Online business is booming, and online shopping statistics say that ecommerce is the way to go for any growing business. You have a product you want to sell or a great business idea.
Building an ecommerce website will strengthen the reputation of your business, help you expand your brand nationally and internationally, and expand your professional network.
In this article, we’ll show you how to build an ecommerce website in 7 steps, quickly and easily using ecommerce platforms, without any special technical skills or experience.
Building an online business in 7 Effortless Steps
If you are just beginning your research, all of the information about Ecommerce can feel both complicated and overwhelming.
Building an ecommerce website used to require extensive technical understanding and a dream, but with the massive options for ecommerce platforms, all you need to do is a little research to move your growing business online.
Do you want an online store but don’t want to spend thousands of dollars building an ecommerce website? If the answer is yes, then let’s walk you through the process of building your own store using Builderfly as an example.
Builderfly is a powerful tool for creating online stores and selling on multiple channels.
Follow these steps for building an ecommerce website:
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Start with a Strategy
To ensure success while building an ecommerce website, start with a sound strategy. Even the simplest ecommerce platforms have details that need to be just right for you and your business.
For instance, everyone says that they have excellent customer service, but you’re headed into a world where your life could depend on your ecommerce site. Don’t you need 24/7 customer service and friendly staff available to solve anything that might come?
If you’re selling digital products, consider the bandwidth and shipping options you’ll require. Selling services online? List out precisely what you’ll be selling, how you need to deliver it, and any time limitations.
Building an Ecommerce Site? Plan for Growth
Think about the options you want AND the options you’ll need for the growth of your business, and how those options will affect your bottom line. Builderfly offers multiple plans so that you just pay for the options you want when you require them.
At the end of the day, be sure to do your homework so that you’re making the best long-term decisions for your business. Speaking of long-term, another very important strategy while building your ecommerce website is search engine optimization (SEO).
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Choose a Domain and Platform for Your Ecommerce Website
Is a custom domain essential for your ecommerce website? The short answer is no.
If you plan to sell a wide variety of products and develop or extend your brand, a custom domain is a way to go.
A custom domain gives your ecommerce store:
- A recognizable brand that belongs to you, e.g. mystore.com
- A professional email address connected to your domain where people can reach out to you
- Search engine optimization (SEO) benefits
If you don’t have a domain name still, you can buy and connect on your Builderfly dashboard.
Your next step is selecting the right ecommerce platform for your growing business. You ideally want to build an ecommerce website on a platform that’s flexible and easy to use.
Solo entrepreneurs and Business owners want a platform that they can easily integrate with their existing site. Alternatively, if you don’t have a site yet, you will benefit from a platform that allows you to build a website from scratch, in a few simple steps.
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Decide on Pricing and Set Up Payments
There are three key aspects of payments as you build an ecommerce website: How you will price your products, how customers are going to pay you, and how will you receive those payments into your own bank account.
You may be starting from scratch or extending your local business online. Either way, the online world has different expectations for how you will put a price on your product.
There are a couple of factors to think about when setting a price for your products for sale online including:
- The cost of materials per item
- Ecommerce web hosting
- Shipping
- Taxes
- Fees and a percentage per sale deductions from various organizations, including PayPal, credit cards, etc.
- Flexible pricing, like pay-what-you-wish
Then decide how your ecommerce site will accept payments. One extremely popular payment option is PayPal. We’ve made it simple for your store to accept PayPal payments from your customers, using our powerful PayPal feature. Yay!
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Design Your Store and Add Products
The next step in building an ecommerce site, it’s time to design your store. Consider what, in addition to your products, you plan to add.
At the very least, you will want to include an about page and a contact page as you build an ecommerce website to help potential buyers connect with you. You can likewise add text and video onto your pages.
When building an ecommerce site, be sure to include your:
- Photograph: People like dealing with real people
- Store name: Builderfly uses your account name by default, however, you can anytime change this
- Logo: For branding and recognition
- Trustmarks and payment logos: These help people feel comfortable shopping with you. Builderfly has these logos built-in.
Select a theme that represents your brand and allows you to showcase your products in the best light possible. Create categories that are logical to your buyers.
Now it’s time to add some products to your new ecommerce website. Here’s how this works with Buildefly:
- Pick your product type (Digital, physical, or service). If you’re offering a video course, it’s worth noting that Builderfly has no bandwidth or storage limits and you can upload files up to an enormous 15GB.
- Give your product a name and description
- Set the price and the quantities available for sale
- Build a preview of your product by uploading an image, an audio file or just a video preview
- Select from a wide range of shipping and pricing options
It can be tempting to speed through this process, but keep in mind that great product descriptions and clear images convert. Be thoughtful and concise with your copywriting and make sure your images look great.
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Create a Great Checkout Experience
Shopping cart abandonment is the plague of online sales. In 2017, the Baymard Institute took the average of 37 cart abandonment studies and found that the average online shopping cart abandonment rate is over 69%!
Avoid cart abandonment as you build an ecommerce website by:
- Offering free shipping if you can, or
- Being very clear about delivery costs upfront
- Making sure that you optimize your checkout for mobile devices. Builderfly works on desktops, smartphones, and tablets.
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Market Your Growing Business
Once you start building an ecommerce website, you need to promote your product to increase traffic and drive sales.
Many vendors choose to sell from marketplace sites such as Amazon or Etsy however find themselves struggling due to high fees and other limitations.
After building an ecommerce website you’ll need a solid marketing plan to bring the right customers to your site and to keep their affection for return business. Builderfly helps you with marketing by:
- Offering built-in SEO-optimization for every product. Use the latest guidance on SEO to help people find your ecommerce website, products, and services online
- Activate social sharing for your products
- Giving you the option to create coupons or discounts to drive sales from return customers
- Include a blog or an ebook on your site to share engaging, relevant content, build trust, and attract new customers
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Look after SEO and analytics
Track the performance of your ecommerce website with an analytics solution. In addition to the business reporting within Builderfly dashboard, Builderfly integrates with Google Analytics so that you can gain deeper insight into how your marketing efforts and ecommerce SEO are performing.
This will help you troubleshoot your site and product pages so you can enhance them for more sales, and effectiveness.
Building an online business using ecommerce platform Summary
That’s it. You’re done! You now have your own online store.
Building an ecommerce website isn’t for the faint of heart, but it is an opportunity to keep your business competitive, and to raise awareness and access for your incredible products. Follow these seven steps and you will soon build an ecommerce website that works – in no time at all.
Here’s a recap of what Builderfly offers as you build an ecommerce website:
- Simple online store builder so your website is ready within a few minutes
- Beautiful themes to set up your online store
- Connect a custom domain name
- Multiple payment options, including PayPal
- Secure shopping and checkout with SSL
- Easy customization
- New features for ecommerce success
- Unlimited bandwidth for audio and video
Try out Builderfly with a free 14-day trial and start building an ecommerce website today!
