Starting a new website specifically for sales...

Quilceda · #1 (**permalink**) 07-19-09, 20:00

I'm considering building a website specifically to sell a certain brand of electronic cigarettes. I've never seen anyone else smoking them in my town, and I get asked about mine all the time. I figure I could print up some simple business cards with the URL and hand them out to anyone who seems interested. The company pays out 20% on sales, so I think it would be worth the effort. I'm hoping to also make some sales online, but I've never started a website purely to make sales and I'm not sure how to go about getting it off the ground.

Does anyone have some experience with starting out on this kind of endeavor?

DediServ? · #2 (**permalink**) 07-20-09, 07:59

I've not much experience but I've done some research on it myself. First, will you be creating a website all in your own and selling them using a shopping cart and accepting payments yourself, or are you simply going to create a landing page to redirect to an affiliate link or something to that extent?

Quilceda · #3 (**permalink**) 07-20-09, 11:04

I would be building the website myself, but the sales link(s) would forward the user to an affiliate link on the company's website, so I would not have to handle the money or customer service aspects of the sales. Really, it'd just be a landing page (but I would extend on it a little bit more than just that; I intend to make a full website, more or less).

DediServ? · #4 (**permalink**) 07-20-09, 16:29

Ok I'm not exactly sure where you would want to go with it but you could do a very informational site, go into all the major details and possibly have a different page for each aspect of it. I'd simply add a "buy here" button or something to that extent on each page maybe.

Binary · #5 (**permalink**) 07-20-09, 20:36

If you have the experience you could build the website yourself, but it does sound a little tricky. You could also consider buying a template and then customizing it for your needs. Third choice is to pay someone to build it for you.

Quilceda · #6 (**permalink**) 07-20-09, 22:20

I have a pretty good idea of how I'm going to build the site (I can code in PHP and HTML, and I've got a few years of experience with Photoshop under my belt), so that's not really the issue. I'm mostly just concerned about SEO issues and the launch itself. There's really not much point in building the site if I'm only going to get a handful of visitors.