If you’re thinking about selling your products online, you would be figuring out how to go about it. Before venturing out into the online business, there are some aspects you need to be acquainted with and then you will ace it!
How Important Is Online Store?
Although 90% of the sales were accounted for at retail outlets, do you know online sales are fast catching up? In their Q14 2015 earnings, the online shopping segment of Target contributed to two-thirds of increase in comparable sales.
With the advent of eCommerce, as many as 60% of adult Americans are happy to shop online.
It doesn’t just end here. From research, it’s evident that Generation X spends 15% more money on online purchases than Generation Y. So, we can very well see the surging importance of internet among the population!
Challenges of Online Store
Though managing a brick and mortar outlet is easy in the sense that you have to track inventory going through just one channel, all this changes when you’re opting for an online store. That’s why tracking inventory across various channels can be challenging because you’re required to maintain an efficient track record of your inventory.
However, your online store will have different costs as opposed to a retail outlet. Sometimes, selling goods online might be profitable for you than transporting and storing at a retail outlet.
Different Types of Web Hosting
Setting up an online store requires you to be online. This means that you must have a website that doesn’t only help you sell your products/services but also loads quickly (without letting your customers wait for it). This is when you need to hire a reliable web hosting service. To get started, you should have some knowledge about the common types of web hosting services:
- Shared Web Hosting – It can support many domain names on a single server. It’s an extremely cheap way of storing humongous amount of data. However, there are limitations on the use of CPU processing power due to pooled resources.
- Dedicated Web Hosting – The most expensive, yet the most flexible option is this one. The site owners can rent out space on a server in a data center. Advanced operating systems like IBM iSeries, make sure that huge traffic is handled by these servers, catering to the needs of clients.
- Managed Web Hosting – It’s provided by a company specializing in platform-specific products. This supports the custom development of frameworks.
- VPS Web Hosting – Website owners have more flexibility with this plan as they work on a hardware framework taking only a fraction of space on the host machine. However, more technical system administration is required to handle and maintain it.
- Cloud Web Hosting – This is for websites requiring more processing power due to an increasing amount of web traffic. Remote computing applications can easily be handled with this web hosting.
- Free Web Hosting – Offered by various companies, it’s a great way for publishing advertisements on pages. There’re many popular platforms such as Joomla and WordPress which can help you tap into the potential of free web hosting.
The Bottom Line
Perhaps, your brick and mortar store is going just fine. But what if your customers are heading to your competitors even for buying a single product item just because you don’t have a website and your competitors do have it?! Since almost everyone likes to shop online, it has become crucial to build a strong online presence.
Building a website and making a prompt decision about choosing a web hosting service is all that’s required. If taken a timely action, selling your products and services online can surely double your profits!
Author
Rebecca O’Brien is a geeky girl who works tech support for a website services provider. Knowledgeable in her work, and the ways of the web, she is happy to go the extra mile for customers and also shares her knowledge with a wider online audience through her articles.
