Open its online shop (e-commerce)

You have to differentiate between retail and professional sales.

Business Sales

Your business is a commercial company if you buy goods to resell or make goods to sell.

Sale between individuals

If you sell your own property that you no longer want to keep, this activity is considered to be sale between individuals.

Creating a business requires you to follow:

• one preparation serious
• and a process of mandatory steps.

Before you get started

You should ask yourself the following questions:

• Are you made to become head of company?
• Do you have the right to become a merchant?
• Does your project have a chance to succeed?

Steps to opening a business

You must follow the mandatory steps following:

• Choosing the legal form of your company
• Declaration and registration of your company on the SCN (if you are a merchant only) and at RNE: titleContent if you are a craftsman with a commercial activity
• Professional insurance

Who can help you?

Become familiar with digital

Train yourself in digital

Are you not familiar with digital communication?

You can benefit in your region digital training for your company.

An online service allows you to find training which suits you:

Entrepreneur: Find your digital training

Test solutions to get started

Before creating your online sales site, you can first try one of the following options:

• Create your own showcase site. There is no online sale.
  Your website is intended to present your products or services with your rates. He advertises it.
  You offer your customers the possibility to order by phone or by mail, or to book a product in your shop.
• Create a new business account on a social network (Instagram, Facebook, etc.). Online sales are not allowed.
  You take orders by phone or email.
  Your web page provides information about your products and advertises them.

This allows you to assess the success or otherwise of this online communication and its impact on your business.

You can then get more involved in creating your online sales site.

Financial aid for digitization

You are entitled to financial assistance.

The following tool lets you know what funding you are entitled to:

Finance your digital transformation

Imagine your website

You need to think ahead about the shape of your website.

You have to find the structure adapted to your products: its format, its graphic design.

Its choices depend on the type of clients (their age, their world, etc.) and will be adapted to the demand.

The domain name is theinternet address of your website.

It's up to you. This is a string of words preceded by "www" and ends with an extension in .fr, .com, .net, etc.

Your domain name is a way to personalize the image of your activity and to stand out.

It must be unique, that is, it must not already be used by someone else.

Find out if your domain name is already in use

Domain name and protected trademark (INPI)

It's a good idea to check if your domain name doesn't already match a protected trademark.

Check availability of a brand, logo, domain name

If availability is free, you can register your domain name as a mark.

Register a trademark online

This is an additional safeguard.

Register your domain name

There are several registrars depending on your web address.

You must reserve your domain name by following the online approach.

You must make the following choices:

• Create and manage yourself your own website:
  
  • With a CMS (site content management): a software free helps you create your site.
    This solution is inexpensive. You choose your host and your server yourself. You can customize your site. You're the ones who do the updates, the security, the data backups. You must have some technical skills. You must have some time to spend on it.
  
  
  • Without CMS: you need to know how to code. This solution is inexpensive. It takes a lot of technical skills and a lot of time.
• Get your site done by a platform via a turnkey software called SaaS (Software as a Service). Sample SaaS: Shopify, Wizishop, PowerBoutique, RentaShop.
  This is a solution subscription fee.
  The platform takes care of the creation of the site for you, then its maintenance. If you want personalized aspects, you have to pay extra.

Mandatory particulars

On your site, you must include certain mandatory particulars.

These terms shall cover the following:

• Your company (unique Siren identification number, contact details of the manager, etc.),
• Your customers (commercial emails, personal data, etc.),
• Your site (host, cookies, etc.).

The term marketplace or marketplace refers to an online platform where several e-commerce businesses are grouped together.

It's the equivalent of a shopping mall physical, but online.

The advantage is to be better spotted on the internet among the many existing sales sites.

You have the choice between marketplaces large national and international scale (Amazon, Cdiscount, Rueducommerce, etc.) and local markets.

The marketplaces of proximity are more suitable for click & collect.

There are many online places of proximity. You will find them adapted to your needs, your products (examples: Ma Boutique en Ville, Cocote, Monpetit-ecommerce, Deliver).

Unless you are selling your own production, you must choose a supplier. This is a wholesaler (seller in very large quantities) or producer.

You must choose a mode of managing your inventory. It will depend on the nature of your products, according to their duration and the type of storage.

E-commerce is subject to a strict regulation which you must absolutely respect.

These are the rules on contract, payment, delivery, withdrawal and return.