What are the steps to start an online business?

The general steps include the following:

Brainstorm and select a potentially profitable business idea that solves a burning problem for your potential customers who are willing and able to pay you.
Conduct in-depth due diligence of your target niche market and of your potential customers.
Quickly validate your business idea by surveying, prototyping, and selling your minimum viable product or service to your potential customers as a proof of concept.
Validate any feedback received from your proof of concept.
Improve and commercialise your product or service, especially if the numbers are right. (If not, select another business idea and repeat these steps until you have found one that will most likely generate profits for you.)
Build a ‘good enough’ (not poor quality) website (see below) and fill it with great content. Use words and phrases your visitors will find familiar. Speak as they would speak, if you will. Take a cue from the types of calls to action your direct and indirect competitors are using. Font, colour, and images all have emotional values. Be purposeful when choosing them. Writing copy that tells a story can help you make an emotional appeal.
Start attracting visitors to your website and convert them into leads; more importantly warm or hot leads. Offer a free gift where people only pay for shipping. Push visitors to subscribe to your email list or download a relevant free resource. Once they’ve made a small commitment, they’re more likely to make a bigger commitment. Use visual cues to direct visitors down the page, especially if you have valuable product information below the ‘fold’.
Encourage social sharing at every stage. Market and promote your products or services to your leads by regularly engaging with them.
Optimise your sales and profit by converting your leads into paying customers. Offer a welcome discount for first-time buyers, product samples, an unexpected free gift to go along with an ordered product, etc. Offer a tripwire, an irresistible and low price product designed not to make money, but to change the relationship from casual visitor to the actual buyer. Have an influencer or expert endorse or provide a testimonial for your product. Show the number of people who have purchased recently or how many people are currently viewing the product. Offer limited-time-only discounts and deals. A countdown to when the discount or deal ends can spur purchases. In the cart, show how much the visitor saved with a call to action to check-out before the savings expire.
Offer free express shipping or something similar to those who purchase before a certain time of day.
Upsell other products and services to these paying customers, especially higher-priced items. Send appreciation cards and notes to existing customers.

General technical steps to build a website

Steps to build a website include the following:

Find a niche that you have practical solutions for solving your potential customers’ problems. By solving their pain points, your website will attract readers or traffic. For ideas, go to Trend Hunter, Kickstarter, Uncrate, and Fancy without leaving out social media platforms.
Select either a self-hosted WordPress site or a free page on com. If you are a blogger who does not care about making money, go with WordPress.com: Create a free website or blog. If you are a blogger trying to make blogging as a profitable career, you will want to use a self-hosted WordPress website that will cost money to set up. Note that these costs are tax-deductible if you are a start-up business.
Pick the right domain name from Namecheap or GoDaddy. If you choose the wrong domain name, it can be a hassle to switch later on without hurting your brand and search rankings. That’s why it’s extremely important that you choose the best domain name from the start. Keep in mind the following: stick with .com; use keywords in your domain name that will tell search engines what your website is about; keep it short (aim for no more than three words); make it easy to pronounce and spell; keep it unique and brandable; avoid hyphens; avoid doubled letters; avoid “cutesy” names and abbreviations; stay clear of copyright issues; protect your privacy with a privacy service, and leave room to expand.
Choose a WordPress hosting service like Bluehost, Dreamhost, HostGator or SiteGround. There are different types of WordPress hosting options available such as free, shared, virtual server hosting, dedicated and managed hosting.
Install WordPress on your website using MOJO Marketplace, Softaculous, QuickInstall (preferred), Fantastico, or file transfer protocol.
Select a WordPress theme that enables what you are doing. (As an analogy, WordPress is the basic engine of a car and the WordPress theme is the design and style of the car) Your chosen WordPress theme should complement the content of your website. For example, if you are starting a blog on politics or social issues, you want a WordPress theme that improves readability. When selecting your WordPress theme, strive for simplicity.
Choose a mobile responsive WordPress theme across different screen sizes and devices, browser compatible, supports all popular plugins, multi-lingual ready (use WordPress Multi-Language plugin), and search engine optimisation friendly.
Check ratings and reviews for the WordPress theme. Review Elegant Themes, StudioPress, Themify, and Themes for WordPress themes.
Verify your WordPress themes. It’s a quick service that lets you verify WordPress themes for security and code quality. This service is free and compatible with Joomla templates.
Install plugins for WordPress. A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that extend the functionality or add new features to your WordPress website. There are different categories of plugins: security, backup, performance, marketing, analytics, monetisation, styling/design, comments, social media, contact, get found/ search engine optimisation, landing page, etc. Questions to ask before installing a plugin: (1) Is the developer a well-known contributor? Do they have other popular plugins? (2) Is the plugin updated often? (3) Has the plugin been downloaded/installed enough times by other people? (4) Has anyone said they had a drop in performance when installing and using this plugin?
Install and set up Google Analytics to your WordPress website by signing up for your free Google account. The best way to know your audience is through your Internet traffic stats and Google Analytics provides the information for free.
Set up a professional email address for your business. A professional email is one that has your business name in it (e.g., [email protected]). [email protected] does not look professional.
Content is king. Without high-quality content on your website, no one is going to visit or recommend your site. Good and fresh content will rank highly in Google search results.

