If you are planning to build an e-commerce site, you must have a clear plan to do so. Here are some tips and tricks that can help you create an e-commerce site.
How to Build a Successful eCommerce Website: Step by Step Guide (2021)
There is no doubt that creating an e-commerce site is one of the most successful projects emerging now, but first of all, if you are planning to build an e-commerce site, you must have a clear plan to do so.
This plan starts with your website building goals, who are you targeting with these products? What are the needs of the target group?
Will your users only get information from the site, or can they buy directly? These are some important things that you need to review before starting.
The second step is to decide on the type of products or services that you will provide, how will you display them on the site? Will you enable the online purchases and physical stores together? How will you handle the shipment and send the product to the consumer?
Then determine your partners who will support you and define an electronic payment system, how will you provide a payment method? Is it available to whom you are targeting? How can I get a refund? And other vital matters related to buying and selling remotely.
If you have some entrepreneurial ideas for your own website .. let us explain to you what needs to be done to build an e-commerce website.
Read here: Understanding the Different Types of E-Commerce Business Models
12 Steps to Building a Successful eCommerce Website: Infographics
1. Decide the niche of your business.
2. Choose your eCommerce platform.
3. Select a domain name and hosting.
4. Create an e-commerce website.
5. Choose and customize your template.
6. Select and customize the WordPress theme.
7. Design your store and add products.
8. Extend your online store with plugins.
9. Create a Great Checkout Experience.
10. Select shipping and fulfillment partners.
11. Set up payment options.
12. Test and launch your eCommerce site.
7 Ways to Make Your eCommerce Website Attractive and Professional
Here is a list of all the steps you can take to get started and successfully create your e-commerce website. Follow these steps for building an eCommerce website:
Decide What Kind of Marketing You Want
If you are someone who wants to create a commercial website, then you will surely have done a lot of research on the Internet about the best and least expensive ways to get a professional site through which you can market and sell your products over the Internet.
Of course, before starting the site, you have to put a clear plan for your project. In terms of the product you will sell, the storage and the sources of the goods, the payment methods you want to provide, and more.
eCommerce platforms have details that should be right for you and your business. To ensure success while building an e-commerce website, start with a sound marketing strategy.
If you plan to sell physical products, decide how you want shipping to work in advance. And If you sell digital products, consider the bandwidth and delivery options you’ll need.
There is no site without visits and no business without customers. Therefore, you must also prepare the marketing plan for the site, how it will reach the target market, and how to gain their trust through various marketing channels.
Choose a Suitable Domain Name and Web Hosting Plan
After deciding to create your own e-commerce site, the first thing you should think about is choosing a domain name for the site, which matches the name of your company or project. Even before you choose a name for your project, first make sure that the domain name is available and you can easily obtain it so that you do not find yourself in front of a big problem.
An e-commerce site is ultimately a site with specific features, and every site needs web hosting in order to install it on it.
Currently, there are many companies that provide this service, but choosing the appropriate hosting for the project remains among the things that the website owner hesitates about. To choose the ideal hosting for your site, put a set of criteria to help you choose the services that suit you best.
In short, the hosting topic is mainly controlled by the size of the website and the available budget, but for a beginner project, it will not need many resources, and you can start with the first offer of Bluehost or GoDaddy, Hostinger, they provide great services to start-up sites with a free domain name.
Bluehost remains the cheapest in terms of price without losing the quality required early in the project. After the passage of time and the increased requirements of your site, you can easily upgrade to higher offers.
If you have chosen one of the companies mentioned above, then setting up a WordPress site can be done with two or three keystrokes.
If you choose another hosting, go to the hosting control panel and look for the WordPress icon, click on it and follow the stages that appear for you to start the installation process.
If you do not find a WordPress icon in your hosting dashboard, we are sorry to tell you that you did not choose suitable hosting for your website.
Make Your Website Attractive and Professional
After registering your site name, choosing a good hosting service, and creating a plan for how to display your products/services across the site, the next step is to design and build the website.
If you are looking for an easy-to-use, affordable and reliable solution that enables you to sell not only through your website but through platforms like Facebook and Pinterest as well, then you should make your website attractive and professional that has the following features:
Content: A major factor for the success of any website is content. Provide your visitors with interesting information, incentives to visit and buy, and ways to reach you. After your site becomes online, update and add content periodically to encourage visitors to return and repeat visits and purchases. Content marketing can be classified as one of the best methods of marketing.
