As we mentioned earlier, you must think about your shopping cart before you think about building your website.  Obviously a website without a shopping cart is not going to bring in much money! In turn, when choosing a shopping cart it is vital that you begin at the end, so to speak; i.e. you consider how customers are going to pay for the goods. This and other related issues are discussed extensively in the sections on payment processing and shopping carts.

It should be noted at this stage that selling one's goods on the Internet is not like traditional selling. Hopefully if your customer has searched for the words that have lead them to your website this is because they are already interested in making a purchase. Over-aggressive selling as such smacks of barrow-boy tactics and is a quick turn/click off! The most important task now is to convince your  potential  customer  that  you  are  a  genuine  supplier,  that  the  goods  will match their description and will arrive when you say they will, and that their payment is handled professionally via a secure system.

There  are  a  number  of  steps  you  need  to  consider  in  building  your  website, before you make any decisions:

1. Choosing and registering a suitable domain name
2. Which web hosting service you are going to use
3. What you want on your website
4. What your website is going to look like
5. How potential customers are going to find your website
6. How you are going to keep your website up to date

All of these we'll discuss in the next few pages