Have you ever dreamt of owning an eCommerce website? Yes, you can make it possible even if you are not techy. Start building an online store today to bring in some additional income.
According to statistics, online businesses are growing significantly faster as compared to traditional businesses. By 2021, eCommerce sales are expected to cover 17.5% of retail sales worldwide. Because of its high success, even established business houses have started converting their offline store to online.
However, the first step in your journey of eCommerce is to create an eCommerce website. If you are not familiar with the exact process while setting up an online store and confused about where to begin from, you’ve come to the right place.
Here is a step-by-step guide to building an eCommerce website or creating an online store from scratch (8 Easy Steps):
How to Build an eCommerce Website in 8 Easy Steps
- Select An eCommerce Website Builder
- Choose the Best Plan
- Choose a Business Name and Domain Name
- Designing your eCommerce Store
- Add your Products
- Set up Payment Gateways
- Configure Shipping Options
- Preview, Test and Publish your eCommerce Store
Step 1: Select An eCommerce Website Builder
When building an eCommerce Website, the first step is choosing the right eCommerce Website Builder. An eCommerce website builder is an online software that lets you build an online store in an incredibly easy and quick way without needing advanced tech skills and coding knowledge. Selecting the right website builder has a huge impact on the success of your online business.
There are lots of online store builders on the Internet. The choice regarding which website builder works best for you depends on the purpose and size of your business. Select the builder that can fulfil your needs effectively within your budget.
If you’re planning to build a full-fledged eCommerce store, then we recommend ZapSeller. It’s super easy to set up, incredibly easy to use, and the sales tools are excellent. The designs come with great customization fine-tuned according to your needs. Get a fully functional website for your online business instantly with ZapSeller. Check it out today!
Before launching your website, you can also test your eCommerce website builder by using the trial version for free.
Step 2: Choose the Best Plan
Once you’ve chosen an eCommerce website builder that perfectly fits your business, you need to sign up with the right paid plan. Every plan comes with different features, benefits and limitations. You can take the help of an advisor to determine which plan suits you best.
You can also consider the below factors while choosing the best plan:
- The choice of an appropriate plan depends on the size of your business and your growth prospects.
- Choose which features do you exactly need and select the plan accordingly.
- Understand the needs of your potential customers and select the plan which provides them with the best shopping experience ever.
- If you’re planning to sell limited products with limited revenue, a basic plan with lower rates may be suitable.
- However, you can always upgrade to an advanced high growth plan once you start selling more products.
- Plan your budget
Step 3: Choose a Business Name and Domain Name
After choosing the right plan, the next step is to choose a business name. A business name should be related to the product you want to sell on your online store. The name should be simple, easy to remember, and not too general. You should also make sure that the name you want to use is available as a domain name. You can check if your desired domain is available (and within budget) by using a domain name check.
Purchase the domain name for your eCommerce website. A domain name is an address or URL where internet users can access your website. Selecting the right domain name is very crucial since it builds trust with customers and adds credibility to your business. A domain identifies your store’s name and an easy way for online buyers to recognize you. You can also opt to get a shared domain which will be under your budget. With this, you can also get the benefits of sharing a domain with an established name. One should also not forget to renew the domain name annually before the expiry date.
Step 4: Designing your eCommerce Store
The next step is designing your eCommerce store for the convenience of your buyers. Your eCommerce website needs to be designed professionally to make it look attractive. Your design should not only showcase your products and services in an interactive way. It should also drive people to shop online from your website.
Here are some tips for designing an eCommerce website:
- You can choose from a wide variety of themes and templates to make your site look good without using any code.
- Your homepage is the most important thing. It is the first thing your customers see. Hence, it should be carefully designed to know exactly what type of business you are doing.
- It should have easy navigation so that your customers can find easily what they are looking for.
- Have a distinctive header and sidebar. Include less important pages in drop-down menu items.
- The content should be easy to read. The information should be displayed clearly and concisely.
- Use proper text size, font style, indentation, and colour scheme.
- Embed Social Media to promote your brand.
Step 5: Add your Products
After you’ve finished designing your online store, you need to start adding your products. Your website should showcase your saleable products and services in a better way so that buyers are never misled.
The three important things while adding products are:
1. Product Categories – If you have a better product categorization on your eCommerce website, it will be easier for your customers to find any specific product that they need. However, too many categories can also confuse your buyer with too many choices. An accurate category/ subcategory is crucial for the success of your business.
