How to Create an Online Store

An online store provides a seller with several features that are not provided through sites like eBay; expenses for creating and managing an online store are less than the expenses for selling through a third party site. When selling through a third party site, the owner must pay an expense to sell items and pay a fee for every product sold. In contrast, an online store would only require the purchase of a domain name and flat monthly fee. Some sites, such as SaleHoo.com, provide a fast way to build an online store and direct traffic flow to the products being sold.

How to Create an Online Store

There are several methods for creating an online store; the two most common methods are building one from scratch or purchasing a hosting service. Building one from scratch requires knowledge of web design and html programming language; it also requires registering a domain name and the software for the checkout function. Regardless of how the online store is built, it must have safety features and security that consumers trust in order for purchases to be conducted.

Some hosting services provide the security required for an online store as part of the store package; for example, SaleHoo stores provide Secure Payment Processing and symbols to show the customers that one's store is secured and safe for making purchases. The previously mentioned example site also provides a constructed store template that is easily customized to fit one's online store preferences, further explained in later sections.

Creating an Online Store from Scratch

Building an online store from the ground up begins with registering a domain name, which may be anything one chooses but should be relevant to the online store or company. After registering a domain name, one may purchase software to build an online store or write the code for the store manually. Payment options must be programmed for the customers use, as well as providing security for any financial transactions and consumer's personal information. A shipping method must also be setup with one of the major shipping companies for consumer's to receive purchased products reliably.

The advantage of building an online store from scratch is the level of control one has over the site, and the full access to the sites source code for modifying the site. On the flipside, it requires an extensive amount of knowledge in programming and designing websites to build a good online sight. This inspired the creation of hosting services that provide an online store template, which allows for people without any knowledge of building web sites to create an online store.

Hosting Service for your Online Store

Hosting services supply a means for one to build and manage an online store in just a few minutes, where building one from scratch would take days. An example of one of these hosting services is SaleHoo Stores. Through SaleHoo stores there are approximately twenty templates for a variety of online store designs, which may be further customized by the one building the website. The hosting service places the products one is selling on the website with an appealing style, as well as provides enhanced navigation of the online store.

The website is designed with a layout that may easily be navigated by potential consumers, and the Bread Crumb style menu prevents consumers from losing track of where they are on the site. In addition to the design aspects, SaleHoo provides search engine optimization through Google; there is also something known as SaleHoo Traffic Training that may be purchased in order to learn how to drive an increased amount of traffic to one's online store.

For those already selling on eBay, TurboLister will import one's listings and post them to the online store automatically. This particular hosting service only requires a monthly fee, which remains the same unless the subscription plan is upgraded. Other hosting services available vary in monthly rates, availability of templates and specific features to aid one in selling products. The goal of the hosting service is to provide people with no experience in web design with a way to sell products online, without any of the charges or fees required for third party selling sites.

Visit http://www.salehoo.com/stores to learn how to create an online store with SaleHoo Stores.