Create your account on Shopify or other hosted e-commerce platform. Do not worry about picking the perfect name at this time; you will be able to mask it with a custom domain when you decide your store products category.
Shopify allows you to sell your products across multiple channels, including online store, Facebook store, or even brick and mortar store. Head to your settings page to create your online store under the Sales Channels section.
2. Pick Your Store Look
One advantage of hosted e-commerce platforms is how they offer a selection of great looking store themes. Use Google to search for store themes that work with your e-commerce platform and pick the one that suits you best. Most themes are built by e-commerce experts and have already been optimised to maximise sales.
3. Create Content
No doubt you have heard the phrase content is king, and while it is true, your content does not have to be perfect to get started. Optimising your content will require more of your time in the future, but making use of standard pages for areas such as About Us or Delivery Information from this link is good enough to get started. You can create terms and conditions, standard privacy, and return policies pages using Shopify’s free tool here.
4. Adjust Your Settings
Now go to your settings page to finish your store setup. You will need to add a payment provider, create your shipping rates, and add your billing information.
As for the shipping information, just add the international free delivery. Most of the products you will add to your store will have the delivery charges already incorporated into the product’s price.
Adding Products To Your Store
If you want to launch your store in a day, you do not have to spend much time finding products to sell, which means you can not engage in the traditional process of searching for suppliers, filtering them through a qualification process, and then stocking products at your home or a warehouse.
The fast solution to this dilemma is to source products through a dropshipping service such as AliExpress. It is a perfect model for first-time entrepreneurs because it is both fast and easy. You copy the product from AliExpress to your store, set your own prices/markups, and after you sell a product, you purchase it from AliExpress and have it shipped directly to your customer.
This approach is nothing new. Zappos got its start using dropshipping back in 1999. Amazon and Sears use dropshipping too. AliExpress is a new approach to dropshipping.
Deciding Your Store Category
The best way of drumming up product ideas is by browsing other stores and social shopping sites. Big stores have infinite resources of data and employ hundreds of people to organise their sales and pick their products. Use that information to your benefit:
1. Check out the best-seller lists in various categories at sites such as AliExpress, Amazon, and Ebay. Follow trending products on Pinterest or Wanelo. Write down each product idea that catches your eye.
2. When you have a list of 20-30 ideas, take some time to carefully revise it. Look for niche products while removing mass products with no clear target audience. For example, there is no specific target group for a regular belt, but you can easily tell that cycling gear will resonate well with cycling enthusiasts.
3. Avoid products with prices more than $60.00. Cheaper products require less thought on the part of the buyer. They also require less support while increasing the odds of finding success in developing markets.
4. Check product demand at Google Trends. Go to trends.google.com, enter each product idea, and see what comes up for trends. Is it decreasing? Is it a seasonal product? If you answered yes to either of these questions, cross the idea out.
Ideally, you should have 1-2 product line ideas you could use to fill your store. Dropshipping allows you to quickly switch between ideas, so if your first proves to be unsuccessful, you can easily try another one.
Finding Suppliers and Adding ProductsDropshipping is the art of banking a serious profit simply by reselling merchandise without touching it. You're basically a middleman.— FeelTheBerด
Adding products to your store and making sure you do not sell a product that is not in stock is a tedious task. There are several dropshipping apps to help you out, but I suggest starting with a free trial of Oberlo. It is built for Shopify and specifically designed to manage AliExpress dropshipping.
After installing Oberlo, go to AliExpress, search for the products you have decided to sell, and import them into your store with just one click. Make sure you select only the highest rated suppliers and products with free delivery since you already selected that option during store setup.
After importing the products, customise them to your needs. AliExpress product names and descriptions often come with the information you do not need, or you might want to tweak the information to make it different from AliExpress.com. Import at least 40-50 products and your store is ready. When you receive an order, go to Oberlo’s order page, confirm it, and have it shipped directly to your customer. It really is that easy!
Moving Forward
In the final analysis, it’s sales that count. Launching a store as quickly as possible allows you to switch your focus to generating sales. Dedicate your time to experimenting with various marketing channels and landing your first order. Whether it’s posting to Facebook or Reddit groups, reaching out to Twitter or Instagram users, or even hiring someone to do paid advertising for you, making sales is the key to success. Once you realise you can sell, then you can always go back to upgrade your store’s look, stock products in a warehouse, or even white label them with your own brand.
If you can launch a store in a day, then you can probably land a sale in a week. The biggest mistake people make is never trying. Now that you see how easy and fast it is to get an e-commerce store up and running, what are you waiting for? After all, the only right time is right now.