An e-commerce website enables you to sell your products and services across different digital platforms and channels. E-commerce marketing is quite different from traditional marketing as it brings in more exposure to promote your business through a website.
While traditional marketing did not have the potential and prospects of using the digital space, entrepreneurs can now do it with much ease.
Although you need to put up many resources to build your business, most of the work is done within a digital space without much chaos. Building a website is one of them. Read this blog to know more about what is an e-commerce website and how you can build it to enhance the customer experience.
HOW DOES E-COMMERCE WORK
Before moving on to the know-how of the e-commerce website, we must first understand how e-commerce works?
E-commerce typically refers to the type of commerce where an e-commerce firm has a brick-and-mortar store, and the transactions take place online. As stated above, setting up an e-commerce website is how a firm begins with. You can set up an e-commerce website with plugins such as Woocommerce.
Below are the processes that take place in e-commerce marketing:
- Once you set up a website using plugins, you can display your products with the price tags and their description.
- You can place a CTA BUTTON near the products’ image and description to make it easier for the customers to click on the “BUY NOW” option to purchase the products.
- Provide the options to the customers to make payment through different modes, whichever is suitable for them. They can choose to pay through Paypal, debit or credit cards, or cash on delivery.
- E-commerce websites also provide the options for the return or refund for the purchased items if they are not satisfied with the quality of the product.
Note: You can also promote your website through different marketing channels and platforms. Social media marketing and email marketing are some of the influential marketing mediums through which you can expand your business to great heights.
WHAT ARE THE TYPES OF E-COMMERCE WEBSITES
An e-commerce website is an online portal that enables the physical transactions of goods and services via the internet. If we talk about the earlier days, e-commerce marketers used emails and phone calls to promote and process the products.
But nowadays, the scenario has changed as you can now build an e-commerce website online to manifest the whole purchasing process in reality.
Below are the different types of e-commerce websites:
- Business to business: B2B websites deals and enable the transaction of goods and services amongst the companies. For example – Selling SAAS products to other businesses.
- Business to consumers: B2C websites enable consumers to purchase goods from e-commerce companies primarily via a third party.
- Consumer to consumer: The transactions usually occur amongst the consumers where they sell their products to the other consumers. These could be the second-hand products used by the consumers.
- Consumers to business: C2B websites mainly deal with the transactions of goods and services, where individuals offer their products to other companies.
WHY YOU SHOULD BUILD AN E-COMMERCE WEBSITE
Due to the pandemic crisis, more and more e-commerce online stores are coming up with new strategies to engage customers online. If you are still thinking about why should you build an e-commerce website, here are some reasons you must consider :
1. An e-commerce website is inexpensive
Running a store might include many expenses and costs such as a rented space, paycheck for the staff, building maintenance, cleaning supplies, and other costs, whereas selling products online cuts most of the costs.
However, you have to pay for many things, such as web hosting and other promotional activities. Also, you may have to hire additional staff (that entirely depends upon the size of the store). But still, everything is cost-effective.
2. Online shopping is convenient
The real advantage of an e-commerce store and a website is that customers can easily order the products online and get them delivered within a short span.
Nowadays, Amazon Fresh has come up with faster delivery options to provide ease to the customers to get the products at a faster pace at their doorsteps.
3. Boosts the online presence
An e-commerce website helps you to boost your online presence. As you register your website and google indexes it, there are chances of receiving higher rankings, and more people can search for it.
You can invest in SEO practices if you want to attain a higher ranking for your website.
4. Enhanced use of Mobile phones
If we look at the recent mobile purchasing trends, they have increased by manifolds since 2015 from 12 to 45 percent.
Mobile shopping is undoubtedly gaining momentum as people are now making more and more purchases from the comfort of their homes. The time durability and convenience have enhanced the sales opportunities.
HOW TO BUILD AN E-COMMERCE WEBSITE
First of all, we will talk about the resources you need to allocate for building an e-commerce website. An e-commerce website is a bit different from a normal website. You need to put in various tools apart from having a secure domain name and hosting.
Below is a quick checklist for building an e-commerce website:
- You need to have a domain name.
- Software for processing payments.
- A platform to build your website.
- Capital or money to create the products.
- Packaging services for the shipping of the products.
Note: You have to predetermine your goals and allocate your budget accordingly.
Now that we have jotted down the checklist let’s get started with some of the effective and easy ways to build an e-commerce website.
Before you create an e-commerce website, do thorough market research and discover your target market.
1. Market research and trending products
Before putting out your product in the market, you must do some market research in terms of where you can sell your product and who your target audience is. If you are still not sure about the products you are going to sell, search for the trending products.
There are various tools you can use to discover the trending products: Google trends, trend hunters, and Instagram influencers are some of them. You can look up the prospects of a product through keywords.
Also, you can check out the popularity and trending products across the globe. You can search for the top-most trending industries as well.
Note: Alternatively, you can evaluate your passions and see how they can profit in the longer run. Once you decide, you can cross-check your ideas in the marketplace. You can visit the Amazon product marketplace and dig deeper into the products through keyword research tools.
2. Make strategies for shipping
Before you finalize the product to sell in the marketplace, make sure the product is lighter in size so that it is easy to ship and deliver the products.
If you are not choosing a dropshipping model, you would be required to do most of the things on your own regarding the packaging and shipping processes. Last but not least, create a prototype for the product.
You can test the samples for the product in the market, and consequently, you can improve the market size with time as you get the feedback. Theory, you can enhance your market and create incredible products over some time.
3. Choose an e-commerce platform
There are various e-commerce platforms available for you to create a website.
- WordPress
WordPress is the most popular CMS site to manage content. Also, it is easy to use as there are a lot of plugins available on WordPress.
There are no compatibility issues, and there are various themes and add-ons as well. You need to install the plugin to set up an e-commerce website.
- Magento
It is also a popular CMS, but you must require some skills and experience to use it. There are various options available for building and customizing the functionality in your e-commerce store.
You must have a skilled developer by your side if you are using it.
4. Determine the elements you want on your website
Determine the pages you want to have on your website on which you can display products. Figure out the categories of the pages and consider the potential ways your customers would engage with your website.
Make categories and subcategories for the products to quickly find out what they are looking for. The search bar is inevitable so that they can search for the products they are looking for. They can easily click on the products and order them.
Another important functionalities and element one can add up is a review that can enhance the sales value and improve the overall customer experience.
Note: Apart from these elements, shopping carts and add-to-wish lists are essential elements that can make it easier for the customers to save the products and buy them later on.
5. Build your e-commerce site
You can build your website using different website builder tools where you first have to plan the products you need to include in the site.
Then comes the payment options, where you have to set up the payment and shipping options. You can also import the products you have stored in a file or have the tools to add each product manually.
6. Launch your store to sell your products
Once you have followed the above steps, you are now ready to launch your e-commerce store. Ensure that you create a well-furnished website consisting of all the details to leave a long-lasting impression on the customers.
Double-check for errors or any broken links. Make sure your checkout processes are working smoothly. Last but not least, create e-commerce marketing strategies to promote your products and expand sales.
Conclusion
If you are thinking of starting up your e-commerce business, you can create a website with the help of the above steps. Moreover, you can experiment if you are still unsure what results you will get, but a great effort is an initiative towards a bigger goal!
Shivani is a content writer at NotifyVisitors. She writes SEO articles, blogs, and guest posts for businesses to improve website ranking on SERP. She follows a balanced approach to the quality of content and its marketing. She loves to do creative, although she had an English major in her graduation.