A Guide to Build an E-commerce Website

Did you know?

It's estimated that there will be 1.92 billion global digital buyers in 2019.

 Have a dream of building an e-commerce website? Don’t know how to get started?  

Let me help you.

Follow my 10 step-guide to build a better and profitable e-commerce website. I’ve helped many startups and SMBs who have ventured into digital scaling of their brand and established themselves with their standout e-commerce sites or full-fledged marketplaces. This article will provide all the insights that you need to turn your e-commerce business dream into a reality.

Ready? Let’s roll!

#1. Choosing the right domain name for branding

Choosing the right domain for your brand is one of the most challenging and important aspect of starting an e-commerce business. Your domain name needs to be short, unique, and easy to remember. Moreover, it should be relevant to your business niche and easily identifiable among the competition. Once a domain name is purchased, the next step is to hire a professional design and development team to design your brand logo, website theme, and other promotional materials.  

#2. Research your top competitors

Research your competition to know what you’re up against and how you can differentiate from them. Find your top three competitors that offer similar services and products, or a business that you intend to compete against. Once you finalize your competitor list, visit their sites and pay attention to their website features such as website layout, page loading speed, cart functionality, payment gateway, and overall user experience. Spend some time to list down what features you want to have on your website.  Compare it against the competition and choose a site structure that helps you stand out from your competition. Ensure that your site doesn’t come off as a copy of your competition or else your audience will get confused and might land up on your competitor website.

#3. Figure out shipping options

The next thing you need to figure out is ‘how to deliver orders at customers’ locations?’

You put a lot of effort into making sure your customers have a great user experience. But when it comes to logistics, if you are not planning to take care of things in-house, you need to find a trustworthy and reputable logistics partner. You can research for an affordable shipping and delivery company and partner with one that will handle all your logistic requirements and ensure optimal customer satisfaction.

Look for a shipping partner that offers you the following services:  

·        Shipping strategy

·        Shipping rates and methods

·        Calculating shipping costs

·        Packaging options

·        Insurance and tracking

·        Label your packages

·        Warehouse service

You also need to decide on a free delivery service – whether you’ll offer free delivery to your customers within a certain location or the type of product they’re buying. Your choice should always be informed by the underlying financials of your business.

#4. Choose your e-commerce platform

Some of the best e-commerce platforms are Shopify, Opencart, Big Commerce, 3d Cart, Volusion, Big Cartel, Woo-commerce, and more.  As the options are endless, you just need to be sure that your e-commerce platform has the following features.

• SEO friendly
• Easy to use
• Secure
• Mobile friendly
• Payment gateways accepted
• Integrations and plugins
• Customer Service

#5. Choose web design and development partners for your site

Once you have chosen an e-commerce platform, it’s time to develop your website. Make sure that you choose the best web design and development partners for your site. Choose someone who has experience in e-commerce development and at least has worked on similar projects.

Tips to choose web design and development company for your e-commerce site:

The first step is to find a company that has proven experience. Make sure the company has been in the industry for at least a few years, and that the members of its team are all well experienced.

The other things you must consider are:

·        Does that agency offer other services such as digital marketing, testing, etc.?

·        Do they follow best practices for the user experience?

·        Can the agency provide some case studies to showcase their success stories?

·        Can they share their clients’ testimonials or their references?  

Take your time to research and inquire before entering a development partnership. Website development efforts require extraordinary amounts of time, money, and company resources. If in case, the agency isn’t living up to your expectations, it’s better to break the deal and run before you’re in over your head.

#6. Finalize the Payment Gateways and Payment Methods

Payment gateways represent the channel through which you collect money from shoppers. The best gateway to integrate on your site is one that has a wide range of payment options and also has a simple payment process that doesn’t confuse users.

Most online stores use PayPal payment integration to collect money since it is the most widely used monetary tool on the internet. PayPal supports payment in all major credit card issuers like MasterCard and Visa and has active users in over 200 countries.

If you’re looking for something more innovative, then you can partner with cryptocurrency payment platforms to collect Bitcoin or any other digital currency on your site. However, there are risks attached to this form of payment collection so take time to study it before diving in.

You may also want to consider whether collecting cash payments on the delivery of the product or service will be ideal for your audience.

#7. Build your e-commerce website

As you’ve chosen your website design and development company, it’s time to build your e-commerce website. You can develop your e-commerce website in two ways – via coding or site builder.  Site builders make development a lot faster while coding from scratch gives you more control, choose the one that works best for you.

The website builders are so easy to use and do not require any prior training or special skills. You can use any of the two methods to construct your e-commerce website. I would recommend going for custom setup which will give you more control and allow you scale your business later.

#8. Add an SSL certificate to your website

An SSL certificate adds an extra layer of security to your website by ensuring that essential data such as credit card details shared by visitors cannot be hacked by an intruder.

If your site doesn’t have an SSL site, your site is not secure and has high risk of getting hacked. As you’re accepting payments on your site, you really need SSL to encrypt your customers’ information.  So make sure the web developer you’re working with adds an SSL certificate to your site to complete the setup process.

#9. Make an Online store launching plan

Now that you’ve spent money and time to setup up your e-commerce website, you want to take in as many sales as possible within your first few months in business and forever of course.

That is where making an online store launching plan comes to play. You have to come up with amazing offers such as offer free delivery, 50% off on products on your launch date, and more stuff.

These promotions do not have to eat deep into your pocket if you can come up with a strategic offer for your shipping company or product suppliers.

Design flyers about your proposed launch date and have your family, friends and anyone on your team share it to as many people as possible via social media or offline.

Lastly, pay full attention to your customers as soon as they get on your site, it’s the only way to keep them engaged.

10. Prepare a Digital Marketing Strategy and get it executed properly

The success of every website relies heavily on digital marketing. Choosing the right strategy can make a huge difference between how much profit or loss you make.

Here are the basic digital marketing services you need, though it mostly depends on your budget:

• SEO (Search engine optimization)
• SEM (Search engine marketing)
• Email marketing management
• Social Media Management
• Affiliate Marketing System

Hire the best digital marketing agency to get traffic on your website. Most of the agencies offer these services as a single package for which you can pay on monthly or any other term basis.  

Have any questions? Inbox me.