Welcome to YourMarketingPodcast. This is Series One – How to Start a Successful eCommerce Business in Less than 30 Days. In this step-by-step guide, you will learn how to quickly launch an eCommerce store and start seeing those sales roll in! And here’s your host…Ishani DePillo.

Welcome, everyone. I’m your host, Ishani. So I must say Congrats! To everyone! You are more than halfway through our How to Start a Successful eCommerce Business in Less than 30 Days Series. I’m so happy that you are sticking to it! 

In today’s episode, you are going to decide on a platform to use for your online store and complete your basic store set-up. These are the things you MUST do to ensure that your store is set up for success. We will send you a printable handout so don’t worry about having to take detailed notes.

Let’s recap last week, we talked about creating worthwhile visuals in the form of videos and photos that will really speak to your target audience and drive sales. You’re definitely going to need some beautiful product imagery and video to set up your online store.

Choosing the right eCommerce platform for your online store is so important because you want to pick a platform that is not only easy to use, so you can get it set-up right away but also easy to maintain and allow you the flexibility to grow. Avoiding excessive developer help and complicated coding can really save you some money now and in the future. There are so many pre-packaged e-commerce platforms that can help build your online store in no time. But how do you choose the right one? 

Let’s go over what you should look for when choosing your ecommerce platform. 

Easy to set up – As I mentioned before, you should look for a platform that is to set-up and use. Especially if you are doing all the work yourself. As a business owner you already have a lot to worry about, and setting up your online store shouldn’t be one of them. Look to see if it Has pre-designed themes that fit your style and brand – Because again, you want to get set up quickly and get those sales rolling in fast, Easy user experience, especially the checkout process. It should be seamless.Speaking of checkout- Secure & provides multiple payment options – Customers need to feel safe entering their credit card information and also giving them a variety of payment options. For example, in addition to credit cards, perhaps allow PayPal checkout or amazon checkout options.Next Mobile friendly because over 50% of traffic will likely be from mobile devices. Search engine friendly. You want to make sure the platform has some SEO optimization capabilities to maximize search engine exposure. Reporting options. You don’t need complicated reporting, but it should at least have the basics like the volume of traffic, revenue, orders etc. Integration options. By this, I mean the ability to integrate with email service providers, reviews platforms, etc. You want a platform that gives you the flexibility to connect with other platforms.Monthly Fees/Transactional Fees. Pay attention to the fees.  They can add up quickly and cut into your profits.

Ok, now that you know what to look for, Let’s talk about the big boys in the industry: Shopify, WooCommerce, Squarespace, BigCommerce and Magento. 

If you don’t know what on earth I’m talking about… don’t worry, I guarantee you are not the only one. I’ll go over higher-level pros and cons of each platform. If you want additional details, head on over to yourmarketingpodcast.com/store to get really detailed and updated information about each one. 

Shopify. This is the most common and you may have heard of this one before. I can almost guarantee that you’ve experienced a Shopify Store if you shopped for anything  online recently. There are over a million Shopify Stores and it’s definitely growing in popularity for a  number of reasons:

It’s easy to launch and manage; it has a very clean, user