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- 1). Find reliable wholesale vendors for the products you plan to sell in your boutique. You can choose to purchase items in bulk and resell them through your boutique. Alternatively, you can become an associate of an online retailer and sell their products through your online boutique for a commission. When you find a vendor, see if they have quality pictures of the boutique items that you can use on your site.
- 2). Acquire a federal tax identification number through the IRS and a sales tax permit from your secretary of state. You will need these numbers to purchase products from some wholesalers.
- 3). Purchase boutique items from wholesale vendors if you plan to mail the boutique products yourself, along with packaging materials like boxes, tape and mailing labels. Vendors generally sell their products exclusively to dealers through catalogs that they mail or offer online. Contact a vendor's customer service or sales department to learn more about setting up a dealer account and purchasing their products at the wholesale price.
If you plan to sell items as an associate, gather the appropriate links and HTML codes for your site from the company with whom you plan to work, which will ship the products on your behalf. - 4). Purchase a custom Web address from a Web hosting site. Ideally, your website should include the name of your boutique to make it easy for new and return customers to find and remember. Another option for a domain name is to incorporate the name of an item you sell. For example, if you plan to sell mostly perfumes and fragrances in your chic boutique, a good domain name might be, for example, "www.perfumeandfragrances.com," because the chances of your boutique showing up as one of the first results in a related search engine inquiry are greater.
- 5). Design your website. If you know how to design websites, you can do this yourself. Otherwise, you may need to hire a Web designer to help you. Alternatively, the hosting site may provide you with a business package that allows you to customize pre-made, user-friendly templates. The look and design of your site should reflect the products you sell.
For example, if you plan to sell products related to the tropics, your boutique's site should not feature pictures of fir trees. A chic, online boutique should have a classy website and graphics, and a coordinating color scheme to give visitors a shopping experience that makes them feel like they are purchasing unique, high-quality items. To create a boutique-like experience, your introductory page can make visitors click on virtual French doors. Once the visitor is on the home page, you can use Flash graphics to make a fancy-looking dresser open different drawers to display the products you sell. As an example, one of the drawers can lead to a page that sells hair accessories, while another goes to a page that sells bath products. - 6). Set up a merchant account so you can accept payments online. You can set up merchant accounts through banks and credit card companies. Alternatively, you can also create a merchant account through an e-commerce site that allows you to make and receive electronic payments and money transfers.
- 7). Market your online boutique. Place ads in women's magazines and use social networking sites to let new customers know about your virtual store.
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