Building a Web Store on Shoestring Budget in less than Four Hours
Starting a business online is no longer as difficult as it used
to be! Now, there are plenty of interesting business ideas that
anybody can pick up from various Internet resources. Startup
related cost, which used to deter many in taking action, has
become negligible. Many people already started to notice this!
According to a recent report GoDaddy has gained 294,368 new sites
in just the first 5 months of 2005 while the top four domain
registrars combined, including GoDaddy, have gained more than
half a million. Mind it! This is not the quantity of domains
registered, this is the quantity of websites hosting with them!
This recent explosive growth means one thing. Online business is
on the rise!
So, if you have one or several products to sell to a large
geographical area and you would like to start an online business
fairly quick but you don’t have much money to spend on it, there
are still ways to do so.
Using the integrated features of many portals you can start your
dream e-commerce site on a shoe-string budget within several
hours. I am going to show you how to do this on Rusbiz.com.
Sign up
Preparation needed:
Write an informative, precise but easy-to-read profile of your
company in less than 600 words. If your company’s name is less
than 12-letter long you are fine. If not, choose a nice name,
preferably, by shortening the company name. This you will require
for login name. Create a logo for your company. You can do it
later if you don’t have a logo as yet.
Steps: Register your company by filling up the membership form.
Choose a membership other than basic. You need an option with the
ability to build a web store. Copy and paste your prepared
profile. Once you submit the form you will be taken to a page
called My Business.
Time required: Maximum one hour including preparation.
Add products to the e-catalog
This step will help you create electronic catalog of your
products that you will use on your website as well.
Preparation: Take digital pictures of your products. Each
picture should not be more than 100 KB. Make thumbnail versions
of your pictures. Thumbnails should be less than 10 KB. Both
pictures and thumbnails should be of JPG or GIF formats.
If your product requires special instructions, schemas, etc.,
make an electronic copy of them as well. This should be of doc,
txt, or PDF format and less than 50 KB in size.
Steps: Now from your My Business page click on the “Add Product”
button. You will be prompted to "Add Product" page. Next step is
to select the correct subcategory, where your product should be
listed. First, choose the main category and than keep on
selecting the right subcategory until you end up on the final
subcategory. This E-catalog is based on USPSC, electronic
classification standard, which offers a ten-digit, five-level
logical hierarchy for organizing products and services. Once you
successfully selected the fifth level subcategory you will be
prompted to a detail form. Add all the necessary information
about your product.
Insert the pictures in the designated places.
Once you finished, submit the form. Continue doing the same for
all the products. You have just created your first electronic
catalog!
If you face difficulties, as a premium member you don’t have to
go through the steps outlined above, you can just send all the
required information to Rusbiz customer service and they will
take care of your e-catalog.
Time required: half an hour including preparation.
Build your web store
You will be surprised to know that part of your web store is
already created from the information that you have inserted so
far! From My Business page click on Manage web store in order to
check and edit what you already have so far and what else do you
have to do. Your web store has 9 more pages apart from the
product pages. The pages are Home, Contact, Company events,
Services, Employee information, Company News, Surveys, and FAQ.
Preparation: You can gather information for some of the vital
pages to give your site a professional look and feel. As the
pages are template based, you can edit and insert needed
information, whenever you like.
Steps: From Manage Web Store the first thing you should do is
configure your web store. This means, you have to select currency
of your choice, payment and delivery methods. Next you should
choose which of the products you would like to display on your
home page. I’ll also suggest you to fill up some of the above
mentioned pages, i.e. employee bios, etc. This gives your web
store a human touch.
Voila! Your e-commerce website is ready to go!
Time required: Maximum two hours including preparation.
Here are the advantages of having a web store like this one:
• You don’t need to know HTML
• Navigation and editing of your website is easy and simple
• You receive instant access to Rusbiz community of thousands
of prospective customers
• Shopping cart is an integrated part of the package
• Membership allows you to sell products through Rusbiz
e-marketplace
• As a member you are also allowed to use Rusbiz business process
management system
• You will get access to other useful features of Rusbiz system
• Your website will be indexed by major search engines within a
matter of days
The best thing about this method is you can start with 3 months
Simple Membership for just US$ 65! If you need to use a domain
name, you can readdress it to your Rusbiz web store. After a
while, if you feel that you require a full-fledged e-business
website, professional developers from Rusbiz can take care of
this as well. As more and more people are getting involved in
online business, if you don’t start now, you might miss the boat!
So, take action!
About the Author
Nowshade Kabir, is the founder, primary developer and present
CEO of Rusbiz.com – a Global B2B Exchange with solutions to
create e-catalog, Web store, business process management and
other features to run a business online. You can read various
articles written by Nowshade Kabir at http://ezine.rusbiz.com.
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