Are you thinking about creating an online e-commerce store? Then keep reading, we'll give you a tour for the different options to do it in the cheapest way.
Obviously, to create an online e-commerce store you must make a small economic investment, but above all, you must invest a large amount of time, in this way you will see that you can start your business online without having to make a significant economic investment.
It is not a secret that nowadays it is possible to sell and market products worldwide thanks to the Internet. Therefore, it is possible to create an online e-commerce store without the need of having any computer knowledge, as wholesalers or dropshippers are responsible for sending their products directly to your customers.
Fortunately you can begin to learn the basics of this whole process of online marketing on the Internet, taking into account that there are several electronic payment companies, such as PayPal, that make it very easy to pay and purchase a product online.
Supplying products: How to do it?
For the emerging economies, the supply of products represents one of the pillars of logistics when you are creating an online e-commerce store; this is because this new form of business comes to modernize the physical distribution networks of products.
Today, as e-commerce stores continue to grow, couriers are adapting to new technologies and new e-commerce trends, making the changes needed to make product sourcing infrastructures optimal for users.
Since all purchases are made from the comfort of a computer or an intelligent device, all companies must ensure that the delivery and associated processes work without the slightest possibility of error, this in order to provide a pleasant experience for the consumer when it comes to purchasing a product.
Logistical processes for the supply of products
Here are some of the most important processes to ensure that the supply of products from your online store becomes optimal and operational.
Place an order with our supplier
Remember that never, never, is a good idea to promote a product in your online store that you do not have available to send to the customer in the stipulated times. The ideal in this new form of business is to have the Dropshippment as a distribution base for products.
With this product distribution system you must take into account the following factors:
Delivery times of the vendor
Supply costs
Type of products
Daily online store orders
Receive the goods
Once you have ordered products from the supplier, you must have a proper way to receive the goods.
When you receive the merchandise, you must check that the products match in type and number of units in relation to the order placed with the supplier.
Now you must check that the order is in good condition to proceed to its classification, you must be especially careful with those products that have not passed the quality control, in this case you must record all incidents found for possible claim.
Selecting and locating the goods
For the selection and location of the goods you only have to place the products you have received according to the order of reception. Remember that each product must have a specific location, this location can be done by yourself or by the product management program that normally provides the services of Dropshippment.
Once you have selected and located the products, you must incorporate them into the stock of the computer software you manage. In order for your e-commerce store to work perfectly, you must fully know which is the available stock of any of your products and that the same stock is promoted for sale in real time on the online store website.
Creating in Shopify
Shopify is a CMS that allows you to sell your products on the Internet in a very simple way, with this CMS you will have the possibility to design your online store completely customized, the best thing is that you don't have to have programming skills.
Advantages of using Shopify as a CMS for your e-commerce store
Nowadays there are more and more digital entrepreneurs who are seduced by all the benefits offered by Shopify for the creation of online stores, here are some of this advantages:
Simplicity in the creation and management of your online store
With Shopify it is very easy to create, customize and adapt your e-commerce store, so you have an optimal and secure digital tool with which you can start selling your products in a short time, if that were not enough, you can also design a blog where you will promote your store.
Possibility to design and customize it according to your own preferences
This powerful and complete CMS has more than 100 professional templates, intuitively adjustable as well as the possibility to create your own design with HTML and CSS.
Payment facilities for your online store
Shopify holds over 70 international payment currencies, allowing your products to be sold locally and internationally.
System of automatic taxes
With this option you will allow Shopify to automatically take care of local and country taxes according to the location of the product purchase.
You can sell products that you do not have in stock with the modality of Dropshipping
You can get this facility just by downloading applications such as:
Ordoro
eCommHub
Inventory Source
Unlimited products
This CMS allows you the possibility to import or export your products through csv files or one of the applications for import/export that you have download.
Unlimited bandwidth
The most important thing about an online business is the bandwidth, having an unlimited one you won't have to worry about paying more according to the traffic of visitors to your online store.
Accept and manage orders in seconds
You can configure Shopify to inform of a new sale by email or mobile notification. Remember that all customers love the speed of the services that they access.
Creating Shopify Websites
Here are some of the reasons to choose Shopify as a CMS for your e-commerce store:
Easy to use, so you won't have to invest in programmers or web designers to design and manage the store.
It is a robust and safe platform
Professional template design
24/7 technical support to solve problems and doubts
Large number of functionalities
You can install more features through the applications which are very easy to install
What should the client do?
The client only has to send all the corporate identity files in vectorial format (logo, colors and typographies).
Then you must send a form where you specify the data necessary to identify the project such as: Company data, Name, ID number, date of birth and address of partners, Description of the type of business of the store, target audience, potential market and type of products to be sold.
The client must open or have a PayPal account, then proceed to activate the Shopify plan that best suits their needs.
Must upload photos and descriptions of the products to be promoted in the catalog, all under the instructions provided by Shopify.
The client will be the one to write the blog articles, all under the instructions provided by Shopify.
Social Media Configuration, Connection, and Marketing
Definitely there is no better channel to connect with your customers as well as optimal marketing of your products than social media.
With this tool you can create social network accounts for your e-commerce store; these accounts will help you build the image of your brand or product while improving your SEO, achieving greater traffic to your store.
Fortunately thanks to the buttons that include the different CMS platforms you and your customers can share content on different social media.
Benefits of sharing posts from your online store on social networks
When you publish something about your online store's products in different social media, you will increase your online presence.
By using social media you will help search engines to find your website. If you already have online followers and you want to take advantage of that space to sell your products you just have to use the Buy Button to add your products to Shopify.
Links to your social network profiles
Some Shopify themes have social networking buttons, which will help you redirect your customers to different social media profiles.
Here are some of the Shopify themes that feature social networks buttons:
Venture
Supply
Simple
Brooklyn
Building the customer base - MailChimp and customer club
Once you have built your customer database it is very important that you take care of it, this with the aim of notifying them about offers of your products, news or simply keep in touch.
For this reason it is so important to keep all emails from your customers as the greatest asset of your company.
As the idea is to send emails with quality content, with modern and attractive designs, you must have a marketing service provider like MailChimp. This mass email provider has a very easy to use visual interface.
What can you do with MailChimp?
You will be able to catch your customer’s emails from your website by hosting them directly to your database.
Customers can leave if they are not interested in your brand or product
You can import the mailing lists you already have
Attractive design
It's free
How do you use it?
The first thing you need to do is to log in to mailchimp.com.
Organize your customers' mailing lists
Now you can start creating your email marketing campaign
*Remember to leave the option to unsubscribe from the list
Shipping Methods (the cheapest forms)
Do you have an e-commerce store created by Shopify? Pay attention because we will tell you some very economical shipping methods for your customers.
The first thing you should do is visit your local transportation companies and check and compare costs. They will surely ask you how many shipments you will make, and then they will give you outrageous prices.
For this reason the best option is create an account in a comparator of shipments, by doing it you will have access to lower prices.
Online shipping comparator: Send packages cheaper
With the Shopify installation you will be able to implement a template adapted for the search of cheap shipping companies.
Thanks to Shopify's 24/7 customer service you will have no problem configuring the template with this online shipping comparator tool.
Online Shipment Comparators: What are they?
These are websites that take care of shipping your products with the support of the best known transport companies in your locality at much lower prices.
The low costs are due to the fact that the shipping comparators negotiate better prices for volume of shipments, which is why they can offer you low prices, with which you will be able to ship your products through their website.