Before You Begin

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Successful ECommerce is Hard Work

To be successful with your ecommerce store, it takes time, energy, and careful planning. This checklist is designed for new storewoners to help you organize the tasks and data that you will need to build a successful website.

Digital Content from Suppliers - Paper catalogs will only slow you down. Contact your suppliers and manufacturers and ask them for a digital copy of their catalog. An online store is 100% digital, meaning that all of your paper photographs will need to be scanned and the product data will need to be typed into the ecommerce system. Distributors are used to getting requests for their product information digitally, so you shouldn't be shy about approaching them for product photos and data. PDF catalog files are O.K., but you will still need to save out the images and text from them manually, and this is an extra step. The absolute best formats for getting bulk product data include; a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, a CSV file (comma separated values), a database file (like Microsoft Access), or a SQL backup file (.bak file).
Photos - like the product data described above, your store will be easier to build if you have digital copies of your product photos. While distributors are often happy to provide you their product images, you should never steal product photos from a competitor's website. Delaware.Net will not help you to take photos from a competitor's website. Unique products and apparel websites typically require that you take some of your product photos on your own. If you anticipate taking a lot of product photos, it makes sense to setup a photo booth, using fabric from a fabric store, and incandescent lights.
Digital Camera - Every ECommerce store owner should have a dedicated digital camera for putting product photos quickly into their online stores. Store-Logic has built-in photo processing, which takes your raw digital camera photos and optimizes them for the web automatically. Super-high resolution digital cameras are NOT required for taking ecommerce product photos. Color photographs for print media are typically very high resolution, where on-screen resolution is only 72dpi. In other words, a very basic $100 digital camera will work just fine for taking product photos.
SSL Certificate - When you shop online, you have probably noticed that secure pages are shown a little bit differently in your web browser. Typically there is a small padlock shown at the bottom of the browser window, and the address changes from "http://" to "https://" (notice the "s"). This indicates that the page you are looking at is secured, and can submit private data like credit card numbers. What makes them secure is a domain-specific security certificate that is only good for a year at a time (they expire). SSL certificates cost about $65 per year. Version 2 of Store-Logic™ (adn higher), and Commerce Engine™ have SSL certificates built into the shared checkout system so that our customers won't need to purchase a SSL certificates.
Keywords - When you are entering products into your store, you will need to enter keywords that represent the terms that relate to the product, so that the product can be indexed easily by Google.
Merchant Account - a merchant account enables you to accept credit cards live at your business in person.
Payment Gateway - a payment gateway authorizes credit cards in real-time in your ecommerce website.
Google Analytics Account - this free services gives you traffic reports for your store.
Digital Postal Scale - to utilize the real-time shipping gateways for UPS and Fedex, you will need to enter weights on all of your products.
Cloth measuring tape - you will need to measure the size of your products that are oversized (if you sell oversized products) so that the UPS rates will be accurate.
UPS / Fedex Account