website creation and launch

Let's consider the stages of developing an Internet project. After determining the tasks for which you will create the type of site you need, you will have to choose how it will be technically implemented. Next, you will learn about designers and content management systems that help you customize the appearance and functionality of a web resource.

Technical implementation using a designer or CMS platform

An online website builder is a service that has all the tools for setting up and managing a website without technical knowledge in programming, HTML and CSS languages. To manage a website created using the builder, just log into your account. The intuitive interface of the designer's control panel contains an editor in which you can change the design of the site, manage sections and functionality, create and customize pages.

All constructors are free of charge. As soon as you want to connect a beautiful second-level domain or functionality, you will be offered to upgrade to a paid plan. Some designers broadcast their advertisements on free packages.

Here is a comparative description of popular designers:

	uKit	WIX	uCoz
Types of sites	Business card website, one-page website, online store	Blog, forum, business card website, one-page site, online store	Blog, forum, business card website, online store, coproparative website, information project
Ready-made templates with device adaptability	More than 150	From 390	300+, but not adaptive
Free/trial plan	Yes/15 days	Not really	Not really
Minimum tariff	from $5 per month	from $4.08 per month	from $2.99/month
Level 2 domain binding	Available only on paid plan	Free on paid plans	Allowed on a free plan, if you pay for the “Optimal” plan for a year, a domain is a gift
Link	Go	Go	Go

CMS platform (engine) is a website management system for working with its content and functionality. Provides unlimited possibilities for implementing various functions using ready-made add-ons or programmers writing modules for special tasks.

There are free and paid CMS. I would like to note that in the case of free CMS engines, there are no hidden restrictions, like with website builders. This is why I like WordPress, on which the Inetsovety.ru blog and many of my other projects were created. I only pay for the domain and hosting. And once I had to spend money on ordering a unique template.

Which engine is suitable for the types of sites discussed above can be clearly understood from the table:

CMS	What can be created
WordPress	Blog, business card, corporate and news sites, information project, portal with simple functionality
Joomla	Blog, business card website, corporate website with simple functionality, news project, online store with simple functionality
Drupal	Business card website, blog, corporate and news resource, online store with complex functionality, portals and services, even a social network
OpenCart	Online store only
1C-Bitrix - paid	Business card website, blog, news and corporate website, online store with complex functionality, portals and services, promotional website, social network
UMI.CMS - paid	Business card website, corporate and news website, online store with complex functionality, Web portal
osCommerce - paid	Online store

To help you make a choice on how to create a website yourself from scratch, let’s look at the differences between builders and CMS platforms:

1. With the help of designers, you can make a website yourself without technical skills or knowledge of programming languages ​​- this is a big plus;
2. The first disadvantage follows from the first point - free plans have functionality limitations. If you need to add a feature to your project that is not in the standard library of designer options, even a programmer will not be able to help you, since you cannot make changes to the source code of design sites.
3. A significant disadvantage of the designers is that you cannot transfer the site to another hosting. Once an Internet project is created there, it remains there forever. While web resources on a CMS are saved in backup copies and transferred between hosters quite easily.
4. Most designers allow you to attach a second-level domain name to a website only in paid plans.
5. Designers have restrictions on connecting SEO modules, which complicates promotion in search engines.

As you can see, you can make a website with your own hands for free using the website builder, but it will be limited in functionality. If we consider purchasing a paid plan, the costs may be higher than when hosting an Internet project on a free or paid CMS from a hoster.

Domain name

The next stage of creating a website with your own hands is choosing a unique name for it on the Internet. A domain is the address of a website on the Internet. All domain names have two components. An example site includes the name inetsovety and the zone in which it is registered is written through a dot - .ru. The zone indicates the region or country of location, or the purpose of the site.

Mentioned above were domains of the second and third levels. The number of levels is determined by the number of parts separated by a dot.

website is a second-level domain, and forum.site will be a third-level domain. If a 3rd level domain is created on the basis of a 2nd level domain, they have a special name - subdomains.

If you decide to create your own website on the Internet using one of the website builders, you can register a third-level domain for free. It will be something like this – moydomen.ucoz.com.

Hosting

Internet projects created on the CMS platform are hosted by hosting companies, which provide space for storing site files on their servers.

You can place your website on the Internet for at least 120 rubles per month from a good hoster. As traffic to an Internet project grows, it may require a more powerful server, therefore, the cost of renting hosting will increase.

