How to set up an online store - Guide to Filipino Entrepreneurs

A couple of months ago, I posted an email to some entrepreneurs asking them if they would like to learn how to set up an online store. Quite a number of them expressed interest so I decided offer a short workshop. I only requested that somebody provide a venue and perhaps an LCD projector. One entrepreneur, Architect Benjie, was good enough to offer his computer shop.

On the day of the seminar, though, only 5 people came. Despite this, we had a good, healthy discussion and I gave them a hands-on experience. I have a web hosting account and provided them with temporary URL names for their use. They generally got the idea of how to do it but (from their faces I could see) it seemed they?d really still prefer to have a technology-savvy individual do the dirty work.

Upon reflection, I figured that most of the other entrepreneurs didn?t come because they didn?t know the venue or the time was inconvenient for them. For their benefit, I?m posting my personal experiences in creating an online shop.

There are a couple of things you have to consider when setting up an online store:

• Your budget for the store
• How your customers are going to pay you
• How you are going to send your items to your clients
• How you are going to market your website
• The security of your website and your client?s info

As far as I know, the easiest way to set up an online store is really just to get one from yahoo small business hosting. Essentially, they?ll prepare all the necessary elements for your business. They have the online store management system, a payment system (PayPal is among their list of merchant gateways), ready-made templates, integration with a shipping company (United Parcel Service), statistical analyses, and SSL (Secure Socket Layer). SSL is important because it encrypts data passed between the server and the browser, so that unauthorized parties cannot intercept sensitive, confidential or personal information, such as a phone number or address. Every modern e-commerce site has SSL.

All these features come at almost $US30 (or a little over P1, 500) per month. Too pricey, perhaps?

Well you could experiment first by getting those affordable hosting from Pinoy webhosting sites like siterepublic and fiestahosting. Make sure to ask if they have CPANEL. cPanel (control panel) is a graphical website management tool. The software, which is proprietary, runs on most widely used Linux distributions, and FreeBSD. It is designed for use by many commercial web hosting services.

Why cpanel? Well, there is a not so well known option there called fantastico. When you use cpanel and click on that fantastico icon, you will see a list of possible web applications that you could install on your website. Some of the possible web applications that would be included there would be zencart or oscommerce. Try installing these two and you instantly have an online store.

and OSCommerce are two of the most popular web-based e-commerce applications around. Both are open-source applications bearing the GNU General Public License. Essentially, this means you can freely use it. You get technical support for it by asking from its community of online users/developers. There are other commercial e-commerce applications around, which you could install in your website, but I personally recommend these two.

Assuming you can install any of the programs above, you should then study it and start filling up the catalogue with items that you wish to sell.

Payment Systems

Your next problem would be to figure out how your customers are going to pay you. You could always opt for cash on delivery (COD). Then again, if you stick with that, you have just set up an online brochure, and not an online store. So, go ahead and find a payment gateway ? there are a number of Philippine based payment gateways already available. There is payplus, payfree, yes payments and even one from mozcom called payeasy.

There are also international payment options like PayPal and 2checkout. Janette Toral?s digitalfilipino website uses xoom.com. From my evaluation, though, I?ve seen 2checkout (2CO) as the easiest to set up and the most competitively priced option available for Pinoys. Paypal is cheaper but, unfortunately, it is still not available in the Philippines. You could get a relative/friend from the US to set up paypal for you, but there are too many hassles that come with that.

In case you choose paypal or 2checkout, there is a ready-install option for zencart/oscommerce. You just need to include your account details and do your online purchase testing. 2checkout allows you to use a trial credit card account number to use for testing purposes. 2checkout gives you the option to send money through a cheque mailed to you once a certain amount (like US$100) is reached. It also has built-in SSL for added transactions security.

Sending Items

It would be ideal to sell items, which are downloadable files like audio, video, e-books or pictures. Once it is purchased, you can automatically email an access code for your buyers to download. For any other physical item, though, you need some form of delivery/courier service.

Go shopping around for the
best courier rates. You can approach LBC, Fedex, UPS, or any other logistic support provider. Prices tend to vary depending on location and urgency of the delivery. LBC, as I recall, has a P100 delivery pouch within Metro Manila. For example, you can sell Audio CDs and have it delivered using that courier pouch. Just add P100 for delivery charges. There are other couriers that offer delivery within the city for much less, I believe for around P40.

Website Marketing

Once your website and the backend support system is ready, you can then go around and tell everybody you know about your online store. Chat with everyone online, tell them about your new website, and hope they?d buy something.

One way to do this would be to go sign up for all the yahoogroups/googlegroups of your target market (even perhaps entreplink), send a message announcing your website. You can even go and give commissions to referral purchases. This would be tedious and the effect is questionable, though. People might actually be more irritated with the commercials they get from the emails..

A simpler way would be to use Google Adsense. Google, as everyone with an Internet connection knows, is the premiere search engine in the planet. Everybody uses it and everybody types in keywords to search items in around the web.

Well, guess what, that you can advertise on those keywords in Google! When you register for an ?adword? account (a US$5 registration fee is required), and you can prepare a campaign. Each campaign can be targeted to certain keywords that you bid for. For example, say you are marketing a web site of ?Pinoy Big Brother? memorabilia; you can make a campaign using those keywords as adwords. Anybody who searches ?Pinoy Big Brother? would, depending on your settings, see your advertisement just at the right side of the Google search results page.

My Ad at ABSCBN!

Aside from that, there is a possibility that your advertisement would be shown in our websites that have Google ads. Just look at my ad showing up a the ABS-CBN website! Since we are at it, you might as well put adsense in your webite.. you get income whenever somebody clicks on an adword link: