The eCommerce website business is growing much faster than the traditional stores available in our city. Do you know that local retail shops, DIY (Do it Yourself) crafts makers and even bloggers are starting to sell their products and services online? What is the success of running a better eCommerce website is nothing but a strategy and excellent website? Just go through the below-given tips for how to build better ecommerce website guide which is a perfect resource for you.
Determine What to Sell and How to Source Products
Here we will discuss what you want to sell and how you will source the products in detail. This is the foremost step of how to build a better ecommerce website.
Explore Online Listings
Before diving into creating eCommerce website ask yourself what exactly you should sell? And more important people will buy it? One easy way to find people’s demand is possible on checking the popular listings on eBay, Flipkart, and Amazon. If you already have products in mind continue reading.
Your skills and Interests
If you are an artist, crafts maker, or a designer of clothes you can venture into eCommerce to sell your own creations. If you add creativity to your skills and interests definitely you can create your own brand and can run a successful eCommerce website.
Source Products
If you are not having any special skills don’t worry you can source products from other creators and manufacturers. You can arrange the item to ship directly from the manufacturer.
Finding Suppliers and Communicate
Once you have selected what to sell? Next is what are the products are they readymade or have to create them (for this you need materials)? The websites like Alibaba, globalsources, thomasnet, and many more are providing raw materials, you can search for the product and you can get the raw materials. You have to just affix them and sell them with ease.
After fixing about the supplier get in touch with them, talk about payments, minimum order requirements, liable insurance, and their policies. You have to have a clear conversation with the suppliers about the raw materials. Initially, you have to start with minimum order and pickup orders according to the product sales.
**If you are having manufacturers and products are readymades you can skip this step.
eCommerce Technology and Solutions
Have you decided with vendors and products? Next, you should deal with technology side things in how to build a better ecommerce website. This is the main important thing to consider in how to build a better ecommerce website.
Hosting and Domain Registration
Mostly you will have a store name in your mind if so you can proceed to register your domain.
Pick a name that communicates your offerings – Ideally, your domain name should tell people about what you are selling. Or else you can select an innovative name that can pronounce easily which is easily remembered. The name like ExcitingGirlsCollection.com tells about what exactly the site is? And a name like clubfactory is innovative and easily gets noted.
There are online domains naming tools like namestation, domaintyper to search and choose a perfect domain for your website.
Register Domain
Once you have chosen your domain name you have to register through domain registrar like Bluehost, HostGator, GoDaddy, and so on. You have to pay domain registration fees vary depending on the domain name. Check out with the multiple registrars which offer the best pricing and other promotional offers.
eCommerce Platform
There are two main categories when it comes to eCommerce like self-hosted and hosted.
Self-hosted – this eCommerce platform needs to implement and maintain store yourself. You should have a technical understanding on web hosting, ecommerce, and need to hire a developer to establish and run ecommerce shop. The main advantage of this platform is flexible and you will be able to implement advanced features and customizations. The self-hosted platforms are complicated to set up and run.
Open source eCommerce platforms include Magento, WooCommerce, and Opencart will help to set eCommerce platform to your website.
Hosted – This will take care of your hosting and server maintenance which are user-friendly and preferred option for non-technical people.
Some of the open source eCommerce platforms include Shopify, bigcommerce, volusion, etc.
** You can choose from self- hosted or hosted open source eCommerce platforms. Both have their own advantages and disadvantages but to start with self-hosted ecommerce platform is best for you.
Get SSL Certificate
After creating a website, be sure to get SSL certificate for your website. These certificates will provide the green lock before your URLs. This also helps to keep your customer’s information private and safe. An SSL certificate for your website encrypts all the sensitive information customers provide and this will help to restrict hackers to grab credit card information and will keep the customer’s information safe. You have to get an SSL certificate is also an important step in how to build better eCommerce website.
Keep User in Mind and Design Website
Each and every single detail like product images, menu, cart buttons, search bar, grid layout, filters, and contact info should design keeping the user in mind. The user experience is like a paramount to turn visitors into customers and to turn the customer into repeat customers. You have to take suggestions from your friends, relatives, and even hire someone to look into the site usability, navigational ease, visual appeal, and overall satisfaction. This will help to increase viewers and buyers that is the reason this step is important in how to build a better eCommerce website.
Sort out The Payments Side
The payments are the prominent section of eCommerce. You make sure that you select the right payment gateway that works great with your eCommerce website. There are many payment gateways available in the market and some of them are Stripe, Suthorize.net, Paypal, 2Checkout, WorldPay, etc. The payments side is the key step in how to build a better eCommerce website.