I host my websites with two good hosters - Beget and Makhost. Primarily due to the fact that they have excellent quality hosting at a reasonable price. The sites work without failures, and if problems arise, a responsive support service will help resolve any problems that may arise.

Exterior design

At first, you can select and install a free template. There are many themes on the Internet for different CMSs that are distributed free of charge. If you are creating a serious commercial project, it is better to spend money on a design that will highlight your resource among competitors.

A wonderful theme for sale for WordPress Root, it has flexible design settings and is highly SEO-optimized for promotion in search engines.

In this case, you will have to contact a designer to develop a website layout. To understand what elements should be present on the site, analyze your competitors. Highlight successful solutions and indicate in the terms of reference your wishes regarding the structure of the future project.

Having received a PSD file with website elements drawn in Adobe Photoshop, you contact the programmers. They will do the layout - adapting the design to the previously selected CMS system.

You can find website developers on freelance exchanges; see the list of the most popular ones.

You can also make candy out of free templates if you understand a little HTML and CSS. Create a unique logo for your website in Photoshop, install a favicon, and set a personal style for the design of publication materials.

Pay attention to the following free courses; they will help you not only create your website for free, but also design it beautifully with your own hands.

Filling content

Content means text, graphic, video materials posted on the site. It all depends on the goals of the site. The business card website should contain images with examples of work on the portfolio page, a price list with prices for the work. Corporate projects cannot do without posting presentable promotional videos and descriptions of the company’s activities.

One of the stages of content preparation is collecting the semantic core of the site. Those. key queries for which it will be promoted in the popular search engines Yandex and Google. If the source of traffic is contextual advertising, you need to know what keywords your competitors are using to display their ads.

The work of writing texts about the company can be entrusted to copywriters, and professional content managers will help you prepare publications on the website. All of them can be found freelancing.

How to learn to create websites from scratch

You can create a website yourself for free from scratch not only using the website builder, but also thanks to various training materials. There is a lot of information on this topic on the Internet. All you have to do is look at YouTube; you won’t be able to watch the videos you found in a month. The knowledge gained will help you make a website yourself and for free with the ru domain and place it on hosting. But you won't get the full training.

Although you will learn a lot of technical points about setting up, they are all scattered and are not a step-by-step system of actions from A to Z. You may miss important details. Try to watch videos in a newer way, some materials quickly become outdated.

There is paid training to create websites from scratch, where all the necessary and relevant information is structured and presented. It is important to be able to distinguish between cheap dummy courses and professional training materials.

The fastest way to learn how to make websites is to take training from professionals in their field. This is an investment in knowledge that will help you acquire a new profession and earn additional income from independently developing websites for yourself or clients on a freelance basis.

After reading the article to the end, you received a clear picture of what is needed to create a website from scratch and what stages this process consists of. Now you must decide whether you will do everything yourself and for free or outsource some of the processes (delegate the work to professionals - designers, programmers, semanticists, SEO optimizers).

Creating a website with your own hands is not limited only to defining its tasks, choosing the type of project, the method of its technical implementation and subsequent configuration. Development is followed by an equally important stage - SEO promotion (attracting visitors to the site). But this is the topic of a separate article, stay tuned to the blog. I wish you success in mastering the knowledge and skills of the webmaster profession.

Almost every person at least once in his life has dreamed of opening his own business. And while some are selecting options for opening retail outlets in the real world, others are trying to “capture” the Internet space.

In fact, creating your own business on the Internet is one of the most promising ways to earn money these days. In this article we will look at the question of how to use a simple action algorithm to open your own online store in 2019, with virtually no investment. On which in the future you will be able to earn from 150,000 to 250,000 rubles per month. And these are far from the highest indicators that can be achieved.

An online store is a trading platform created on the Internet. Its goal is to offer its products and services to the end consumer.

Every serious person understands that creating your own business from scratch in the virtual space without spending a penny is impossible. Let the investment be minimal, but it will be required. Ideally, a high-quality and good Internet platform can be opened by spending at least half a million rubles.

Not everyone has such finances, but you shouldn’t despair. On average, to successfully operate your project, you can initially cost 10-15 thousand. Agree, these are pennies compared to the figure mentioned earlier.

Opening a serious multi-page online store without a lot of capital is a very risky business. At first, many projects, even the largest ones, cannot withstand the competition and fade away. Therefore, if this is yours, it would be wiser to create a more modest site with minimal investment.

