How to Start an Online Golf Business
Are you a golf enthusiast who wants to take his passion and turn it into an online golf store? With a little research and planning, it's easy and affordable to build an Internet storefront. Here are some tips to starting an online golf business.
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Instructions
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Decide what you're going to offer. Will you sell only golf clubs or will you offer every type of golf item available? Will your online store cater to a specialized group such as women golfers or to golfers of all types? Will you also offer something other than tangible goods, such as coaching or articles about coaching? Before you build your site, you need to know exactly what it will be offering.
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Plan your website. Websites can very easily get disorganized, which can make it difficult for customers. So plan each page of your site and how it will be organized. Make it easy for visitors by grouping items into categories such as "Golf Clubs," "Golf Videos" or "Gifts for Golfers." You may even want sub-categories such as "Golf Clubs for Women." Don't forget that every good website also needs the following pages:
1. Privacy statement that outlines what you'll do with customer information.
2. Contact information so customers can get in touch with you with questions or concerns.
3. "About Us" that outlines your business' history, mission and goals, and lets your visitors know about you.Optional but recommended features include an email capture form that you can use to send a newsletter or the latest golf deals, a FAQ page that provides answers to the most common questions you're asked, and a blog with the latest golfing news.
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Find a web host. There are e-commerce specific web hosts that make setting up an online store fairly painless. When researching these types of sites, you'll want to consider monthly fees and what they're based on, whether or not the shopping cart can calculate sales tax by state as well as shipping costs, limits on the number of items you can have in the store, inventory tools, security measures to protect you and your customers' private information, and customer support tools. If you'll using a regular web host you'll want to find out about storage and bandwidth, e-commerce (shopping cart) plug-ins, email, up-time percentage (percentage of time the servers are up and running), control panel and tech support availability.
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Set up payment processing. You'll want a payment system that can be integrated with your website's shopping cart. If you're using an e-commerce host, it will tell you which payment processing systems you can use. If you're setting up your own site, your web host may already have a shopping cart system you can use, in which case you'll want to find out what payment processing it works with. If you buy a shopping cart script, it also will let you know which payment processing you can use. To use the above options, you may have to apply for a merchant account, which is much like applying for a credit card. A final option is to use PayPal.
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Create your site. Once you have an e-commerce or web host, it's time to build and upload your site. An e-commerce site and many web hosts have options to build your site using templates online. Or you can use a program such as Microsoft Expressions or Adobe Dreamweaver to build your site on your computer and upload your web host's server (your web host will email you information on how to do this).
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Find customers. Your online golf store won't make money until you have customers. Prepare a marketing plan that outlines who your customers are and where they can be found (such as what magazines do they read?). Next, create and put your marketing message in front of your target market. Ideas include ads in golfing magazines or websites, writing articles for golfing magazines and websites, and social networking with golfers online.
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