The Co-VID 19 pandemic has been a game-changer for retail and service businesses. Who could have predicted even five years ago that people would be taking yoga classes online with a teacher on a different continent? Much less shop for groceries and other needs from their phone at any time of the day?
The pandemic has also affected how authors engage with their readers and sell books. There are no in-person events and if there are, it’s limited to how many people can attend.
7 Ways To Take Your Book Store Online
If you are an author, retailer or any small business selling products, you should be making that move into online sales. This post is going to show you seven things you need to do to set up an online book store.
Find A Great Web Designer For Your Book Store
If you don’t have the technical skills to set up an e-commerce site, you will need to hire a web developer. Particularly one who specializes in setting up sites for online sellers.
Talk About Design
A great web designer is going to bring your vision to life. Talk with the designer about how you want your site to look and how the copy and photographs should be displayed. You also need to decide how customers will navigate their way around the pages.
Choose A Domain Name
You will need to choose a domain name for your site. There are websites that can help you to do this. Remember, your domain name has to be unique. It is the home address of your website in the great city of the internet.
Hosting The Site
Websites need to be hosted on a server that provides you with your own dedicated space on the internet. The good thing is, paying for a host isn’t usually very expensive. Your web designer may offer this service themselves or recommend a hosting service for you.
Maintaining Your Site
Unless you are very tech savvy, it is probably not a good idea for you to maintain the site yourself. Trying to save some cash by taking a DIY approach usually ends up in you spending more money. If you’re not comfortable with the technical side of things, ask your web developer for help. However, you’ll want to be able to do simple things like upload pics and edit copy. The developer your hire should be able to design a site that allows you to do this quite easily.
E-commerce
Your online store will need an online payment processor that will allow it to take payments from your customers. This is a crucial part of the online store. If your shopping and check out process doesn’t work efficiently, it could cause frustration for your customers. And what’s worse is it could result in lost sales. Before you hire a web developer, make sure that your developer is experienced in this area.
Shout About Book Store! Start A Blog
So, now you need to tell everyone about your book store.
Setting up a blog on your is a great way to communicate and engage with your readers. Learn how to use SEO effectively to drive customers to your site via your blog posts.
And promote your blog posts on social media. Instagram and Pinterest are great platforms to draw attention to your books and interact with your customers.
Wrapping Up
Those are the seven steps to setting up an online book store. I hope you found this post helpful. If you have anything to add, please share it in the comments below!
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