Fees- each payment gateway has their own ways, some providers have fixed costs per transaction and while others have variable percentages or fees. The perfect choice will definitely depend on your sales volume and prices.
Payment Types- All payment gateways accept credit card payments but if you are planning for non-traditional payments like cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. You need to ensure a gateway that will support bitcoin type of payment type.
eCommerce Integration- when your payment gateway integrates with your eCommerce platform will make your life easy.
Market eCommerce Business
Now you have done with all the required things to start your eCommerce website. Now, you have to focus into get traffic to your e-Commerce website. You have to market to gain customers that’s why it is the important tip of how to build a better eCommerce website.
SEO
To rank higher in Google search results, you need to invest in SEO to enable your site. There are parts to the research phase in SEO they are keyword search, competitor research, Build links, and optimizing a website.
Keyword search – you have many online keyword search tools to get keyword ideas along with information on search volume. Just type in the words that are relevant to your business, the next keyword planner will generate a list of keyword ideas. They also provide information on search volume and competition for each keyword.
Competitor’s research- Use some of the online tools like SEMRush to find your competitor’s best ranking keywords. If your competitor’s website has much higher domain authority than your website it will be difficult to rank for the same keywords. If this is the case it’s best to target other search items. The competitor’s research is nothing but analyzing competitor’s SEO strategies to increase your online traffic.
Optimize Website- Take your list of keywords and strategically incorporate into your page titles and descriptions, headers, web copy, and URLs. Things like speed, usability, and mobile-friendliness also influence rankings.
Build links- The relevant high-quality website links back to your online website store will have a positive impact on your rankings. You can start with the site linking to your competitor’s, research and see if they can include a link to your online shop.
You can also try to get backlinks to include obtain product reviews from relevant blogs and industry sites. You also try writing guest posts and get media coverage. Try to create creative content that other sites would love to link.
Content Marketing
The content marketing strategy will definitely benefit your website in many more ways. You have to create educational and relevant content allows you to engage your audience. You have to produce high-quality content that relates to the targeted keyword which contains right links will help to increase your website SEO rankings. Also, create an FAQ page that will tackle your customer’s common queries.
Social Media Marketing
Whatever the online store you have but most of your customers are on social media. The social media marketing will help you to reach your targeted audience will increase your website viewers and product buyers. The social media marketing strategies include marketing on sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest. You can create a page on Facebook, an account on Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter. After all showcase about your website innovative search in browser how to start it. If you use effectively social media marketing will surely help to gain good traffic to your website.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is also useful and will certainly help you to get right customers. If you have an email list then you will have full control over when and how messages to send. The best part of email marketing is about the powerful mode of promotion and communication. Start collection email addresses by setting an option on your website inviting to sign up with email id.
Measure Business Performance
Now, your store is all set with all required things and marketing strategies which will gain traffic and sales. You have to take a look into your eCommerce data to check performance. You can check your business performance in your platforms reports and by using Google analytics. You have to measure business performance which helps to increase your business that’s the reason it is the last step to count on how to build a better eCommerce website.
The following are the top metric you should focus on
Site Traffic
How many visitors your website is getting per day, week, and month? How your customers finding your website, For example, social media. On knowing how people are finding your website will help you which channels are worth investing. You should focus on the location on the customers will help to campaign locally about the website.
Conversion Rate
The low-conversion rate means that you are targeting the wrong audience. It also means that there is a disconnection between your marketing and your product offerings. The site is too slow or not user-friendly and that cause people to bounce. If the conversion rate is low you have to dig into the issue and try to pinpoint the reason and it will help to fix the issue.
Cost per Acquisition
The formula for CPA is total campaign cost divided by conversion. This will measure the effectiveness of your marketing and advertising efforts. And also tells you whether a campaign worth investing and helps you to allocate budget accordingly.
Average Order Value
The average order value will provide insights into customer behavior and spend. The low average order value indicates that your website is selling more of your inexpensive items. You should increase your marketing and sales for your high-value products. It also indicates that people are not buying multiple items and at times to increase your cross-selling efforts.
Finally
The critical steps of how to build better eCommerce website are explained in detail to built eCommerce Website. If you implement the above steps successfully you can run your online store effectively. This article helps to achieve to build eCommerce website and bring closer to achieve your goal. Get in touch in the comments section, if you need any help in starting or growing your eCommerce website.