The Key Points of Building an Online Store

Online shopping is becoming more popular in Finland and online shopping sales levels have increased. There has been concern that brick and mortar stores are losing their customers to online stores and that Finnish stores are losing their customers to international online stores. One solution to this concern is that Finnish brick and mortar stores also start selling online. But how to build online stores? The aim of this thesis was to study about building an online store based on theory and practice, and to find out the key points of building an online store in Finland. There were two research questions: how to build an online store and how the theory of building an online store differs from reality. The main focus was on e-commerce software, delivery methods, payment methods, and design and usability. The research was limited to small and medium size online stores. The literature review section discussed about building online stores based on online articles, guidebooks by e-commerce service providers, and books. For the empirical part of the study, a qualitative research was conducted. Five persons were interviewed for the research. They had participated in building an online store. They were interviewed either via e-mail or telephone. The results of the interviews were analyzed in the discussion section. The first part of the discussion compared the findings of the literature review with the interview results. The second part of the discussion then found out the key points building an online store based on the findings of the literature review and the interview results. The results showed that the theories about building online stores and reality were mostly similar. When building an online store, it was important to plan everything on beforehand and find correct partners to help with e-commerce software, and delivery and payment methods