Budget A Little Time To Save Lots Of Money Later

Are you considering opening an online store? If so, you’ll want to skim this list of questions and notes AloeRoot provides to people who are looking to start selling online; if you can answer these upfront we can quote more accurately and finish your site more quickly. Shorten the time it takes to get your shop up and running by doing the legwork early.

General Questions:

Do you already have a web presence? If so, what’s your website address?
In which province or state is your business headquartered?

Inventory Information:

How many products do you wish to have in your store?
Is each item one of a kind?
Do you have a brick and mortar store also?
Will you keep separate inventory for your ecommerce shop?

Shipping Information:

To which countries do you ship?
How do you ship? Purolator, Canada Post, UPS, other?
Do you offer free shipping at all?
Do you offer local pickup?
Do you need to offer parcel tracking?

Payment Collection:

Which payment methods will you accept? Visa, MasterCard, check, money order, PayPal?
Do you already have a merchant account for accepting credit cards? Who is your provider? (You will need to locate any merchant account information you have available.)
Which taxes do you collect?

Bookkeeping Requirements:

What information does your bookkeeper or finance department require from your ecommerce store?
Will you be using the store to help manage your books, or do you have separate accounting software?

Three Things You Need:

1. A security (SSL) certificate installed on your web server. Cost: free of charge if your site is hosted on our servers. Otherwise we will determine pricing for you.

2. Ecommerce Software: there are many varieties available. We can determine, in consultation with you, which option is the best for your needs and budget.

3. Hosting for your store: we offer hosting plans suitable for ecommerce shops. Some platforms, like Shopify, provide their own hosting and that price is included in their monthly charge. If you have an existing hosting plan, we can find out if it offers all the features required to run your store.

Information You Will Need to Provide to Us:

1. Your company’s contact information including:

Office address
Shipping address
Credit card billing address
800 number if applicable
Customer service name, mailing address, email address and phone number
HST or business number

2. Your privacy policy (we can help you write this).

3. Text about your shipping policies.

4. Your returns / exchanges / customer service policies.

5. Quality photographs of all your products (we can assist if necessary). Good product photos are one of the most important factors in making sales online.

6. A list of all your products as a spreadsheet with the following information included. We will help you determine on an individual basis whether all this information is required:

Name
SKU
Description
Short Description
Weight
Height, Length, Width
Price
Quantity Available
Taxes Charged

New Accounts You May Require (we can assist):

We can help you set up accounts with the following providers, if necessary. Because these accounts require you to provide private financial information, we request that you create the accounts yourself with our assistance and share with us only with the information we require to build your store.

Shipping Accounts as needed: Canada Post, UPS, Purolator etc.
Merchant Account for accepting credit card payments
Payment Gateway Processing Account (processes credit card transactions in your shop)
PayPal Account

Plan Now, Save Later

If you gather all this information at the early stages of your ecommerce plan, it will be much quicker and easier to set up your shop. Generally, it takes longer to gather all the required information and to set up the necessary accounts than it does to build your store, so it pays to be armed with this checklist before you begin!