How do I start an online business?

How do I start an online business?

If you want to cash in on the increasing number of people shopping online these days, you need to take your Montgomery business online. But how?

It may seem daunting, but starting an eCommerce business is actually pretty easy nowadays… and you do not need to blow a hole in your bank account to do it. In this blog, we will go over three essential items you need to check off your to-do list to get your online business off the ground.  

Find your niche

The first thing you need to do is choose your niche or market. In other words, decide on your product and/or service offerings. 

If you are looking into starting an eCommerce store, you probably already have a niche. However, if you don’t, you can choose to sell something you actually care about and have good knowledge in. For example, if you like hiking and are pretty good at it, you can sell hiking products on your website. If you like creating art and consider yourself a good digital artist, selling your art online is probably the way to go. 

Spend some time finding the right market. Otherwise, you will be putting all the work into building an online store only to find out that no one wants to buy what you’re selling. 

Set up your website 

Now that you know what you want to do online, you need a platform where you can do it. You need a website. Your website is your digital storefront, so it has to be relevant to what you do, look good, and function well. The aim of your website is to give prospective or current customers easy access to all the information about your business or product and/or service offerings. 

You can choose to have your website professionally designed on a Content Management System (CMS) like WordPress or build it yourself using a free website builder like Wix or Squarespace. We would suggest you stick with the former if you want a professional-looking, feature-packed website that scales with your business. 

Once you have your eCommerce website designed and developed, it also needs to go live. For this, you need a domain name and web hosting plan.  

Promote your eCommerce website using SEO

No matter how great your website looks, if no one sees it, then no one will be buying from you. The best way to think about owning an online business is that you have built your business in the middle of a dry and desolate desert. One way to get traffic to your website is by using SEO. SEO—short for Search Engine Optimization—refers to the process of optimizing your website and individual web pages to be indexed by a search engine like Google. Good SEO can help you higher up in search results and make it easy for your target audience to find you. 

Have plenty of other things on your plate to be able to take your business online? We can help! At Tommy House Studios, we offer businesses in Montgomery leading-edge solutions—from professional web design to hosting to marketing and everything in between—to give them an effective online presence.  

If you want to harness the full power of the internet, call us at (334) 310-2915 or contact us online.