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Setting up your own online store may seem like a daunting process to begin with, but
in this help video, we'll offer a few tips to help you get started.
If you have just set up your store, it will still contain a few Dummy Products and Categories,
just to give you an idea of how your store may look once you've added your own details.
You can delete all of this data using the Manage > Categories section.
Simply delete all of the dummy categories, and all of the products within them will be
deleted as well.
For more information on this, please see the "How to Remove Dummy Data" help video.
Before adding any of your own products, have a think about how you want to present them
to your customers, and then use the Manage > Categories section to create some of your
own categories.
For example, if you were selling electronics, you might want to create a few different categories,
such as "Televisions", "Audio Equipment", and "DVD Players".
This will make it much easier for your customers to browse your store and find what they are
looking for.
To learn more about adding your own categories, please take a look at the "Managing your Categories"
help video.
Once you have created some categories, you have a place to put your products.
Use the Manage > Products section of the control panel to add whatever products you want.
You may also want to prepare and upload your product images first – you can do this via
the Manage > Images section, or by using the "Images" panel, shown while adding a new product.
For further information on adding products, please see the "How to Add a Product" help
video.
Next, you'll want to take a look at the Ecommerce > Checkouts section of your control panel
to choose which payment methods you would like to offer to your customers, such as PayPal
or Google Checkout.
By default, we'll enter your Free Webstore login email address as your PayPal account
email address.
If you already have a PayPal account that uses a different email, you'll need to update
this accordingly.
For more details on selecting your payment methods, please see the "Enable Checkout/Payment
Options" help video.
Next, you may want to consider customising your design a little. You can do this using
the Design sections of the control panel.
You can change the colours, upload your own logo, select your preferred font, and more.
For more information, check out the "Customise Your Store" help video.
When your store is created, we automatically populate a few of your non-product pages will
text, such as your About page or the Welcome Message on your Home page.
You can use the Manage > Pages section of your control panel to edit these pages however
you want.
To learn more about this, please see the "Editing your Pages" help video.
Now that you have products, categories, payment options, and you're happy with the design,
we recommend you take a look at the Manage > Postage section.
You can use this section to create a set of rules which govern your shipping costs, to
ensure that your customers are always charged the correct amount.
You can also use this to create different kinds of postage options, such as Courier
or International Shipping options.
For more information about this, please see the "Set Up Postage Rules" help video.
You store is automatically given a unique Store URL when it is created, such as www.freewebstore.org/shopname.
You can change this at any time, or you can also attach your own domain name, like www.shopname.com.
This can help to give your store a more professional image, and it can also help your store to
perform better on search engines, like Google.
To learn how to link a domain name to your store, please see the "Get a Domain Name"
help video.
And finally, once you have attached a domain name to your store, we recommend you submit
a sitemap to Google.
Search engines can be slow to update their listings – it may take weeks or even longer
before your store begins to show up in their results pages.
Submitting a sitemap to Google can potentially speed up this process, and it also provides
them with an up-to-date list of all of the pages on your store.
For more information on this and the many other aspects of search engine optimisation,
please see the "Search Engine Optimisation" help video.
And that's it. Following the steps in this help video should ensure that you have done
everything necessary to set up your store.
We also recommend that you have a play around with the control panel to familiarise yourself
with it.
And don't forget: if you ever need a hand with anything, the "Support" section of the
control panel is there to help.