Overview - The Plan

OK - housekeeping points all out of the way, let's get to work ...

So you know where we are heading, and you know where you are at any point, this is the broad outline of what we are going to do:

• · Draw up a short list of narrow themes for your web site, based on your interests and experience.
• · Research the options to decide which will be the most productive.
• · Build a simple site that is search engine friendly, expandable, and easy to manage.
• · Locate products that fit into your theme (and therefore match your customers wants and needs).
• · Locate content that can easily be incorporated into your site.
• · Add interactive elements to your site to create a community around your chosen subject.
• · Promote the site to generate targeted traffic.

How closely you follow the steps in the guide - and how much of your own ideas and creativity you put into it - is completely up to you. There is little (if any) interdependency (big word alert!) between parts of this guide - that is, you can pick and choose which bits you adopt and where you decide to do your own thing.

If you are a complete beginner, you will probably want to follow the step by step ideas quite closely - in which case I can give you every confidence that you will end up with a working e-commerce site.

Even if you are very experienced in such matters, I'm sure you will still find some ideas of value within this guide.

In either case, do let me know how the guide could be modified better to your needs.