Getting a business started on line is easy but making sales takes a lot more effort . You can use a open source web design program to build a web site and start selling your product of choice. Several years ago shopping carts were difficult to use and required costly secure servers and programming skills. Today you can drop in a ready made code from Google or Paypal plus a number of independent shopping carts that work with private credit card processors .
One of my sites sell platinum wedding bands and uses paypal for payment transactions . Since Paypal does not have a easy way to offer coupon discounts and does not play well with Google payment I use a third party vendor named e-junkie to bring the two payment systems and discount options into one cart . The cost is as low as five dollars per month and the program can also be used to sell ebooks and other information to your client. I use it to download a free ebook about what to look for when purchasing a platinum wedding band as well as what weights make good platinum wedding bands for men.
In order to stay up with the instant response shoppers want I also employ a totally free service called Comm 100. It provides quite a few enterprise grade products ranging from newsletters to live chat services. The live chat allows clients to ask questions in real time by text or voice without picking up the phone.If you have a buyer in need of more details the faster you answer the questions the faster you can close the sale . If you force buyers to ask questions by email they may continue to shop and find another site selling the same product with answers to their questions posted on line. This means you lost your chance to make a sale because you took too long to respond to your buyers questions.
You also need to remember a lot of on line shoppers look when at home, usually late in the evening. If you use a google phone number and answer it after traditional business hours, at home or by cell phone you can double your chance of making a sale.