Creating an eCommerce Website: The Basic Steps

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In today’s world, an eCommerce website is one of the most popular, transparent, and profitable businesses to start. If you’re wondering about launching your own store, check this article to find out all the critical basics you should know before you begin.

Where Do You Begin?

Many entrepreneurs frequently get confused about the process of launching an online store. If you want to launch your eCommerce website from zero, questions like, “what does an eCommerce website actually do?”, “how much does it cost to build a platform like Amazon”, or “what steps do I need to take to collect payment?” are totally okay.

So, that’s where we come in. This post will focus on the basic steps of eCommerce website development for beginners and anyone interested in this sphere of Internet marketing.

1. Choose an eCommerce Platform

If you truly want to establish a brand and have full control over it, you should choose a platform to host your eCommerce website and provide you with all the necessary tools to launch an online store successfully. There are many free platforms to choose from. For example, Magento, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, PrestaShop, Shopify, or OpenCart just to name a few.

2. Domain Name

The domain name or URL will represent your or your company name. GoDaddy and Namecheap are two of the most popular domain name registrars. Here are some tips for you to consider.

It needs to be short. Neither Google nor your customers will like to type it if it’s too long.
Should be easy to spell.
It needs to be easy to remember to type manually.
Include keywords so that you can further rank on Google.

3. Choose a Theme

One way is to hire a professional designer to create a unique eCommerce website interface. However, if you are just getting started, spending hundreds of dollars on design services is unnecessary (it’s better to spend them on products). Instead, use free themes available on the chosen eCommerce platform to determine what you want your store to look like. It allows you to start quickly and easily.

If you want to go beyond the free stuff, you can buy themes at your platform or purchase Envato themes and templates.

4. Edit Your Theme

Most themes are plug and play. What’s left for you is to upload items’ photos, add descriptions, choose fonts, and you’re good to go. However, suppose you want color controls or other unique custom changes. In that case, you can always outsource this task to experienced experts like Smartteksas to save your valuable time and get smart solutions for your eCommerce business. An aesthetically pleasing website has not harmed any business yet.

5. Connect Secure Payments

In this step, you need to:

Set the price points for your products.
Set how much inventory is available for your products.
Connect the payment system to it.

Luckily for you, we live in the 21st century, and you don’t have to process any of the transactions yourself manually. When customers buy on your eCommerce website, they are not buying directly from you but from a third party. These are payment plugins like PayPal, Stripe, or Shopify. Thereby, you don’t have to oversee the payment process and invoice customers for their orders.

As a result, both the buyer and you are protected: you know that you’re getting funds, and the buyer knows that he’s not getting scammed.

6. Shipping

Furthermore, if you want your website to calculate the shipping cost automatically, it requires extra costs to automate this process. If you’re just starting, we recommend heading over to USPS. They have flat rate boxes, so go to their website if you’re selling anything that’s small size. Here, you find out what dimension will fit your product nicely. Besides, they go across the country and the world for a set price.

7. Make It Legal

Some people think it is hard to start an online business and make it legal in the government’s eyes. It is, of course, wrong, and you just need a few free simple things to do:

File an EIN.
File a States Seller’s Permit.
Create a business entity, either DBA or LLC.

8. Get Customers

We offer you 10 ways to bring customers to your eCommerce website:

SEO.
Content marketing.
Public relations.
Social media.
AdWords.
Product listing ad.
Paid social media ads.
Use influencer marketing.
Display ads using Google’s ad network.
Retargeting ads.

9. Get Paid

Now, just sell and start getting paid. What’s left to do is to set up your business bank account. You connect it to your website so that payment can go and be deposited into your bank account. Then, you can use that money to buy more inventory for your marketing dollars and continue growing your business. For example Shopify integrates with Quickbooks to help you monitor your inventory, sales, expenses, and profit all in one place.

Final Thoughts

More importantly, when you’re ready to have this website launched and already selling products, you need to focus on sales, getting traffic, and a better customer experience.

So, we hope these steps helped paint a clear picture of what it takes to launch your eCommerce website. Sometimes it can be overwhelming, and there’s a lot of information, but we hope you take a look at it, step back, have a breath, and realize that you can do it. And remember, you already have everything to start. Let yourself take the rest along the way.