Before starting your e-Commerce journey, you should put down your objectives on paper. While this may seem frivolous and redundant, you will realize how difficult it is and how complex your thoughts are, when you start jotting them down. The reason for doing this at the preliminary stage is so that you realize what you are trying to achieve and how you are going to achieve it. This should be your business objective, solely envisaged for your website. This will and should be different from the objective of your brick and mortar business if you have one, but will have traces of similarity as far as the core aim is concerned. If you laugh off putting down your objectives, you are sure to waiver and falter when the website is up and running. Improper business planning is one of the main mistakes that e-Commerce adventurists make. Putting your thoughts down on paper will also help you when drafting legal contracts and documents for your vendors and employees.
Website Design
The next main step about having an e-Commerce website is to choose a design for your store front. While most people choose readymade e-Commerce systems like Magento, OpenCart, PrestaShop etc. there are a few persons with deep pockets who may want to reinvent the wheel and build a custom designed website. E-Commerce systems are preferred due to their quick turnaround time and see-before-you-buy capability. Whichever option you choose, you should ensure that you will get continuous support for it at an affordable cost. Buying a dirt cheap template which requires you to buy hundreds of expensive addons is a total rip-off. Similarly, choosing a platform which requires special hosting or server resources can also be a bad idea.
If you are planning to hire coders on a full time basis, you may want to ensure that they have diverse knowledge and not specific to a particular technology. The team overall should be strong enough to support your future needs as well. You may also need to ensure regular training and technical sessions for them, so that their knowledge does not rust and it keeps them active and on their toes too.
Legal Documents
Something which small entrepreneurs ignore is legalities and putting down agreements on paper and never asked web development company UK for this. When you hire people to work on your website, be it for SEO or designing or even coding, you should ensure that your company data and business secrets remain confidential. Signing a Non-Disclosure agreement is an important way of securing your business property and ensuring you get an edge over your competitors. Another critical aspect about starting out on an e-Commerce venture, is having a formal agreement or contract with your web designers and coders. All terms of work, costs, payment conditions and milestones should be clearly defined and laid out in the agreement. Taking the help of a lawyer and getting these documents drafted will definitely be worth the fees.
Test Pilot
The most important aspect of setting up an e-Commerce website, after you have done all of the above, is to run a small sample test website. Taking baby steps and then taking giant leaps is the only way you will be able to steadily rise. No matter how big you plan to become and how much money you plan to pump into your business, it is important that you do a test run of your entire business model. You can have a full-fledged website setup, with payment gateway, CDN systems and even mobile apps, but do it with a small set of products. Even big companies like Google and Amazon start out small when they launch a new project.