How to start an eCommerce website

Select your product niche after conducting a market search and evaluation. You can’t really start selling any product until you know what you want to sell. If you pick the wrong niche or the wrong set of products, you could be shooting yourself in the foot well before you even begin. In selecting your product niche, select a target market that is not completely saturated and super competitive. If you choose a very narrow niche and you are the best at selling these products, you can easily outsell larger branded shops. You should always focus on selling to a niche market rather than trying to satisfy everyone. Pick an area where you have expertise and interest, and can effectively position yourself as a specialist retailer or go-to person. It’s about product differentiation that meets customer’s requirements. If you offer everything, it’s impossible to compete with big online shops like Amazon and eBay. But in a small niche, you can differentiate yourself and really stand out.
Identify the product you want to sell. The product should be easy to pack and ship and not be fragile. It should not take up much physical space, is timeless and sells from $20 to $200. Understand the legal and custom requirements of online retail before you start to sell online. Some products cannot be sold online. Others have age and import restrictions, or tax and intellectual property implications.
Identify who are your customers who will buy your products. Knowing who your customers are and understanding their requirements and pain points will help you narrow down the appropriate product that will meet your customer’s requirements and needs.
Evaluate or assess the product demand by your potential customers. When you first start out, avoid common items like T-shirts or really strange and obscure product ideas. Use Google Keyword Planner, Google Trends, Google Search Results, eBay/ Terapeak (eBay product research), Amazon/ Jungle Scout (Amazon product research), and comparison shopping engines like Amazon Product Ads, Google Shopping, Pricegrabber, Pronto, Shopping, and Shopzilla.
Once you know that there is a good and sustainable demand for your product, assess your competition. Do your competitors have quality websites? What Google ranking do they have? Do they offer a good shopping experience? What is their pricing? Find out what they do well and what they do poorly. Buy their products and figure out how you can improve upon them. Use tools like Semrush and SimilarSites to uncover information about your competitors.
Test and validate your product idea and its value proposition and benefits with your friends and potential customers. Get a feel for whether your product is a winner or has legs. You may also want to consider buying a small quantity to sample and try selling them on eBay to gauge customer demand. You are testing the market.
Source your product locally or overseas using wholesale pricing once you know that your product is a winner with the customers you want to sell to. If you source products overseas, there are customs and importation taxes and processes to deal with. When importing products, there are longer lead times, quality issues, relationship building, language barriers, time zone issues, contracting, payment terms and minimum orders to worry about and manage. Are you shipping your products by air or sea? Do you have a customs agent to help you with documentation, entry, duty, and bond? Visit websites like SaleHoo, a directory containing 2.5+ million of wholesale products from 8,000+ wholesale suppliers.
Determine whether you want to carry or hold inventory or just drop-ship. Drop-shipping is a type of online store where you are only responsible for taking orders and handling customer service. Once an order is placed on your website by your customers, your vendor will be automatically notified and handles the shipping and delivery of the product to the customer. You should ensure that the ordered product is actually delivered to the customer within the agreed time frame and condition. Find drop-ship vendors using websites like WorldWide Brands and Doba.
Are you buying wholesale or from a middle-person? Can you distinguish between the two?
Start your own online store completely from scratch using WordPress to build your own sales funnel or use existing eCommerce marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, and Etsy that can potentially offer you instant sales. These marketplaces charge commissions on each sale. They have strict terms and conditions that are ever-changing. Diversification is key – don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Start off with existing marketplaces to learn the ropes and gradually move your business and traffic to our own online website with a uniquely branded web address.
Your ultimate goal is to set up your own online store platform. The biggest mistake most people make is not choosing the right platform for their online eCommerce store. There are two types of eCommerce platforms: (i) BigCommerce, Magento, PrestaShop or Shopify are fully hosted eCommerce solutions where you just log in and immediately start selling where they can get expensive with fees and commissions; or (ii) WordPress + WooCommerce (free plugin) that offers flexibility but requires some setup.
To set up your WordPress + WooCommerce store, you need to have your own
After buying your domain name and web hosting, install the WordPress open source content management system and
Select and customise your own WordPress theme. Themes control how your WordPress website will look to the users when they visit it including how your products are displayed for sale. There are thousands of paid and free WordPress themes available for online stores.
Set up your WooCommerce store by downloading the free WooCommerceplugin. Before you can start selling, there are a few things like currency, payments, and shipping information you need to set up. WooCommerce needs Internet pages for cart, account, shop, and check out. WooCommerce can be used to sell both digital downloads and physical goods that need shipping. By default, WooCommerce comes with support for PayPal, PayPal Standard, and Stripe payment gateways.
Add products to your online store. Set up your ‘Product Categories’ first. This allows you and your customers to sort and browse products easily. Then add ‘Product Data’ information like description, pricing, inventory, shipping etc. Then add a main high quality, high-resolution product image, and a product gallery. Repeat the process to add more products as needed.
Enhance your online store with other WordPress plugins. There are over 46,000 WordPress plugins available. Here is a step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin, a list of 24 must-have WordPress plugins for business websites and another one with 20+ best free WooCommerce plugins.
Market and advertise your online store and drive traffic to it. You may also want to see these 19 actionable tips to drive traffic to your new WordPress site.