Over the past 20 months, I have helped a few business owners transform their brick & mortar businesses in to click & order enterprises. You can either use Shopify, Shopmatic or any other paid, template based eCommerce solutions or you can build it from scratch like I did using WordPress + WooCommerce. Either way, you will need to grab a decent domain name that represents your business.
STEP 1: Getting a Domain Name
I used namecheap.com to secure my web domain name. I personally recommend using a dot.com domain vs a dot.sg domain because it is easier to set up (may save you weeks of pain) and provides higher perceived value (more international). You can also purchase it via your webhost (see Step 2 for details).
STEP 2: Hosting your website
If you are using paid, template based eCommerce solutions like Shopify, you can skip Step 1 & 2, as these steps are integrated when you sign up their subscriptions.
I am using ua.siteground.com as my webhost as they are pretty efficient on customer support and priced reasonably. More importantly, they provide good security and free SSL. You may also consider buying your domain name as a package with Siteground if you have not done so in Step 1.
STEP 3: Installing WordPress on your website
Once Step 1 & 2 is completed, you will need a content management system to house your business content. I used WordPress because it is open-source (FREE) and it is one of the easiest to build upon. Go to the cPanel of your webhost, you should be able to see the WordPress icon under Autoinstaller (if you are using Siteground).
You will be prompted to create an Admin ID & Password. This will be used for your website login in the next step. In the same location, you can start creating emails linked to your domain name which will be hosted by Siteground as well.
STEP 4: Installing WooCommerce Plugin
Once you have completed Step 3, you should be able to login to your (WordPress-installed) website via the following URL:
http://domain-name.com/wp-admin
Use your Admin ID & Password set up earlier, you can now login to the “back-end” of your website to start building your online store. Head to Plugins -> Add New and search for WooCommerce. Click install and activate plugin. Once done, you will see an additional item on your left column of your WordPress “back-end”.
As you can see, it is a relatively simple process. As long as you have the guts to make mistakes, you will find the above steps easy to follow. If you are interested to render my service to build an eCommerce website for you, let me know.
