The one thing about the internet is that you can be an individual business owner and present your company at the same level as corporations with tens of thousands of employees. ..

The difference between an attractive functional site and and one that people will click away from means money in your pocket.

But with WordPress it doesn’t mean you need to pay a lot to get a lot.

Actually i have seen huge companies with seriously ugly sites that function very poorly so being big and with a lot of money and staff to build and manage (COUGH… IBM.COM) a site really may not be a reason people stay on a site.. they may just have no other choice because the company is just so big they have to use their site.

When deciding on how your site should look or what Theme you should select it is important that you check out your competitors.

You should gather at least ten sites that are similar to your needs.

Remember they don’t have to be selling the same product you are selling but they should be within the same realm …. meaning if you sell hand made stuffed animals and only offer 3 types you should probably not be getting a lot of your ideas from Amazon.com or Target.com but that is not to say you can’t pull any ideas from those sites.

Once you know what your competitors are doing it is your job … or yours and your designers job to out do them.

I would also suggest that you make use of a plugin like wooCommerce to sell your products unless you want to host your content on a shopping cart hosting service which will handle all the payments but will charge you per month.

And if you are a first time beginner pick a single payment gateway and stick to it.

Paypal may not be perfect in all ways but in all ways it is pretty darn good. If you need to expand then you can later… but the best benefit of using PayPal or Google or Amazon Payments is that you NEVER collect the actually credit card number. This is very important for new eCommerce retailers because you do not want that extra level of security that must be constantly monitored by a professional.

If you need to accept Credit Card payments directly .. get a 1800 number and do it over the phone or in person with a phone swiper or hire it out to a company that is certified by your credit card company and … yes you can call your Merchant Services company and they will give you a list of certified hosting services. If you don’t certify your CC Collections you will find yourself losing your Merchant Account.. it happens.

SO research your competition

Try to out do them on your level .. don’t try to be Walmart with 400 billion in sales.

Work with your designer if you have one.

Find a good method of accepting payments securely.

Then give it a go… you never know you might become rich off your cookbook or another Justin Bieber … sorry hope that doesn’t happen to you … heheh.