How to make an online store from scratch

Whether you already have a physical store and want to transfer it to the online world, or if you start your business from scratch, we want to explain how easy it can be for you to start selling online. There is no doubt that to launch a large-scale business it would be important to have a team that consists of at least these three figures: a marketer, a designer and a developer. However, if you do not have an initial budget that allows you to hire these professionals, another good option is to train yourself in these areas and follow the ideas that we show you in this post on how to make an online store from scratch. Take note!

FIRST STEP: What are you going to sell and to whom?

Choose your products and define your buyer personas.

A very common mistake, especially made by people without any marketing training, is to skip this important step. If we do not define from the beginning what our market, products/services, target audience, competition and differential value are, it will be truly difficult for an online store to work. This phase establishes the foundations of the business , so dedicate the necessary time to it, reflect, study the market, discuss your idea with other people so that they can give you their point of view, and analyze all the pros and cons that you will find along the way. If you want to know how to make an online store from scratch, don’t skip this important step.

To do?:

• Study the products/services you want to sell ( product life cycle , market, competition…)
• SWOT analysis  (strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities)
• Define your target audience by creating so-called buyer personas.
• Create a brand, defining its mission, vision and values, which should be reflected in its logo and corporate image in general.

For this phase, some posts that we have written in Academia de Consultores will be of great help:

• How to create a unique selling proposition?
• What is a buyer persona? Examples and templates
• How to design a logo step by step?

SECOND STEP: How are you going to sell it?

Discover how to make an online store from scratch

Now we have reached a phase where technological knowledge makes a difference, although it is not essential. To start, we recommend you read our post about  everything you should know before buying a hosting and domain , as it will be the first step you will have to take to create your website and online store.

Later, to define how to make an online store from scratch, or rather, our online store, we will assess what our knowledge and technical resources are. Thus, based on them we can develop our store on different platforms and formats. Here are the main ones in order, from the easiest to handle even without technical knowledge, to the most complicated for which we will need a technical team:

1. Online stores in social networks:
   • Online store on Facebook (in our post on How to sell on Facebook? You will find detailed information on how to make an online store from scratch on Facebook).
   • With apps like  Inselly  you can easily sell and create a store on Instagram.
   • Twitter “ Buy Now ” button (only available in the US).
2. Online stores in CMS (content manager):
   • WordPress with plugins like WooCommerce
   • volution
   • Zepo
   • go-kart
   • Shopify
   • PrestaShop
   • opencart
   • Drupal-Commerce
   • bigcommerce
   • Magento
3. Self-developed online stores .

Obviously, for your own custom development you will need to have a complete development team with extensive experience in ecommerce. In the case of online stores with CMS, I invite you to enter the website of all the options that we propose, some are more complicated and others are websites where they indicate all the necessary instructions to follow step by step and discover how to do an online store from scratch very easily. If, for example, you already have your WordPress website and you do not have much technical knowledge but you control the blogging platform, opting for WooCommerde can be a good solution. In case you do not have a website or any technical knowledge, opting for direct sales on social networks can be a brilliant option to start. Creating an online store on Facebook is really easy,

STEP THREE: How to improve sales?

Promote your brand and products

We have reached the last step on how to make an online store, and that is that, no matter how well we have done the previous phases, it is essential that we now focus on the ultimate goal of our business, on our mission: the sale. And for this, we once again need certain knowledge of marketing, advertising, public relations, social networks…