2. Product Description – Write an SEO-friendly product description. It should be easily readable and addresses all the questions your customers can have about the product. Your product description should also be convincing and optimized for keywords to boost search engine ranking.
3. Product Images – A good picture speaks a thousand words. People tend to have more attention towards images than text. Set a good quality of picture with an appropriate picture dimension and size. You can also use Product explainer videos on your website that can explain your product in a better way to the shoppers and help them make a buying decision. The images and videos have proved to convert visitors into buyers.
Apart from these three things, you should also include pricing, weight, size, ratings and reviews on your product page for helping prospective buyers to buy a product.
Step 6: Set up Payment Gateways
Payment gateways are an integral part of any successful eCommerce transaction. This is a crucial part where you can convert a visitor into a buyer. You need to set multiple payment options available for the customers like Credit Card, Debit Card, Online Wallets, Net Banking, or COD. If you don’t provide easy and simplified payment gateway options to your customers, he will stop placing the order in the middle.
While selecting the payment gateway, you should also check for PCI compliance and SSL certificate to avoid any security breach. Setting up a secure payment page for customer purchases is very important. If the users feel that the website isn’t secure, they aren’t likely to complete a purchase.
An eCommerce website builder like ZapSeller helps by connecting you directly to multiple payment options including PayPal, Stripe, Paytm, RazorPay and many more for a faster checkout process. With multiple payment integrations, ZapSeller is easy, secure and reliable.
Step 7: Configure Shipping Options
Today, online shoppers first look at the shipping options and delivery charges before taking any decision to make a purchase. Most online shoppers don’t prefer to wait for over 5 days for delivery. They tend to leave their shopping carts just because they were unhappy with the delivery dates or if they didn’t find a free shipping option.
Offer your customers faster and cheaper shipping options. Specify the Expected Date of Arrival of a product with live order tracking feature. A pleasant delivery experience will drive your customer to shop again with you.
Step 8: Preview, Test and Publish your eCommerce Store
The last important step is testing your eCommerce website. Ecommerce website builders make it very easy to test and preview your website before finally hitting the publish button. While previewing and testing, you can check whether all your store’s functions are working properly and your website is satisfying your customers’ needs or not. You can also check how your online store looks on different devices and browsers. Check for any potholes in your website, and once you’re completely assured and ready, hit ‘Publish’!
Go Live! Your website is ON.
Conquer the world of eCommerce with your million-dollar business idea, an attractive website and excellent strategy.
FAQs on How to Build an Ecommerce Website
Question 1 - What is an eCommerce website?
Answer – E-Commerce, also known as online shopping, is the sale and purchase of goods and services over the Internet. It’s basically a commercial transaction that is facilitated through the internet. An e-commerce website is a website that allows you to buy and sell goods and services online. An eCommerce site has a functioning like a physical store. People can choose products or services, arrange for delivery and make payments on the site itself.
Question 2 - How to build an online store from scratch?
Answer – While building an online store from scratch, you have to first do a lot of research about your target market. This research will help you to decide which eCommerce Website Builder is best for you. After finding your perfect website builder, choose the best plan for your business and get a domain name for your store. After choosing a design and layout, you can add your products, payment methods and shipping settings.
Question 3 - How to make an online shopping website in HTML?
Answer – If you’re a programming expert and have the coding skills, you can fine-tune your site design with great ease and flexibility. Learning to code a site yourself and knowing HTML will give you higher customization options and a greater reward. You can use straight-up HTML to build a site from the scratch. Your first step is to sign up with a hosting provider. Then you can start writing HTML tags in a high-quality text editor and fill it in with the basic structure of your HTML site. You can also make your site visually appealing with formatting, colours, and graphics using HTML. Improve your site with time as you develop more and more HTML skills.
Question 4 - How much does an online store cost?
Answer – An online store has significantly lower start-up costs compared to a physical shop. Online businesses are cost-effective as there are less human resource involved and fewer infrastructure costs compared to a traditional shop. If you are technically capable and can do some work by yourself, the budget can be less than $40 for a month. However, if you need to hire a professional designer or web developer, your budget can reach about $1,000 for a month. However, the answer to the real costs associated with an online business is always unclear as everybody has different opinions. It’s often advisable to take financial advice from an accountant while planning a budget.
Question 5 - Do online stores need a business license?
Answer – Yes, online stores need a business license. All companies require a business license, whether they sell online or traditionally. A business license helps the government to keep track of enterprises and their tax revenue. If you operate a business without a proper license, you can be charged with heavy fines. You need to complete the required paperwork and renew your business license annually.