Structure: You have to decide how many pages you want the site to contain, how you will link those pages to each other, what are the main logos for the pages and products. You can set up the home pages first and a new page for each product with all of its details.
Design: With the content and structure of the site, the design comes third in importance, whether you are going to hire independently or do it yourself .. Focus on simplicity, consistency, readability, and usability.
Browse the site: Make it easy and fun for the visitor to navigate between pages, for example, do not use more than three or four-directional links for the main pages, and never let the visitor reach a dead end.
Credibility: Creating an e-commerce site depends mainly on credibility. It is important that the products that visitors buy arrive with the specifications advertised on the site, and that the quality of the products is not less than consumers’ expectations while browsing the site.
Honestly tell the product page why it should buy your product without it from competitors, the site must appear in a professional manner and stand out as reliable and credible as selling face to face.
Provide your means of contact on the ground, such as the address of the company or store, the official phone numbers of the company, so that the visitor always remembers that you are not just a website and that behind this website is a respectable entity that can be trusted.
Create an eCommerce Website Using WordPress
WordPress is a free and open-source content management system that you can get for free through the site wordpress.org. It helps to create a beautiful website, blog, or app without you having prior knowledge of programming and coding.
A WordPress them is a set of files that are installed to control the structure of the site and the general appearance of which it will appear in terms of colors, sizes, types of fonts, how the content is displayed, and other design matters.
You can get free WordPress themes from the theme store that it provides on the official website, or via the control panel. You can also get paid thems via the developer’s website or theme stores depending on your budget and needs.
If your budget allows, we recommend choosing a paid theme with additional tools and services that are not available in the free themes. But if you are a beginner and want to save as much money as possible in technical matters (although we do not recommend this because of the importance of the topic), you can choose a free theme, and you can change it after you see the success of the site.
Creating a serious commercial website requires some expenses, even if it is not very large compared to other types of trade, so do not skimp on your project if you want it to succeed.
Install Must-Have WordPress Plugins
Do some of the necessary settings for the website. These settings are necessary no matter what type of website you want to create, whether it is an informational site, a news site, or an e-commerce site. There are a number of plugins that you should install. Some of them are related to the security of the site and some are related to other things.
Among the essential plugins for any website may include Elementor, WPForms, MonsterInsights, W3 Total Cache, WooCommerce, etc.
There are many platforms that allow you to create an e-commerce website. The most important and popular of these platforms is Shopify. But most of the time it is not accessible, especially for those who are new to e-commerce or do not have a large budget and want to start with the lowest costs.
You can add a WooCommerce WordPress plugin and can launch your project online with a professional site at the lowest possible costs and in the fastest time possible.
As for WooCommerce, it is an open-source e-commerce plugin that is installed inside WordPress to add features that are not available by default in the original WordPress program.
Configure Your eCommerce Shipping Options
If you want to work as a dropshipping site or to market Amazon products, you can skip this stage because you will not send the products yourself and leave this task to the distributor.
If you are sending the products yourself, click on the “Set up shipping” button to enter the shipping method settings page. Change the shipping price, destination, and others as required, you can skip all the methods currently if you want because you can change them whenever you want on the extension settings page. Press the “Complete task” button to return to the settings page.
Many e-commerce pioneers turn to host companies to meet their needs with e-commerce sites. Such as credit card transactions, money transfers, sending an automatic message confirming the purchase and displaying related products, and other matters.
Integrate the “e-shopping cart” model on the site, which allows the visitor to deal with his purchases on the site and follow up on payments via his credit card. This model consists of four main parts.
Catalog: Customers can browse products, read information for each product, and compare prices.
Shopping cart: It tracks all the orders that the customer makes, and new orders can be deleted or added through it.
Review the order: It is the process that the customer performs to review the purchases that he has added to the cart, and review any discounts or offers offered by the site, with adding any additional costs such as shipping expenses.
Executing a request: The program reviews the credit card or payment method used, checks all information, and saves everything in the database.
Set Up Payment Methods
To specify the payment methods that you want to provide to the customer on the site, press the button “Set up payments”, you can activate Paypal, Cash on delivery, and payment through the bank. Of course, in the case of Paypal or the bank, you will need some settings. Click on the “Set up” button to follow the settings for the payment method you want.
Read Here: How to Grow Your eCommerce Business: 12 Strategies to Drive Sales
