all about dogs

1. Find a pet supplies wholesaler who’ll drop ship for you.

Drop shipping is when your supplier ships the goods to your customers without an invoice and marketing material. With drop shipping, you have zero inventory cost. The orders are placed on your website, but the goods are shipped from different warehouses. Customers don’t know that and return to YOUR site to order more. The largest US drop shipper for pet supplies such as pet food, pet toys, pet medication, pet jewelry, pet gifts is Peticious.com. Peticious has over 100K pet products, good pricing and drop shippers may qualify for an additional 10-20% off retail prices.

2. Register a domain name

There are several domain registrars which you can use such as enom, networksolutions, godaddy, netfirms etc. You’ll need a domain name for your store. You’ll quickly notice that a lot of domains are taken.

3. Get hosting for that domain

You need web hosting space in order to install your shopping cart software and upload your product images.

4. Decide on shopping cart software to use

There are many shopping carts out there which people use to market their pet products or for drop shipping purposes. Some of the popular free ones are: osCommerce, ZenCart, Magento, CRE Loaded Standard

When selecting proper software for your pet store, you need to make sure that you will be able to handle your drop shippers shipping methods and scenarios. If your supplier is shipping from multiple locations, you should look into software such as Magnum MVS in order to achieve Multi Warehouse / Multi Location Shipping.

5. Install the shopping cart software

Download and install the software on your web server. Save the administrator login details

6. Activate, configure and test shipping & payment modules

Create a test product and configure the shipping and payment modules you are planning on using. Make sure everything is working properly such as real time credit card processing, order confirmation emails and orders being recorded in your shopping cart database.

7. Load your inventory

Some shopping carts have an “easy populate” or data import component which may accelerate loading your suppliers product data. Inserting items manually can become time consuming.

8. Get a logo and template

Professional looking and affordable shopping cart templates are usually available at TemplateMonster.com. Some really good logo designers compete at contests held at 99designs.com

9. Configure prices, specials, featured items, cross sell items

Most shopping carts are equipped with features which allows you to configure your store front properly. Take advantage of features such as cross sell, bundle sell, specials and featured products.

10. SSL Secure your site

If you are planning on accepting credit cards right on your website, you’ll need to purchase and install a security certificate. Godaddy has good pricing on SSL certificates.

11. Google’ize your site using Sitemap, Analytics, Base, Checkout, Adwords & Adsense

Create an XML sitemap and submit it using Google Webmaster Central. While you are at it, sign up for Google Analytics and embed the Javascript code into your site. This will set you up with web stats, visitor and later on campaign tracking. Upload a Google Base feed, install Google Checkout and connect your Google Adwords and Google Checkout account. This will save you credit card processing fees. Finally connect your adwords and analytics account and start an adwords campaign while setting goals and tracking conversions. By placing Google Adsense on some of your landing pages, you can recycle the paid traffic and get some of your advertisement funds back. Getting the most out of adsense may require thoughtful ad placement.

12. Marketing your store

This is where the real fun begins. There are endless ways to market an eCommerce store. Google base and adwords will definetly get you started and together with analytics and conversion stats you should be well on your way. There are many other ways to drive online traffic to your store. Tapping into the offline advertisement market and spreading business cards and flyers to local pet business is also not a bad idea.

There are companies out there who will take care of all 11 steps for you while leaving you room and budget to focus all your efforts on the marketing aspect.

Check out PetSupplies.name. They provide Ready, Set, Go! eCommerce Pet Shops preloaded with 1000s of bestseller pet supplies at discount prices. You may also obtain FREE flyers and business cards for your offline marketing needs. PetSupplies.name even takes care of all your order processing needs, and offers one of the best pet affiliate programs on the market.