How to Sell Online

Everything you need to know about launching a successful online store and selling online.

Here’s how you start an eCommerce store, run a successful online business, and make the most of selling stuff online.

1. Join Zyro

All you need to join Zyro is an email address. Register for an account in a minute, upgrade to a plan that works the best for you, and set up your online store.
2. Build your website and online store.

Zyro offers beautiful, responsive templates, an easy drag-and-drop builder, and lots of help building your site. Choose Add section to create an online store page on your site.
3. Launch your store and start selling.

Once your online store is all set up, you can begin to sell online. Publish your website with the click of a button, and start getting valuable traffic to your store.
4. Track performance.

As well as a detailed dashboard that tracks all your sales data, Zyro gives you access to traffic and ad analytics. You have an overview of everything you need to know about how your store performs.
5. Optimize and grow your business.

Use the rich data you have about your store to improve it constantly. Optimize conversions and sales, and reach out to customers on new platforms for more sales.

Online store startup checklist

Whether you’re a small business owner or a new entrepreneur, here’s how you start selling online and grow your business.

1. Find your products

Deciding what to sell online will tell you who your target audience will be, how to style your brand identity, and where to market your business.

If you already know which products you're going to sell online, you can move along to the next step in this checklist. If you're still undecided, try to answer these questions:

- Which industry are you passionate about?

- What niches exist within this industry that you could fill with products?

- How much competition is within those niches?

- Is there a market that you can serve with your online business?

- What products does that market need?

- What are the profit margins you could make selling these products online?

Once you find your products, it's time to start creating your eCommerce website.

2. Secure your domain

A domain name is the URL that appears in the address bar when someone visits your eCommerce store.

While your domain name could really be anything, it's important for a number of reasons. It tells visitors about your website and is the first impression they'll have of your brand.

It is also helpful for search engines to know how to categorize your site, making it an important SEO factor. If your domain name includes a reference to your products or industry, customers will find you more easily.

When choosing your domain name, you should:

- Make it relevant. Including keywords related to your niche will help search engines and customers understand what your online store is about.

- Make sure it's memorable. A memorable domain can help customers quickly find your store again.

- Make it unique. A good domain name will make your eCommerce website stand out from your competition.

- Your eCommerce website domain should be spelled and pronounced easily, and not include anything other than letters.

You can use Zyro to find your desired domain and purchase it. If you already have a domain name, you can use it with a Zyro website.

Find a domain

3. Create your online store

Once you've secured your domain, it's time to create your eCommerce store. There are two stages to this: creating the website that will host your store, and creating the online store that will process sales.

Website and branding

Before customers start shopping, they'll land on your main website. This is where first-time visitors can get a feel for your brand, find out what you offer, and decide whether they like what you're about.

For these reasons, it's crucial that your website looks great, functions well, and represents the identity of your brand. When it comes to buying or selling stuff online, user experience is king.

Ensure that your website:

- Represents your brand with its logo, layout, color scheme, and design

- Guides customers to your store in a friendly manner

- Provides all information about ordering, shipping, and returns

- Has easy-to-follow navigation

- Is light on unnecessary features and loads fast

Online store

The online store will be a page of your website where customers get to buy your products.

Style it to look like the rest of your website. Focus on your products and make it easy for customers to make a purchase.

The layout of your sales pages is dictated by the products you're selling. The website builder you use should help you with an initial layout, but over time you'll learn how best to present what you're selling and make improvements.

Choosing the right platform

The quality and success of your online store will hinge on the platform you choose to build it with.

Make sure the platform has all of the features you need for selling products in a way that suits you. There's no single best eCommerce platform out there, but there is one that will be best for you.

Our recommendation for first-time or inexperienced online sellers is the Zyro website builder.

Not only is the platform easy to use, but it also will help you create a beautiful website with tons of useful eCommerce and marketing features.

On Zyro, you'll find:

- A drag-and-drop website builder you can use to launch a beautiful website in minutes

- eCommerce tools to help set up a powerful online store quickly and easily

- Marketing tools that promote online sales across multiple platforms

- Optimization tools to help convert visitors to customers

- A centralized eCommerce dashboard that lets you control inventory, orders, shipping, payments and more

Join zyro

4. Choose your payment and shipping methods

Payment and shipping are not the most exciting aspects of selling online, but they're two of the most important ones.

When choosing your shipping and billing options, you need to find a balance between speed and convenience, as well as security.

Take Zyro as an example of an eCommerce platform that has everything you need to strike this balance:

- You can choose from over 50 payment options, from credit card payments and wire transfers, to Square, PayPal, and other popular payment methods

- You may also offer as many shipping rates and carriers as you like, with a smart shipping calculator that helps ensure your customers always get the best rates and service

- This is all kept secure with HTTPS encryption on your site, which means all brand and customer data is secure

- Our eCommerce platform is also PCI DSS validated Level 1, which is the gold standard for online transaction security

5. Launch and market your online store

Once you've got your website, store, and products online, you're ready to start selling.

Don’t forget to market your brand around the web to attract traffic and start making sales. There are loads of ways to do that.

Google advertising

Advertising with Google puts your brand and product on the world's biggest search engine. As well as appearing on Google search results, you can access Google's ad network to promote your store around the web.

Setting up ads to promote your online store on Google is simple:

1. Pick the products you want to advertise. It might be new inventory or items on sale.

2. Design your ads. Think about your target audience and where they'll see your ads.

3. Launch your сampaign. Google makes it easy to choose your budget and go live with ads.

4. Track results. If you're using a platform like Zyro, you can track ad performance in a built-in dashboard.

Social media advertising

Social media marketing offers the chance to reach customers where they're already hanging out. Since social networks get a lot of information from their users, you can target the exact people who will buy your products.

