1. Determine what you are going to sell and who you are going to sell to? are you a reseller or direct to market with your own product?

Consider if you are a business to consumer / business to business or a physical goods or digital download style business? you maybe a combination of all of the above.

Answering these questions will help you determine the right model store to develop.

2. Understanding the goals of your business?

You may already have some of these questions answered if you are an established business or a bricks and mortar operation, However the goals for beginning or adding an e commerce platform to you business needs to be considered.

Are you opening sales to the national or international market or are you intending to sell primary to your local market?

How are you going to handle logistics/delivery etc?

Are you going to limit your online products and drive customers to a physical store / is the web store a supplementary business?

Answering some these questions will help you determine the shopping experience in section 3.

3. The online shopping experience you want to give your customers maybe the key to whether they stay or leave your web store for a competitors. Offering competitive pricing isn’t always going to engage new customers or guarantee repeat business.

Think about how you want your customers to remember your brand or products by offering a great shopping experience.

Features like the ability to customise & filter searches by colour, size, price or brand, multi buy discounts and a one page checkout experience are great for simplified shopping.

Offering products by Geo location can be a great way of personalising a customer experience as customers can view products more suited to their needs/climate or market.

4. Take some time to consider if one of the many online selling platform options or a custom built web store is the right option for you?

There’s plenty of e-commerce platforms out there that may seem simple and affordable, however if you have taken the time to plan out your store and understand your costs and expected volume of sales then it may become apparent that the ongoing costs of a platform, the implementation time or the steep learning curve with understanding how it works means the figures simply don’t add up.

You may find a custom build of something simpler is the best option to grow your online sales.

5. Once you have chosen which is the right web store platform for you, consider your branding and content development.

Your customer confidence will be drawn from many aspects of your store but high quality product images and detailed product descriptions/information will not only play a role in the decision making of your customers but it will also help with your SEO.

Give some thought to how you wish to cross pollinate your sales channels, the creation of your groups or collections in your inventory and how you want to set up your payment portals.

With a seamless sales flow, good attention to detail and a well considered branding message your web store is almost ready to go.

6. The build and launch of your web store is an exciting time but you may only get one chance when making an impression on your clients.

As part of your planning it is essential to allow for some time to check that all of your web stores branding, pages, images & descriptions, links and payment processing interrogations are working/displaying correctly on all devices.

Optimising your product images for fast and efficient load speed and double checking categories, listings and form functionality should also be an important part of your final checklist.

Its better to take a little bit of time now than lose business down than track.