An online store is not a temporary indulgence, and you need to understand this. Be prepared to spend time on your business, as if you were doing a full-time job, invest your energy, develop the platform, even though it won’t be easy.

Before you create your store, you need to have a clear idea of ​​its key points. Who will it work for? How much will it be in demand? What will be sold there? Do not proceed to active actions if these ideas in your head are not sufficiently formed.

Before you do so, you will need to register in one of two organizational and legal forms: LLC (limited liability company) or individual entrepreneur (individual entrepreneur).

Remember: In addition to the technical aspects of creating a website, there are also legal subtleties. If you start a business without being officially registered, your activity will automatically be considered illegal.

We will recommend individual entrepreneurs as a choice. Registration is very simple, especially to start activities; no constituent documents or contribution of authorized capital are required. But there are points that need to be considered carefully.

An individual entrepreneur is responsible for the debts of his business with all his personal property (car, apartment, etc.). In an LLC, participants are liable to the extent of the shares contributed to the authorized capital of the enterprise.

Online retail outlets: disadvantages and advantages

In conditions of fierce competition, it is impossible to give a clear answer. Both business options are not easy to implement. Below we will try to describe the main advantages and disadvantages of trading via the Internet compared to its offline competitors.

Advantages.

Thousands of websites appear on the Internet every day. Someone opens a resource

• for your business,
• someone blogs
• but for some it’s just a hobby.

In any case, more and more people are asking the question: how can I open my own website? There are different answers to this question, and possible options for opening your own resource are described below.

1. Order website creation in a web studio

As a rule, this option is used by those people who are far from information technology, and it is easier for them to pay than to learn everything from scratch themselves.

This method is also used by those people who can create a website on their own and are good at it, but it is easier for them to order and pay than to waste their time and do everything themselves.

Many web studios make websites only for commercial organizations and various companies.

This method of creating websites has its advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages if you open your website using a web studio

All that is required of you is to explain what kind of site you would like to see and pay for its development. After some time, depending on the level of complexity of the order, you will receive a ready-made web resource.

Another advantage is that you receive legal protection for your order. That is, in case of dishonest execution of the order, you can sue the web studio as a legal entity.

In other options described below, you will not have this opportunity.

Disadvantages if you open your website using a web studio

Firstly, web studios have simply “astronomical” prices for website development. If you entrust a freelancer to create the same website, he will do the same work 3-5 times cheaper.

Secondly, web studios will often offer you dozens of other expensive services, which, in their opinion, you simply cannot do without. In fact, this is just an excuse to “extract” a few more thousand, and sometimes tens of thousands of rubles from you.

This, of course, does not mean that all web studios are trying to fool you. But in most cases, their work is based on the fact that the client does not understand anything about website construction, and therefore it is easy to inflate the cost of the work.

2. Order the creation of a website from a freelancer

A freelancer is a person who works at his own risk, usually without creating a legal entity (for example, an individual entrepreneur or a limited liability company LLC).

When ordering work from a freelancer, you don’t have to meet him at all. The order and its execution are made on the Internet, without any legally formalized agreements for the provision of services (as they say, in words, through correspondence on the Internet, sometimes via Skype).

And this method has its pros and cons.

Advantages if you open your website with the help of a freelancer

Here you also only need to explain what you want to receive and pay. After some time you will receive your website.

As mentioned above, a freelancer will create a website 3-5 times cheaper than a web studio. Moreover, you are unlikely to encounter the “imposition” of absolutely unnecessary services. The freelancer will do his job, get paid, and then immediately disappear.

In addition, all freelancers, as a rule, work on the same platform (one website), and there is fierce competition between them. Therefore, they value their reputation more than a web studio, and therefore treat their work more responsibly.

Naturally, you should not turn to a beginner to create your website, but to an experienced freelancer who is interested in preserving his reputation.

Disadvantages if you open your website with the help of a freelancer

Working with freelancers is based on a kind word. You may never receive completed work. You can't sue them. But if you work with TOP freelancers, the probability of your order not being fulfilled is close to zero.

It should be noted that now the sites where all freelancers work are introducing various services to insure both the freelancer and the customer against failure to fulfill the obligations of the parties.

For example, in the case of the Free-lance.ru platform, such a service is the “Risk-Free Transaction” service. But still, we considered this feature of working with freelancers to be a disadvantage, since you do not enter into any official contract.

3. Create a website yourself

Another option for creating a website is to do it yourself. Let's look at the advantages and disadvantages.

