How to Build a Website & Add Your Own Shopping Cart

Sign up for a business account through PayPal. This process takes a day or two, as they will want to verify your account information. PayPal will walk you through this process at their website.

Choose a web hosting company that offers the features you want for your website. Web Hosting Geeks offers reviews on the best web hosting companies which allows you to compare pricing and features. Web hosting companies range from free to hundreds of dollars, so be sure to check out at least a few companies before making a decision.

Start building your website with the tools provided by the web hosting company. This includes choosing a template that customers will eventually come to identify as your business. Be sure to include some content pages that keep visitors coming back, such as articles, blogs, how-to guides, and free newsletters. Just selling products is not an effective way to get online customers, as people want to know you are an expert in the line of products you are selling.

Place your product on its own web page. Include a picture of your product and details about it. Be sure the picture is crisp and clear. If this is something others are selling online, there may be stock photos of the product that you can either purchase or use for free. Be as detailed as possible when describing your product. Also be sure to leave space on your page for the shopping cart button that you will make in Step 5. You will want to place the shopping cart button in a prominent place on your product page, as this is the button that will generate a sale for you when customers click on it. Do not place it at the bottom of the page, as some potential customers may not scroll that far down the page before losing interest in buying your product. Place it somewhere in the middle of your page. Do this same process for each product you are selling.

Log in to your PayPal account to build a payment button to place on your product page. You do this by clicking on the "Merchant Services" tab at the top of the page. Next choose the "Add to Cart" or "Buy Now" link to start building. "Add to Cart" is for websites selling multiple items, while "Buy Now" is for only one product. PayPal will walk you through the information it needs in order to generate a code for your product. Once the code is generated, you will need to copy and paste it to the product page on your website.

Repeat Steps 4 and 5 for each product you need a payment button for. PayPal also has a "View Cart" button that can be placed on each of your product pages, if you have more than one item. This button works with the "Add to Cart" button so that customers can order multiple products from you, and keeps track of all the products until the customer is ready to checkout and make a payment.

Link your product page to other pages on your website, especially your home page. This makes your product page accessible for potential customers to get to from almost anywhere on your website.