Ecommerce 101: The basics of building a successful online business

Selling online is an exciting venture and we're here to help you. Follow these basic steps to selling online and you can be on your way to launching and growing a thriving online business with ProStores.

Sign up now

Questions? call 1-866-737-3229
Mon- Fri: 5am-8pm MT

Design your store

Create a professional look with a range of design tools. Our preset design themes and templates are a great way to get started.

  • Select your design theme and preset page layouts – choose from over 190 professionally-designed templates
  • Quick Tip: Get even more professionally-designed store themes and templates at the ProStores Template Store
  • Upload your logo or create one with Prostores' built-in logo generator

You can then customize your store with our Design Editors or with Dreamweaver

Services

Interested in full custom design? Hire one of our Certified Designers »

Add Products and Categories

Set up your catalog in two easy ways.

  • Add categories and products one at a time. Just follow the steps in our Add Category and Add Product wizards.
  • Upload a spreadsheet that contains all of your catalog information, including inventory counts. Use our Import Data feature to do this.

You can also upload product and category images one at a time or all at once in a Zip file.

Set up payments

Get set up and get paid. Our Payment Preferences wizard will help you setup PayPal, select which credit cards to accept, and set up an online credit card payment processor.

  • Accept online payments right away with PayPal. Your customers can pay using their PayPal account or with a credit card through the PayPal site.
  • Process credit cards in your store securely and in real time with a merchant account and online payment processor

To accept PayPal, you’ll need a PayPal Premier or Business account

ProStores works with these online payment processors.

Set up shipping and sales tax

Display accurate shipping and tax rates in your shopping cart and automatically add these charges to orders on checkout.

  • Use the ProStores Shipping Setup wizard to define your own shipping rates
  • Set up built-in rate calculators for USPS®, FedEx®, UPS®, or Canada Post
  • Quick Tip: Set up simple default shipping rates and add at least one of the major carriers.
  • Follow the steps in the Sales Tax Setup wizard to set up tax rates
Check with your state tax board about charging sales tax.

Open for business

Set up the basics and open your store for business in a day or two:

  • Use our preset design templates
  • Enter products and categories
  • Accept PayPal as your main form of payment to get started
  • Set up basic shipping rates and add one major carrier
  • Open for business!

Then, you can:

  • Customize design details
  • Add credit card payment processing
  • Continue to add content to your store over time

Quick tip: Before you start to promote your store, go through the store as a shopper would and place a few test orders.

Search Engine Optimization

ProStores has built-in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tools that help improve your ranking in natural search results.

  • Search engine tuning to make your page urls more search-engine friendly
  • Automatic site-map creation and submission to Google and Yahoo!
  • Customizable search engine keywords for each product
  • Quick tip: Content is king with SEO – add useful information like buying guides and product reviews to your store and update it often.

Link to your store from a blog. TypePad offers a ProStores-compatible tool that allows readers to search your store directly from your blog.

Interested in advertising on search engines? ProStores Marketing Services can set up and manage paid search campaigns for you.

Comparison Shopping Engines

ProStores automatically submits your product catalog to Google Product Search (free).

We also provide tools to do this with three major comparison shopping engines (CSEs): Shopping.com®, Yahoo! Shopping®, and Shopzilla®.

  • Set up accounts with the sites you want to submit your product catalog to
  • Follow the step-by-step instructions to have your catalog information automatically sent to each site

To submit your product to multiple CSEs, check out the ProStores-compatible tools from MerchantAdvantage or SmartFeed.

Sell on eBay

With more than 250 million potential customers, eBay is a great way to attract new customers and turn inventory into cash fast.

We have the best eBay integration of any ecommerce solution on the market.

  • List to eBay directly from ProStores
  • Streamline listing with eBay listing templates
  • Sync your eBay listings and ProStores catalog and inventory

Learn more about the benefits of selling on eBay

Already selling on eBay?
Learn more about all of the great features for eBay sellers in ProStores.

Email Marketing

One of your most valuable assets is your relationship with existing customers.

You can use email marketing to turn one-time buyers into loyal customers and drive repeat business.

Keep your customers coming back for more with:

  • New product announcements
  • Special offers
  • Tips for using your products

Once your store is open, you can get started on this right away with Constant Contact or IMN Sales in a Click - two ProStores-compatible tools for email marketing.

Learn more about how email marketing works in this free guide from IMN Sales in a Click.

Merchandising and Promotions

If you're a retailer, you know how important merchandising and promotions are to getting people to buy more once they’re in your store.

We’ve got built-in merchandising and promotions tools than can help boost your average order size and drive repeat business. Here are just a few.

  • Highlight Featured Products on your home page
  • Increase order size with up-sell merchandising on the shopping cart
  • Storewide Sales
  • Product Sales

With ProStores Advanced and Enterprise tiers, you can also assign codes to promotions in order to limit access to target customer segments.

Manage your inventory

Give shoppers a great buying experience and show items that are available for immediate sale. You can also display stock levels to help drive sales of low inventory items.

ProStores has built-in inventory tracking that will deduct the right amount from your inventory when items are sold.

Keep your inventory up to date with the following options.

  • Enter and edit quantities for each product one at a time
  • Upload your logo or create one with Prostores' built-in logo generator
  • Use the Import/Export Data feature and a spreadsheet to review and update inventory quantities for a group of products all at once
  • Set up ProStores to communicate with a ProStores-compatible tool like QuickBooks or Stone Edge Order Manager

More sophisticated inventory management features are available with ProStores Advanced and Enterprise tiers.

Manage your orders

We also have a built-in Order Manager that helps you stay on top of your orders and provide a great customer experience

  • Receive notices of new orders by email or on your desktop with ProStores Store Monitor
  • Track your orders from payment authorization through shipping and post-sale credits.

If you need to coordinate inventory and orders for multiple sales channels, take a look at Stone Edge Order Manager, a ProStores-compatible tool.

Manage your shipping

Be more efficient and increase customer satisfaction with shipping through ProStores.

  • View, sort and print a list of orders that are ready for shipping
  • Print packing lists individually or in bulk
  • Generate UPS® and FedEx® labels and provide tracking numbers to your customers
  • Pay for postage and generate USPS® labels through your PayPal account

Take a look at these ProStores-compatible tools for more advanced shipping management: Stone Edge Order Manager and Shipworks.

Manage your customers

Stay close to your customers. Review real-time activity about your newest and most loyal customers.

  • Update customer information in Store Administration and allow customers to update their own information on you storefront
  • Export customer lists for email and other marketing campaigns
  • Quick tip: Give customers incentives to sign up for an account with your store -like access to future promotions through your email newsletter

More sophisticated customer management features are available with ProStores Advanced and Enterprise tiers.

Track your success

Get sales and site traffic information at your fingertips with our built-in reporting tools.

  • Executive Summary reports show you best selling products, top customers, and the store search keywords shoppers are using
  • View Sales Reports by individual product or grouped by category and manufacturer
  • Track the number of visitors coming to your store, see where they’re coming from, and identify keywords they’re using to find you on the web

Put the knowledge you gain from the reports to work. Here are a few ideas to get you started.

  • Highlight best sellers
  • Promote slow-moving items
  • Target top customers with special offers