Building Your Online Store

In this post we will cover how to build your own website, what you need to start an online business and how you can make the most of e-commerce.

Online shopping is a $4 trillion industry which is projected to reach $5.3 trillion by 2020. There are over 3 billion people shopping online worldwide who are looking for products that suit their needs and wants, so it's easy to see why many people have turned to the internet in order for them to be able work from home or just make a little extra money on the side.

The most common way for sellers to start an online business is by creating a website. By using the power of the internet, you can reach millions of consumers, products to sell are abundant and if you find a niche that you are passionate about you will be able to sell anything. In this post we will cover everything from how to choose a domain name for your website, what kinds of things should be included on your site and how much it will cost you in order for you to get started.

How to Choose a Domain Name

There are lots of different domain name extensions that you can buy, but the most common ones are .com, .net and .org. Imagine that you have decided to create a website about camping equipment, which domain should you use? While .com is more expensive than other extensions and not necessarily better, it is still the most popular in use. So if your budget is limited go for the .com extension or if your niche requires people in higher education then you should choose something with the extension of .edu. But there are tons of options that you can look into such as local domains like .ca, gb or my.uk.

If you are thinking of a generic name for your site then pick something like camping.com, but if you want something a bit more specific try out something like planningcentre.com or maybe campingtent.co.uk or travelgear-uk.co.uk which are just a few of the many options available to you.

Make sure that you check the availability of your desired domain name before you purchase it. A lot of extensions will have a search box on their site, for example .com should be used here – just input your URL and press search and if it comes up in RED then that means that there is already a website with that address. Secondly try using a few different browsers like Firefox or Google Chrome to see if the same website shows up in different colours. And thirdly, there are some services out there like Domainr which will let you know if the domain is available.

Conclusion

After all the searching and the checking of domains has been done, purchase the domain name. There are many kinds of registrars to choose from but our recommendations are Namecheap and Hover, they both offer amazing service and you can actually find some great coupon codes for both services on our site, so feel free to bookmark it or share it with your friends. The main thing you need to be aware of is that if you are going to be selling products online then you need to make sure that your website is secure, that is why we recommend using SSL Certificates which will encrypt all of your visitors information.