An eCommerce Website Expriment

10th Mar 2014 | Posted by Eko S. | No Comments

I think that I’m like a lot of people. I’m not a tech genius, but I grew up during the advent of the Internet so I’m fairly computer literate. I’m also like a lot of other people in that, over the past few years, I’ve done more of my shopping online. I was curious, so I did some research and found out that more than 34% of the whole world is online and what’s even more interesting is is the fact that there are over 140 million domain names in existence.

Considering this, I began to wonder how difficult it was to create an ecommerce website. I’ve always enjoyed collecting various knickknacks involving pop-culture—things like action figures, movie posters, T-shirts, and pretty much anything that is nerdy. I thought that maybe it was time to get rid of some of the clutter in my apartment and make some money in the process. I considered using an auction site, but in the end my entrepreneurial spirit took hold and I began to wonder if maybe it was possible to start an actual business where I could continue purchasing and selling my wares.

#1: Designing

I went online in search of ecommerce website builder software. I found a company named Shopify and I signed up. Now again, although I know my way around the computer, I don’t know anything about coding or HTML. I was therefore happy to see that there was a theme store with a ton of templates. I just found one I liked, downloaded it and applied it to my store. It was all point-and-click. There were a couple of things I wanted to change about the template, but all I had to do was go into the admin page and click on a couple of buttons. That was it. I was done with my ecommerce website design.

#2: Building

The next thing I had to do was add the stuff I wanted to sell on the website to my computer. I used my phone to take pictures of everything and uploaded the pictures to my computer. Then I had to write out some descriptions about what I was selling and do things like add a price. With all of that done, the next step was to set everything up into collections. I didn’t have everything I wanted to sell added to the website, but I had a couple of different types of items, so I set up an action figures collection, a movie posters collection and an old video games collection. Then I made some smart collections. I was able to use the ecommerce website builder softwareto make a collection called, “For the Cheapskates” where everything in every collection I had that was under $20 would be listed. I like this cheapskate’s collection. Believe me, I know, when your living at home with your mother and working at fast food joints it can be a really difficult task trying to find something to satisfy your nerd needs. I would have been all over this collection back then!

I was actually really surprised because to do all of that only took me a few hours. Everything looked really good, and it looked like I hired a professional do it.

#3: Details

After all that I went into the admin page of the ecommerce website software and set up automatic credit card payments and a few other things. All the administration stuff took me less than an hour, and that was it, my website was up and running. Of course, there were a whole bunch of options that I could get into, things like translating my website into different languages and currencies, adding multiple logins, setting up a blog, and adding things like adding slideshows, but with the site up and running I knew I could take my time with all that other stuff. I think the next thing I’ll do is set up a blog. That way I can get in touch with all the other nerds out there and let them know what I’m selling.

#4: Completion

At the beginning of this experience I really just downloaded the ecommerce website builder softwareas a little experiment to satisfy my curiosity, but now I actually have an internet store set up, and I have to say, I’m pretty happy about that. I love all the stuff I’ve collected over the years, but to be honest, it’s taking up a lot of space in my life. In the end, if I sell some of it, I can always use that money to go out and build a new collection.