How to start e-commerce - step by step

[Patres]

Hello

Im new here (forum and especially in England) so my English is not so very good. I want to make my own eshop, but i really dont know how things are going. Can i ask you guys for some advice about Ltd company (online ltd?), if its needed to make own company or self-employed is enought?

What about bank account and Visa pay on my site?

Thank you
---
Patrick

 

[sanjiv]

I am a web designer and can design an E-Commerce website for you. I can set up all the payment gateway stuff for you and incorporate it into the website. If you are interested, please do not hesitate to contact me via private message.

 

[Kev Jaques]

MIT have loads of good info about Starting an eCommerce Shop

 

[adam391]

Patrick,

You can start/run an online shop as a self-employed individual.

 

[tony84]

Bare minimum, you need
-a paypal account. This can be linked to most types of bank accounts.
-You will also need a domain (i use namecheap.com - theyre not the cheapest but nice admin system, good support and ive never had major issues)
-some hosting.
-a supplier.
-eCommerce software - prestashop, oscommerce, storesprite are some free examples.

on top of that you might also want to consider:
- a new theme/template to make it stand out
- advertising

Im sure some people will have other bits to add to this list.

 

[matt.chatterley]

MIT have loads of good info about Starting an eCommerce Shop

Cheers, Kev

For the OP - in addition to the link Kev gave above, we also have a set of articles on the subject of starting an online shop.

As others have said, you can definitely start your own site while just being self employed (don't forget to register as S/E though) - and tony84's list of basic needs is pretty much accurate for a simple start-up!

Do you know what you will be selling?

 

[michael_zhang]

Hi, I would like to suggest you to start on a third-party B2B website at the begining.

 

[fullmotiongroup]

Tony, that's a good list.

 

[shopintegrator]

Hi Patrick,

The type of online shop solution that will best fit you will depend on a number of factors.

• What budget you have available to spend on your website
• How many products are you looking to sell and what price range these products fit in to
• Your level of experience with putting a website together and how much of this you want/are willing to do yourself

As for taking credit/debit card payments from your website, Pay Pal allows you to accept credit/debit card payments from customers and they don't have to have a PayPal account to pay you either. It is a very cost efficient way to get started as it has no monthly fee, no set up cost and charges a 3.4% transaction fee on each order (reducing to lower % charges as the amount of money you take increases).

 

[jamesparker100]

I guess there is no need of making your company with a physical name, but in order to have your market name you can register your business name, so that you get the unique identity of the business. You can work as an affiliate,,, just you need to focus on traffic of your website so that user or visitors come onto your website the potential users.... And then contact with any vendor to increase their sales.. and take commission on each sale.. initially you can do this !