Launching a web shop in 8 steps
If you are reading this article, it means that you are thinking about opening a web shop. Many people write about the web shop as an application for online commerce, but few know all the necessary actions that precede the opening of a web shop. We will focus on those preparatory actions.
Opening of Ltd, LLC or trade crafts. The first step is, logically, the opening or registration of a business activity. Just these days, the procedure has been further simplified and the minimum share capital for the establishment of a Ltd that is, of a LLC is reduced from HRK 20,000.00 to HRK 5,000.00. It is no longer necessary to reserve a company name and some other details that were necessary until now, which reduced the total costs of establishing a company. Although deadlines of 2-3 working days are officially mentioned, in reality the process of establishing a company takes a little longer. For this action, you need to calculate about a week of time and some nerves. It is very important that you add the activity of “selling via mail or internet” to the list of activities, because otherwise you will need to supplement the activity, which again requires money and time.
Business space for web shop. You need office space. You can buy it, or you can already own it, or most often you rent it. It should be for business purposes. This purpose should be entered in the original extract. Therefore, a residential space cannot be a commercial space. The office space must also be legal, i.e. have a use permit or other document for use.
Minimum technical requirements or abbreviated MTU. An item that a lot of people don’t know about and are unpleasantly surprised. In addition to step 2, your business premises should also meet certain minimum technical conditions. This means that the name and address of the company, as well as the working hours, should be highlighted. In addition, you also need a warehouse or a space where you will store your goods. The warehouse should be ADEQUATE. It is not the same whether you are trading diamonds that fit in an envelope or white goods that need a lot of space. In the not-so-long-ago time, the minimum prescribed areas of storage space were prescribed, but in recent times the state has “relaxed” on these things. You also need to get the so-called “safety at work” done. Specialized companies will do it for you. Request a certificate of minimum technical conditions from the competent state administration office in the county, or from the competent administrative body of the City of Zagreb. The same office will also give you a list of items that you need to meet, according to the type of goods that will be sold.
Dropshipping is not a topic, but we will mention it as an essential ingredient of web shops - a way of trading through a web shop in which it is not necessary to have a warehouse because you order the products from the supplier only when you sell them. The supplier sends the products directly to the customer’s address, and you, as a retailer, do not physically see them. Dropshipping has its advantages and, of course, its disadvantages. The most common are combinations of dropshipping and stock removal. So you can offer your customers speed and a competitive price on the most favorable terms. In the case of dropshipping, you do not receive the goods at the warehouse, but charge a kind of “commission” for your brokerage services, which is the difference between the purchase price and the retail price.
Classic web sales. After you have received confirmation of the minimum technical conditions, you need a few more items necessary for sale or trade. For starters cash register. The cash register program for shops should contain several modules. Invoicing module, warehouse module, buyers, suppliers, manufacturers, the possibility of printing labels with declarations and prices, the possibility of creating receipts and inventories as well as price leveling and similar things. It is very important to choose a quality program for retail (cash register) because once you start a web shop (or any other store) and fill the warehouse with products, it will be very difficult to replace the program.
The legal responsibility for the orderly management of inventory, cash registers and other related matters rests exclusively with the web shop owner.
Bookkeeping filling of web shop. Your first ordered goods have arrived. You need to receive it through the cash register program. The same is done through the so-called primka. Items are entered through barcodes, their retail price is determined, declarations are made and information about the purchase price is entered along with some other details. After that, the goods are technically ready for sale.
Web shop. Assuming that a web shop has been developed by a web developer in parallel with the preparatory actions we have listed so far and there are still some details left. There are mandatory data that a web shop must have. These are the basic data of the merchant, general terms of purchase or sale, guarantee of return and exchange of products, statement of confidentiality or protection of personal data (GDPR) and a form for unilateral termination of the Purchase Agreement. Make them of good quality in order to gain the trust of customers in this area and, more importantly, to comply with Legal Directives.
The first sale. The web shop has finally been launched. The first customer. The first order. If all the steps have been taken so far, it should go smoothly. We are creating an invoice. For payment by direct bank transfer or cash on delivery, fiscalization of the invoice is not mandatory, while for payment by credit card it is mandatory. Yes.** Even though it is a web shop, there are still cases in which you are obliged to fiscalize or issue fiscal invoices.** After creating the invoice, we pack the goods together with the invoice and the unilateral termination of the purchase agreement, to which the customer is entitled within 14 days. We deliver the package to the selected courier service. The selection of the courier service is also one of the more important elements. In addition to the price of the service itself, customers highly value the quality.
That’s it. Your web shop is up and running! :)
After some time, when the volume of work increases, it will become tiring to keep track of bookkeeping stocks and product stocks in the shop. It would be quite convenient if the retail program (cash register) and the web shop were connected. Is it?
We are already talking about more advanced web shops, or so-called ERP systems, in which the cash register and web shop are connected to each other and the quantity of articles in the warehouse is automatically reduced with each sale on the web shop. Even the entire system is managed from one central point. Web applications. We will talk about ERP for web shops in one of the next texts.