How to set up your online selling platform. Creating a website, domain name & hosting.

1. How to set up your online
selling platform

2. When you begin your online
business one of the first things that
you will need is a platform to sell
your products and on the Internet
the ideal platform is a website. I
am going to explain how you can
set up your own business website.

3. First of all you need to decide
what name you will give your
website. This is called the domain
name and it could be the name
of your business or if you provide
services it might be your own
name.

4. You will need to find out whether
the particular domain name that
you want is available. Ideally if
your business is aimed at
customers worldwide then you
would choose .com domain.

5. If your business was aimed at
customers in a particular country
then it would make sense to have
a domain name that ends with
something specific to that
country. So for example, for a
business aimed at the UK market
you would purchase a domain
name that ends with .co.uk.

6. Once you have determined your
domain name and you know that it is
available you can purchase it and this
means that no one else can have that
same name.

7. The next step is to set up and
configure a hosting account.
Basically you need somewhere to
host all of your website
information. Once you have
purchased hosting for your
website you need to connect your
domain name with that hosting
server.

8. It might take a few hours for this
process to occur but once
completed you will then be able
to start adding and formatting
your website. You may find that
there are website templates
available in your hosting account
so you can choose a template or
theme that fits in with your
business.

9. I use WordPress which is a free
software for building a website
because it is very easy to use. You
will be able to download
WordPress from your hosting
account.

10. Once you have this platform to
build your website on you can
choose various designs and
templates from within the
WordPress dashboard. There are
also premium themes that you
can purchase if you so desire.

11. There are many plugins that you
can use with WordPress that are
designed to make your site easier
to use and to provide helpful
features to your visitors and
customers.

12. You can then begin to add
content to your website such as
information pages about your
products or if you choose to use
your website like a blog you can
add posts to update your visitors
on what is happening in your
business.

13. You will also need to include legal
pages and a contact page to
keep within current regulations. In
addition you need to have some
form of merchant account so that
people can click on any buy
button and be directed to a
secure payment system.

14. When you create your online
website you need to always keep
in mind that it will be used by
customers and therefore you must
design it in a way so that it is easy
for people to navigate around
your site and find what they are
looking for easily.

15. If you found this helpful then you might like to visit
my website:
KayFranklin.com
(Free download available)