Hey Jenn

I am sure there are many other entrepreneurs who are planning to launch an ecommerce site are looking for a similar checklist.

Let me share my very basic checklist.

How to Start an Ecommerce Business Checklist

Depending on the type of the business, this checklist might change, but I believe these are essential steps to take if you like to start your own ecommerce business.

1. Idea

It all starts with a good idea. Before even thinking about starting an ecommerce business with your great idea, ask your family and friends what they think about it.

Make sure that they are 100% honest with their feedback. Because, usually family and friends will say "great idea" and it won't help you in the long run.

Do your initial research right. Visit as many sites/blogs as possible and try to get as much feedback as you can. Ask here, you don't have to share the details of your idea.

If you believe your idea will form a successful ecommerce business after your initial research, go for it.

Always keep in mind; "Do not get discouraged about negative feedback & comments". Whatever you do, there will be somebody trying to discourage you.

If you want to start your own ecommerce business, you are an entrepreneur, and most people cannot understand how an entrepreneur thinks and feels.

2. Market & Niche Research

You have a great idea, you did your initial research and you trust that it can be a great business model.

Now, it's time for market research & niche research. This is probably the most important stage in planning for an ecommerce store. If you do your research right, you might save terrible headaches in the future, if you do it wrong, you might loose a lot of cash. So, you have to do your market research right.

• Do your market research first. You have to clearly understand the size of the market. Is it worth starting an ecommerce business for this market?
• Competition Analysis. This is very important. You have to understand what the competition is doing. How long they have been in business. Since you will be launching an ecommerce business, you have to check both online and offline competition. You might invest into a business with little to no competition, but an offline giant in the same niche might go online after 6 months, and kill your business with its power.
• Niche Research. Many entrepreneurs mistaken by including niche research in market research phase. Niche research should be treated separately. To be able to do a good niche research, you have to be good at keyword research. Your niche research should result with clear metric data about the niche you are planning to compete in.
• Keyword Research. For the initial market research part, keyword research should be done parallel with niche research. After you launch your business, you will constantly need to do keyword research and update your SEO strategy depending on the results.

Tools I use for Market, Niche & Keyword Research Phase:

• Google Adwords Keyword Tool: This is the best tool for niche and keyword research, and it is 100% free. Keep in mind, google adwords tool's data is not always 100% accurate. You have to make sure you use a few different keyword research tools along with the adwords keyword tool.

• Microsoft's Keyword Commercial Intention Tool. This is a cool tool. Not 100% accurate again, but idea behind is great. If you want to learn more about what it does, read this blog post I've written a while ago.

• Micro Niche Finder. This is a tool I use daily to find secret niches and keywords. I believe I've paid little less than $100 for this tool. You can use Google, Adwords Keyword Tool and Excel to do pretty much what this tool does, but it's a huge time saver for my business and time is money. (*The link is my aff. link.)

At the end of the research phase, your simple idea has started shaping into a business model. When you are comfortable and confident that you can compete in the market with your business model, it is time to move to your business plan.

3. Business Plan

Whether you will need an investment or it will be a self funded project, you need to create a business plan.

Business plans are good to layout a road map for yourself. You can keep updating your projections in the business plan while running the business.

It doesn't matter if you have everything planned or not, you should start putting the part of the puzzles into your business plan.

I personally use Palo Alto's Business Plan Software (aff. link there), and it does magic for all of my new projects. If you will be shopping for funding, you don't have a chance but use a quality business plan software. There are also several free biz plan tools out there and some excel templates. But I'd recommend using a good business plan software.

4. Development Plan

Other than a regular business plan, you have to have a development plan for your website. I prefer to keep my website development plan separate.

Web Development Plan varies depending on your needs. To stay in the required budget, and projections, it is a great idea to have a separate development plan.

5. Marketing Plan

You need a clear roadmap of how you will market your new ecommerce business.

Online marketing includes a number of specialties on top of regular/offline marketing, such as SEO (Search Engine Optimization), Affiliate Marketing, Media Buying, etc.

Especially if you have a tight marketing budget, it'd be wise to plan where each dollar will be spent along the way.

You should also specifically think about your SEO Strategy before you launch your site. Are you going to be doing the SEO work yourself or hire a professional? Here are couple of blog posts I've written about the topic which will give you a better idea of what to do if you are new to SEO.

• SEO for Long Term.
• SEO Consultant Job Description

Here are some great tools and market research data you can use for your online marketing plan.

Conclusion

I wish I had written a blog post :) I didn't think it would take this long to talk about the very basic steps to take to start an ecommerce business.

Like I said at the beginning, this is a basic check list and you should think think every step thoroughly and put some hard work in it.

Most important part,before you decide,is the number 2 "Market & Niche Research" in Ahmet's article..

An e-commerce website is a very important for anyone who is interested in ecommerce business. There are many web-hosting companies and tools that are available to create a website make it easy to operate your own website. Start with the basics when you create an e-commerce website and customize it for your requirements.

Ecommerce Online Payment Solutions

Hi Jenn,

Market research is the #1 most important step. If you're technical, you might be OK with a good open source option like Magento or X-Cart. If you'd rather a solution where everything is hosted for you so you can just add your products and go, you might be better off with something like BigCommerce.com or Yahoo Stores.

Take a look at this checklist for selling online from the BigCommerce website: http://www.bigcommerce.com/how-to-sell-online.php

It explains each of the 8 steps involved in selling online:

1. Choose what you're going to sell
2. Determine how you'll ship orders
3. Create your store
4. Decide how you'll get paid
5. Choose a domain name
6. Customize your store
7. Add products
8. Launch your store

Again it depends what you need, but that might be a good start :)

you will need a good shopping cart, i found bigcommerce on google.. they look interesting, maybe give them a try.