Benefits of opening your own website

There are no financial costs. No need to look for a performer. Having learned to create websites once, you can always create a second or third web resource for yourself. Moreover, once you open the site, you can always quickly make minor changes, and you don’t have to look for a contractor to do this work.

And if you have to look for a contractor, then you understand perfectly well what task to assign to him and the approximate cost of this work. The contractor, understanding that you understand this topic, will try “not to lose face” and will complete the work with high quality and on time.

Disadvantages if you open your website yourself

The only drawback is the time cost. Yes, to create a website, you will have to spend several months on training.

You can learn for free. On the Internet you will find many free courses on creating websites, so there is only one drawback to creating a website yourself - a waste of time.

Listed above are the three most common ways to create your own website, choose any of them, each has its own advantages and disadvantages.

When opening your site, do not go to extremes

Lately, I have often come across messages about negative experiences in opening their own websites. The Internet has such a feature that negative reviews spread in large numbers and much faster than positive ones.

The essence of some negative reviews comes down to the fact that the website creator attended an expensive paid training on how to make money on the Internet, ordered his website from a web studio or from a freelancer, and then... nothing worked. The site did not work as expected, it was not possible to earn money, and the loan must be repaid somehow.

Therefore, before taking out a loan, hoping to easily repay it with the help of supposed earnings on the Internet, you should be more careful in analyzing your niche on the Internet, the presence of supply and demand in it, etc.

Second common extreme when opening your website, it means endless alterations and additions. This is perfectionism, or in other words, the desire to make a perfect site, the fear of releasing your site freely floating on the Internet until it looks perfect. And as a result, time passes, and the site “gathers dust” somewhere on the computer of the site creator, and no one knows about its existence.

In this case, you should set a firm date for opening the site, and when it arrives, release your site on the Internet in the form it currently exists, even if it is not entirely ideal.

Third extreme, which is typical for new sites, is that the site is abandoned (they stop working with it regularly) due to the fact that it did not live up to the hopes placed on it.

At the same time, it often happens that a little effort is needed, just a little more, for the site to work the way we would like. Therefore, you should never despair, and you should strive to complete everything to its logical conclusion.

When opening your website, of course, you shouldn’t go to extremes, and you will succeed!

02Mar

Hello! In this article we will talk about opening an online store.

Today you will learn:

• How to open an online store;
• Its main differences from a real store are;
• How to resolve all legal issues.

Pros and cons of opening an online store

Let's start with the pros:

• Reduced cost of goods. It is achieved due to reduced costs for renting premises, utilities, employees, etc.;
• The formation of a client base and analytics on them occur automatically;
• The store is always open, regardless of the time of day, weather, and holidays;
• Requires minimal initial financial investment.

Now about the cons:

• Lack of trust among buyers. Most Russian residents still prefer real stores. This is understandable, when you come to some boutique you have the opportunity to touch the product, look at what it is made of, pre-evaluate its quality, etc. There is no such function in the online store, and due to some dishonest sellers, there is the opinion that at first you should order from online stores with caution;
• You will still need to hire a programmer and an advertising specialist who will be responsible for the functionality, security and promotion of the online store;
• There are no external advertising channels. It is still a trend that most customers find out about a store by seeing its sign. There is no such possibility with online stores, so you will have to spend a lot of money on advertising;
• Now let's talk a little about how to calculate the cost of one sale. Many people think like this: income from the sale of goods - expenses from its purchase = store profit. But no matter how it is. All financial costs for attracting one client must be taken into account and taken into account.

Types of online stores

Now let's move on to the types of online stores.

Depending on the number of goods, we can distinguish:

• Catalog;
• Single item stores.

Their main difference is that online catalog stores are full-fledged sites with a large number of products and categories. On them, a person can find different options for one product, or even products from several related niches (sneakers, backpacks, caps, etc.).

They are good because they provide customers with a large selection of products, each specific product of which may be of interest to an individual buyer.

Shops for one product are designed as single-page pages (landing pages). Such sites sell only one product, but they do it masterfully. This is a real one that guides the visitor through it, forcing them to agree, nod and push them to buy.

No other fields, no way to get confused. There is a product, there is a description, and there is a large order button. may turn out to be the opposite of the average online store simply because it sells much better.

You can also distinguish between wholesale and retail stores. The former cooperate directly with manufacturers and sell goods with a minimal margin, but in large quantities. The latter already cooperate with wholesalers, selling to ordinary people at their own fairly large margin.

