E-commerce has witnessed tremendous growth since the pandemic hit, and businesses are taking full advantage of this trend. E-commerce provides businesses with a fantastic opportunity to reach new global customer bases and boost sales.
Before beginning to market and sell your products, it’s essential to conduct some thorough research. This means analyzing competitors as well as understanding what your target market wants.
1. Choose a domain name
E-commerce is an effective business model that allows you to sell products or services online. But before starting an e-commerce store, there are a few considerations you’ll need to bear in mind before opening one. First and foremost is selecting your store type – each comes with its own advantages and drawbacks.
Once you have determined the type of online store you wish to build, the next step should be selecting a domain name. This step is vital, as your domain name will determine how customers find and access your site. A great domain name should be easy for people to remember while remaining relevant for business; including keywords where possible is ideal.
Create a domain name that stands out from the competition and makes it easier for customers to locate you by choosing something unique and memorable that customers can remember easily, such as numbers, symbols or hyphens that may be difficult for customers to recall. Also ensure your name is easy for potential customers to spell so they can find you easily online.
Another thing to keep in mind when creating your e-commerce store is whether to choose a hosted or self-hosted e-commerce platform. Hosted platforms tend to be simpler to setup, offering preloaded templates and tools to assist in building out your storefront; however, this may limit customization options or necessitate signing up with an external payment processing service provider.
Self-hosted e-commerce sites give you more control over the look and feel of your store, although they may require more financial outlay to set up. They also allow more freedom in designing the look and functionality of your store – perfect for brands seeking to differentiate themselves from competition.
2. Create a website
An e-commerce website serves as your business’ “storefront,” inviting customers to explore products or services available for sale before placing them into their virtual shopping cart and paying with credit or debit card. Depending on your available resources and bandwidth, you may create and manage this e-commerce platform yourself or hire a developer to complete this work on your behalf.
An important initial step for any successful business is researching their market and competitors, from products they sell, customer bases, social media strategies and branding practices of similar stores, customer personas (fictional representations of ideal customers) as a tool to determine which messages and offers will work most effectively to determining customer personas (fictionalized versions of your ideal customers).
Next, decide the type of e-commerce store you would like to create and launch. There are various options for doing so – individual brand stores can be created with individual branding or joining online marketplaces like Amazon or Etsy as a marketplace to sell products; there are also hosted platforms (such as Shopify) which provide all-inclusive software or open source options ( such as Magento) giving more control over the look and feel of their sites.
Once your website is live, the next step should be adding product information like images, prices and descriptions for each item for sale. Once this is completed, obtaining inventory should also be secured – whether through manufacturing them yourself or purchasing from wholesalers – followed by setting up shipping and delivery options for customers – this is where an e-commerce platform comes in handy as many include tools for creating shipping labels and tracking orders as well as payment processing services to handle transactions – some e-commerce website builders offer this as part of their package.
3. Select an e-commerce platform
An effective ecommerce platform is key to your business’s success, whether you’re starting from scratch or expanding an offline brand into the digital landscape. A quality platform will enable rapid expansion that would otherwise not have been achievable.
What criteria can help me select an ecommerce platform for my business? Many factors need to be taken into account, including price, features, support and overall experience of shopping for customers – providing an enjoyable shopping experience is integral to success on any platform! – and will ultimately keep them coming back for more.
When selecting an ecommerce platform, look for one that provides:
Ready-made themes and templates that are editable are great time and money savers as it saves both your time and effort when designing a website from scratch. Additionally, your platform should support multiple devices including desktops, laptops, smartphones.
Fully integrated payments. By accepting various payment methods, this feature will enable your company to build customer trust and increase conversions.
Your chosen ecommerce platform must offer SEO capabilities and tools to optimize content for search. This may involve optimizing URLs, metadata tags, blogs and customer reviews among others.
Hassle-free checkout. A seamless and straightforward checkout experience is key for creating a positive customer journey, especially among mobile users who purchase products while out and about. Consider selecting a platform which supports various forms of mobile payments such as Square readers or PayPal with a smooth flow for checkout.
An effective and flexible ecommerce platform is essential to running a successful business, but to truly enhance performance and growth it is also wise to collaborate with an external digital partner who can manage all aspects of the platform for you, leaving you free to focus on marketing and sales while we help facilitate sustainable expansion in the long run.
4. Set up payment options
When setting up an ecommerce website, one of the first tasks will be selecting and setting up your payment processing gateways and checkout processes. Your ecommerce platform may already come equipped with these components or you could access third-party solutions through marketplaces or app stores. Depending on the nature of your business and target market, offering multiple payment methods could boost customer satisfaction while increasing sales.
Credit cards remain the preferred payment method, but many consumers also utilize other payment options like wallets (Pal Pay, Apple Pay and Amazon Pay) and buy-now-pay-later solutions such as Affirm Klarna Sezzle for buy-now pay later solutions. Ecommerce customers frequently prefer direct debit payments; some even opt for cryptocurrency payment! If you wish to offer these alternatives to your customers then an all-in-one processor that supports these will be required.
Alternative marketplaces, like eBay and Etsy, boasting more than 138 million active buyers each, could also provide another option for listing products for sale; however, you will lose control over customer experience as well as sales data collection capabilities.
After you have determined which kind of ecommerce store you plan on opening, it is time to plan how you will finance its launch. Common ways include taking out a loan or line of credit from a bank or local community business, finding investors through equity-based investments models or crowdfund funding platforms and crowdfunding.
Small businesses should also consider an all-in-one ecommerce platform that offers comprehensive processing and merchant services, saving both time and money by handling everything from payment processing to merchant services; leaving you to focus on growing your ecommerce business instead.
5. Add products to your store
There are various options for creating an e-commerce store, including hosted platforms, online marketplaces and individual brand e-commerce sites. Your choice will depend on your business needs and desired customer shopping experience. Hosted platforms often feature payment processing and shipping features already integrated, as well as templates to assist with store creation. However, hosted platforms may not give as much flexibility compared to custom-built sites.
Online marketplaces are platforms that sell various products from multiple sellers. While this type of platform allows you to reach a broad audience, it may not be best for maintaining brand identity or managing the customer experience. Individual e-commerce stores can be more flexible but require more time and resources for setup.
Once you’ve selected your platform, it’s time to add products. Individually or using CSV import files, uploading individual products or bulk uploading bulk with CSV import files are options available to you. Furthermore, connecting your store to point of sale systems such as Lightspeed Retail (X-Series), Square POS or Clover POS and importing inventory directly can also help with inventory control.
To add a product, you’ll need to provide details like its name, description and price. Furthermore, images should showcase your products at their best in terms of clarity and high resolution – you could even tag each one for easier searching!
Your store page, product blocks and summary block can display limited availability labels to inform customers when an item is low in stock. These labels should also indicate when certain orders may have arrived late from suppliers.
