If you're thinking about starting your own webshop, here's a list of what you need to be aware of as a start-up business.

Decide what you want to sell

The way to take the market by storm is to find a niche that hasn't been seen before or is rarely seen - ergo, your product or service stands out from the crowd.

For example, if you choose to sell regular clothes, it takes a lot of work to compete with the big clothing chains that have been successful for many years. But if instead you have a piece of clothing that is out of the ordinary, you have a better chance of success.

Therefore, it's all about becoming a market leader in the area you want to sell. Offer your customers something that the big companies can't offer. Find your passion and sell it on your online shop.

There are many variables to consider when choosing what to sell.

• Is it a product/service that sells?
  
• Large and heavy items cost more than small and light items
• Do you need to make a special freight agreement?
• How big/small is the chance of the item being returned - and if so, how do you handle this?

Once you know what you want to sell, you can start thinking about the name of your webshop - the domain name of the webshop. It should preferably relate to the product, so that the target audience knows what you're selling.

You can always check if your desired domain name is available here: DK-Hostmaster

There are three ways you can set up a webshop

1. Build your webshop from scratch using open source programmes
   
2. Pay a lot of money to have the webshop served to you on a silver platter by a web agency
3. Develop it through webshop solutions that cost a small amount per month

There are pros and cons to all of them, and you need to choose the one you feel suits you best.

Creating an online shop from scratch on your own requires knowledge of open source programmes, such as Magento or Woocommerce in Wordpress. It takes time to familiarise yourself with, and you need to have a good technical understanding. However, you have your hands on all the tasks and the design measures, which you will not have if a web agency makes the webshop.

If you use an agency, you make wishes for appearance and content, where the agency then develops the entire webshop. This typically costs around DKK 10,000-30,000 depending on the agency and the amount of content.

This can be done cheaper by renting the webshop solution, where you will be able to design and develop the webshop as you want it. Here you often pay a small amount per month, where you can still get professional help with the setup.

The webshop solutions where you pay a small amount per month are often easy to start up, and you decide how much work you put into it.

At ideal.shop you pay as little as DKK 199 per month, which is among the cheapest on the market. We're always here to help you if you have any questions.

Budget

When embarking on the journey of creating a webshop, it is important to investigate and realise how much money you have available. It is not free to set up and run a webshop.

In addition to the cost of the webshop itself, you have to pay for a domain (DKK 45-200 per year). We also recommend that you take some professional photos of yourself and your products to make your online shop look professional.

You will need to calculate various costs for your products, such as product purchase/development, storage and web hosting, in order to be able to sell them to your customers. In addition, you will need an agreement with a "payment gateway" if you want your customers to be able to pay by credit card on your online shop. What about marketing? Do you have the budget for advertising marketing, or do you want to work exclusively with organic traffic?

Then you can also calculate how much you expect to earn once you start selling your products. Keep in mind that you will also need a budget for shipping, such as packaging and freight.

Focus on the user

It's always important to know who your target audience is and then develop your online shop accordingly.

The target audience can be anything from new mums, young people, musicians, nerds, craftsmen, etc. It's your target group that needs to use the webshop, and if they don't understand how to use it, there will be no sales.

Ease of use is important so that customers don't get confused or frustrated. Have photos and content in order. Bad photos and poor/lacking descriptions of your products/services indicate that the company is not professional. You don't want that - so make sure your online shop is 100% complete and satisfactory before you go live.

We recommend that you test your online shop before going public. It's a good idea to get friends or family to take a fresh look.

The same goes for customer service. Remember that your customers expect immediate answers and help. That's why you need to set aside time for customer service.