The advantage of wholesalers is a large turnover, the advantage of retail is lower purchasing costs.

For beginners, working with retail one-page websites is ideal. A good landing page sells itself, without outside help. In order to cost no more than 4-5 thousand rubles, and if done in a studio, then from 15,000 rubles.

Over time, you will be able to gain experience in sales from a one-page website and think about creating a full-fledged online catalog store.

Step 2. Creating an online store website

At this stage, we must do the main thing - the very selling site that users will go to, view products, make payments and contact the administration. We will go into more detail in a separate paragraph.

Step 3. Registration of an online store

Now it’s the turn to officially register your activities.

There are two ways to trade:

The advantages of an individual entrepreneur are obvious - a small amount of reporting, minimum requirements for opening and, in general, simplicity for a businessman.

At the same time, there is one big disadvantage: the individual entrepreneur is responsible for the obligations of his store 100%, up to his property. This means that in the event of bankruptcy, you will have to answer to creditors with your personal finances.

By forming a legal entity, a person relieves himself of the obligation to pay 100% of the debt with his own property. At the same time, a large amount of reporting appears, a rather complex taxation system and the need for constant accounting.

What to choose is up to everyone to decide for themselves. We are for IP.

Step 4. Recruitment of employees for IM

Now comes the stage to hire employees to keep the store running.

For a small online store, the ideal option would be 3-4 employees. One advertising specialist who will be responsible for advertising and promotion. One courier who will deliver goods to customers. And an administrator (the businessman himself or a hired employee) who will answer calls, process orders and monitor everything that happens.

Step 5. Selecting and setting up payment methods

One of the most interesting steps is . At first, the most effective payment method will be cash. Payment upon delivery of goods to the courier is the method that enjoys maximum confidence among most citizens.

When working with mail, there is also an option. It is also possible to add payments through electronic money Webmoney, Yandex.Money, PayPal, etc. But do not forget about.

Most online stores add all of the above for the client to choose.

Step 6. Completely optimize trading

From a technical point of view, the online store is ready, the first sales have started, and now we need to establish uninterrupted supply. The most suitable way is to analyze the average monthly demand for each type of product and order a suitable batch every month (more often/less often).

If a supplier refuses to continue cooperation for one reason or another, you must find a new one as quickly as possible so that the goods are always in stock. Ordering from a supplier only after pre-ordering in your store (dropshipping) is possible only at the initial stage of development of an online store, in the absence of sufficient finances for a full purchase.

Step 7. Solving all tax issues

The least favorite part of most entrepreneurs is tax payments. Since most businessmen choose individual entrepreneurs as a way of doing business, we will talk about.

According to this system, state authorities require a minimum amount of reporting, and taxes will be as follows:

• 6% – if income is the basis for taxation;
• 15% – if profit is the tax base.

For all questions related to taxes and reporting, it is recommended to consult with a professional.

Ways to create a website for an online store

The last thing to do is to buy and purchase a cash register. Absolutely any model will do, so choose to your taste. After this, the cash register must be registered with the Federal Tax Service at the location of the store.

You must take documents with you: a registration certificate, a completed cashier-operator register and a lease agreement or a document confirming ownership of the premises in which the store operates.

How much does it cost to open an online store?

The costs of opening an online store depend on the chosen niche, type of store and expected sales volume.

Let's look at the minimum investments to create a functioning online store:

How to open an online store without investment - dropshipping

The idea has been actively developing in the West for a long time. It is based on the same familiar idea - to open an online store. Only its implementation is somewhat different - instead of the usual purchase of goods from a supplier, you, on the contrary, conduct a business relationship with him, transferring to him all the costs of sales and shipping to the buyer.

The advantages of such cooperation are obvious: everyone does their own thing. The supplier handles the shipping and shipping of the product, and you advertise and sell. This allows everyone to make every effort to achieve their goals. The “Divide and Conquer” principle in action.

Moreover, if you develop a store yourself and look for free advertising channels, you can significantly reduce initial costs.

But dropshipping in Russia also has its pitfalls. Most suppliers prefer to supply low-quality goods through their partners, because, in fact, they are not responsible for them. In the lion's share of cases, customers receive low-quality Chinese products, after receiving which complaints arise against your online store, because it was from you that they placed the order.