Be mindful that different platforms have different demographics and display ads in different ways. Make sure that you're selling products to the right audience, and making your business look attractive.

Many platforms like Zyro will help you advertise on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Snapchat. You can manage all your ads in one place and learn the best place and ways to market your products.

Search engine optimization

Remember when we were talking about making sure your domain name was relevant for search engine optimization? Well, this aspect of online marketing is crucial to help new customers find your store and learn about your brand.

Unlike with Google or social media advertising, SEO doesn't pay for traffic, but instead gets it organically by appearing in relevant search results.

To make your online store SEO-friendly, you should ensure:

- Your user experience and navigation are great

- Your content is high-quality, unique, and relevant

- Your pages are well laid out and have relevant metadata

- Your website is fast and reliable

Marketing with Zyro

If you decide to start selling online with a Zyro online store, you'll have access to a wealth of marketing tools.

Share products and run ads on social media and search engines, manage campaigns, and track and optimize your ads' performance.

Zyro also makes sure that your website is 100% optimized for search. All of our templates are responsive and SEO-friendly. And, we'll help create search-optimized metadata for your pages, and even help write optimized content too.

6. Optimize your website for sales

Whatever you sell online, you're going to want to grow your business at a steady pace. You can put in lots of work to create a great online store, but it won't be until you start selling that you will know how it performs.

It's super important that you check the performance of your store and optimize your website and ads. This is an ongoing process that, although relatively easy, does require attention and work.

Track your online store performance

You must understand where your traffic comes from, how customers find your store, which products are the most popular, and how well your store converts clicks into sales.

All eCommerce platforms will give you basic sales data, but for a better overview of your store performance, there are other tools you should use.

Zyro offers integrations with Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, and Facebook pixel. These help you understand where your visitors are coming from, and how they behave.

Grow your business

You might be selling the best products in the world, but without putting the time in to make sure your online store is optimized, you'll lose out on sales.

The benefit of using a platform like Zyro to sell online is that all the performance tracking and optimization tools you need are available in one place.

Optimize your store

If you want to successfully sell products online, you need to make sure your website is always performing at its best. To optimize your website, you should ask yourself:

- Does your store get enough traffic from the right sources?

- Which content and calls to action are successful in creating sales?

- Where are visitors losing interest?

- What improvements can be made to the user experience?

- How can you make it easier to buy your products?

The answers to these questions will help you start making improvements. It's recommended to A/B test changes you make to your store, to check whether they get your sales up as expected.

Start building

More than just a store

While creating an eCommerce website is the foundation of selling online, you shouldn't limit yourself. Smart online sellers will use social media and online marketplaces to increase their reach and sell across platforms.

With Zyro's eCommerce tools, you're empowered to share and sell your products where your customers already are.

Sell products on Social media

As well as being a great place to market your brand and products, some social media networks also function as platforms for online selling.

With Zyro, you can automatically export your products to Facebook, and create a mobile-friendly store on your Facebook business page. You can also tag Instagram posts with products from your store and invite users to buy.

Sell products on online marketplaces

While it's great to have customers come and use your website, most online sales are made on established platforms like Amazon.

Zyro helps you export your products to these websites, and synchronize your inventory. This lets you sell your products online across multiple platforms.

How do I find products to sell online?

Choosing what products to sell online means finding a balance between items which are popular, and markets where there's room for success.

Pet products

People are willing to spend a huge amount of money on their pets. Trending online at the moment are comfy and cute animal beds and clothing for pets.

Jewelry

Easy to store and ship, jewelry is always a popular product to sell online. The best selling products right now tend to be minimalist designs.

Men's grooming

There has been a growing trend for men to look after themselves. The best online selling products at the moment include beard straighteners and skincare products.

Clothing

People will always get clothes online, and clothing products will always be big business. Smart investments at the moment are products like t-shirts and shapewear.

Watches

Like jewelry, the online selling of watches is only set to rise. Right now, people tend to like either smartwatches or more simple and minimalist designs.

Smartphone accessories

While getting into the smartphone business is very difficult, you could do well selling accessory products online. These might include ever-popular cases, selfie sticks, and car phone holders.

Vape products

With more and more people opting to vape rather than smoking, a whole new market has been opened up. Vaping products have high turnover and repeat customers. However, their sale might be regulated.

Electronics

This is a very broad category, which includes all kinds of gadgets and tools. Popular for selling online now are drones and their accessories.

Subscription boxes

Whether it's food, alcohol, books, homeware or toys, subscription boxes are a great way to guarantee ongoing income.

Beauty products

Beauty products tend to have a decent profit margin for selling online. There's a trend now for elaborate eyelash and hair extensions, as well as nail art kits.

Business considerations when running an eCommerce website

Before you start to sell products online, you must make sure your business is operating legally:

Make sure your website's security is strong and up to date.

This includes protecting your customers' information they share with you. This isn't a concern if you use a platform like Zyro, which has built-in security.

Make sure to clearly share your business's contact information.

The key to customer service is communication, so make it easy for customers and potential customers to get in touch.

Make sure that your business has all the licenses you might require.

As well as business registration, there may be some special certification required in your industry. This differs depending on where you're based, so do your research.

Make sure you've made your company policies clear.

As well as the privacy policy and terms on your website, tell customers about your shipping and returns policies.

Make sure you fully understand your tax obligations.

What tax will you need to charge customers and pay to the government? This is influenced by where your company is registered, and whether you employ others.