Most entrepreneurs who are engaged in the retail sale of goods via the Internet openly state that now it is almost impossible to engage in dropshipping in Russia. Good suppliers do not want to take on contractual obligations, and no one wants to work with scammers.

Among other things, the owner of an online store simply cannot influence the speed of sending goods. Some suppliers like to delay shipping, which also negatively affects the store’s reputation.

Dropshipping in Russia, of course, has its place, but it is an extremely risky way to sell goods. It is much safer to sell the goods yourself.

Choosing a niche for an online store

Now let's talk in more detail about choosing a niche for an online store using specific examples. As we said earlier, one of the most competitive niches now is an online clothing store.

Of course, it is always possible to create an amazing advertising campaign that will attract the target audience, but it will be extremely difficult. For beginners, it’s easiest to start with the retail sale of jewelry or accessories on one-page websites, gradually moving on to more complex products and a larger scale.

If we talk about a full-fledged online store, now the following are in great demand:

• Perfumery;
• Cloth;
• Sporting goods;
• Electronics;
• Software;
• Bags;
• Jewelry and accessories.

A few words about the scale of the business. Any online business can be expanded, and this is a known fact. But you should understand that some niches can be implemented only within one city/region, others can be launched throughout the country and they will pay off.

Example: software, decorations, booking services and sites for paid music listening do not depend on the region. While electronics and household appliances will sell well only in one region. It will simply not be profitable for people to pay more money for delivery and postage than for the product itself.

And in order to pre-test demand for a niche, the simple Yandex.Wordstat service will help. It allows you to track the number of users who enter a particular query into a search engine per month. There you can make a selection by region. Choose a product that is in demand in your or neighboring regions.

How to name an online store

Another important detail is the choice of the name of the online store. This needs to be taken care of before registering a domain name. The name should be catchy, unique and at the same time simple.

The main rule for creating a good domain for a website is that the name should be unique, memorable, but at the same time easy to type. These conditions can be transferred to the name of the online store, because it will one way or another be reflected in the site header.

There are several options for choosing a name:

• Variations associated with the product. One of the advantages of this method is memorability. Buyers will immediately have an association with the products and the name of the store, and they will be more likely to type your name into the search. Minus - you can easily get lost among the same “original” ideas;
• Beating the region. Just like the previous method, it is not original, but it catches on and remains popular;
• Unique name. This online store name will be more difficult to remember, but your store will not be confused with anything else. Example: youth clothing store - CODERED. The name CodeRed can be easily remembered, it is catchy, and may interest the inexperienced.

If you don’t have enough imagination, you can turn to friends or professional namers. The former can suggest a few funny ideas and variations, while the latter will deal with it more professionally. But the price tag for naming services – that’s what coming up with a name is called – is very high. From 5 thousand rubles or more with 3-4 different options. Large companies organize competitions to find a name, the main prize in which ranges from 50 to 200 thousand rubles.

What to do after creation

The name was chosen, the website was created, everything was registered, and even the goods were purchased. The employees work hard and it would seem that they can rest on their laurels, but no.

After creating a website, the real business just begins. From this moment on, there will be constant advertising campaigns, search engine monitoring, brainstorming with the IT department on how to increase conversion, and many other procedures aimed at attracting customers.

But before you start PR, you should do one thing - describe all the pages. It is necessary to provide all relevant information about the product, from its description to tips for use (if required). The description kills two birds with one stone: it provides buyers with relevant information and increases trust, and also increases the ranking for the key query. That is, when a potential client types the name of a product model into a search engine, he is highly likely to see your product in the search results.

How to promote an online store

Let's decide why we are going to promote the store? Naturally, to attract customers. It is from this point of view that we must consider the feasibility and benefits of advertising. Number of purchases = advertising effectiveness. Now let's talk more about promotion methods.

SEO-Promotion

One of the most popular methods. SEO - website promotion in search networks. This applies not only to ordinary information portals, but also to online stores. The higher a site ranks in the search bar, the more visitors it receives, and the more profit it generates.

SEO for an online store, on the one hand, is beneficial: it allows you to attract hundreds of customers without additional advertising costs, but on the other hand, it can turn out to be extremely ineffective - it will require a decent amount of time (3-6 months), and there are no guarantees of a long stay in top.

Suitable as an additional tool for promoting and attracting relatively cheap customers.

Contextual advertising and banners

It is the most noticeable, attracts the most customers and allows you to select by:

• Key words in the search query;
• Relevance of the request (how relevant the search is to the advertisement).

This allows you to cut off non-target requests, leaving only targeted requests. The conversion rate for such advertising is one of the highest. But the price is quite high.

– also an effective advertising tool for attracting customers to the store. A competent and colorful banner and well-chosen text for it can attract a potential buyer to an online store much cheaper and faster.

But it should be remembered that banners are good for spontaneous purchases, and are less likely to help if the client wants to think about his decision.

Product search and selection systems

These are services such as Yandex.Market. These sites are good because they charge a fee for going to the advertiser’s website. That is, they work according to the same scheme as contextual advertising, but they “raise the temperature” of clients - they choose a more targeted audience.

The effectiveness of this method of promotion lies in the fact that people have sufficient confidence in services of this kind, and therefore calmly order goods through them.

Social media

Another tool for attracting the target audience to your online store. The influence of social networks is difficult to overestimate - now with their help you can even order and pay for goods without going to any other, additional sites.

• In communities.

The first advertisement allows you to attract a truly target audience - you can select gender, age, interests, groups in which you belong, add groups to the blacklist that do not characterize the target client, and many other parameters. This is a real goldmine for targeted advertising.

Target audience of communities: 14-30 on VKontakte. 30+ on Odnoklassniki.

Thematic regional portals

– an excellent platform for advertising your business. Advertising on such resources is inexpensive, sometimes it can even be done for free, and there will be many benefits - you can get your first clients simply by posting a post on the city notice board.

Working with coupon sites

One of the most popular ways to promote products and online stores several years ago. Now the popularity of coupon sites has subsided somewhat, but nevertheless, they are quite suitable as a means of promoting a product or group of products, as well as additional advertising for the store.

Partnership programs

They are gaining popularity online, offering to cooperate with webmasters and online stores for a percentage of online sales. Quite an interesting way that shifts all the costs of attracting clients onto the shoulders of the webmaster. But this method requires careful calculation of the amount of remuneration, and is also quite unstable.

Other non-standard advertising methods

Don't think that these are all the ways you can attract customers. You can come up with and launch a creative advertising campaign that will attract customers. The only thing that should not be forgotten is that competent advertising should attract customers, and not scare them away.

At the end of the article, I would like to remind you that, among other things, a good businessman is constantly optimizing his company.

Optimization includes: analysis of income and expenses, prospects for growth and development, cost regulation, forecasting supply and demand, and so on. That is why you should always look for where you can develop. In an online store, the main area of ​​development is customer acquisition.

In order to understand how to work to attract a client, you can use a simple but effective method - a sales funnel. It allows you to see how many clients are eliminated and at what stage. This will allow you to see what needs to be optimized.

A trivial example: 500 people visited the site. Of these, 100 people went to the section with product A, 200 people to the section with product B, and 50 people to the section with product C. On the start page, such a business lost about 150 people. With a conversion of 5-6%, about 10 potential clients are lost. Another option is to improve the start page.

In addition, an important indicator that should be taken into account is the average lifetime of one client. This indicator reflects the time between the first visit to the site and the last purchase. That is, thanks to this indicator, the following can be calculated: average income per client over a period of time.

If you make a statistical sample - find the average client life expectancy, then you can predict the profitability per attracted client. This indicator is very important for advertisers.

Average income per client allows you to predict the costs and profitability of advertising campaigns. The following calculation would be correct: on average, a year passes between the first visit to the site and the last purchase. On average, clients bring in about 10 thousand in profit per year.

It is impossible for the income from one client to be about 4-5 thousand rubles, and the cost of attraction - 5-6 thousand. But there is no need to assume that the cost of one client will be recovered immediately after the first purchase. Almost always, regardless of whether it is a landing page or an online store, a businessman receives the main profit after upselling.

Conclusion

Summarizing all of the above, we can say that creating an online store is an excellent way to start a small business with minimal investment.

The advantages over a regular store are obvious - you spend less money on premises, employees, utilities and other related expenses. Minimum costs make you more competitive, because there is always the opportunity to reduce the price and win the fight for the client.

For beginners, the best option for starting a trading business would be to create a one-page website - a landing page and sell various accessories or other retail products through it. This will allow you to gain experience, get a taste of money and then scale your business, moving on to the next stage - opening a full-fledged catalog store.

You should not assume that after creating an online store you can rest on your laurels and wait for your first customers. The real work is just beginning. In order for a store to operate effectively, it needs to be promoted, advertised and attract customers in all available ways.