On average, millennials make 54% of their purchases online and that number is only going to grow even more. This digitalization of sales makes building an e Commerce website a lucrative and potentially life-changing decision.
If you choose the right niche and advertise aggressively, your ideas might take off and bring you unfathomable success. As enticing as this idea seems, there is a lot to be done before you can celebrate.
First and foremost, building your own ecommerce website takes time and a significant amount of growing pains. Follow these 10 steps to turns your eCommerce ideas into reality and achieve astounding sales numbers. Be meticulous and unrelenting while focusing on each step.
1. Find your target market
One mistake that causes many eCommerce to falter is excessive versatility. Entrepreneurs constantly think that sell something on amazon – a wide range of things at that – will result in more sales.
In reality, a target market is more important than your roster of products. Effectively target only one or two customer groups if you wish to have a core with whom you can start the website.
2. Get all the paperwork for your business
Before you start converting your ideas into reality, it’s important to focus on the technicalities. Register your business, obtain all the necessary permits and get cleared for business.
If you don’t get all the necessary paperwork, the legal repercussions can potentially cripple your entire business. Hire a lawyer who has experience with eCommerce sites.
3. Get a domain name for your website
How exactly do you choose a domain name? First, pick a unique name for your site, one that will make it stand out amongst the myriad of other eCommerce sites. If someone has already used that domain name, add keywords such as “shop,” “store,” “worldwide” before or after. Make it unique and reflective of your ideas.
4. Find a web developer
Perhaps the most important part of every eCommerce site is the interface. No matter how stellar your products and prices are, all of this is in vain if the design is subpar.
Set aside a significant budget so that you can be sure that the web developer will bring your ideas to life. Focus on a responsive and easy-to-use design.
5. Select an eCommerce hosting platform
One thing that determines the functionality of your site is the hosting platform. Whether it’s Shopify, Weebly or WordPress, you will gain a special set of features depending on your choice.
After discussing the design plans with your web developer, choosing a platform will merely be a formality.
6. Create professional content
Nowadays, it’s not enough just to sell products. Instead, you need to focus on inbound marketing. You can write tutorials on how can people use your products, as well as informative blog pieces.
You can hire a dedicated team of writers or use custom writing help services online.
7. Make your contact info widely available
Gain more trust by your customers by making sure that your contact information available on the website, newsletter, or virtually everywhere. Phone numbers and email addresses are important, but phone numbers matter more among the two types for this particular reason. That said, consider using localized toll-free numbers (i.e. the 800 number in the US, 1300 number in the Australia, or 0800 number in the UK,) and make sure to have that number displayed on prominent places on your site.
8. Launch your eCommerce website
The only way to see how your eCommerce website functions is to launch it. Hype up the release with professional content and hire influencers to announce the launch date on their social media profiles.
Make it a big day and include special discounts for the first 50 or 100 customers to talk people into buying.
9. Get social
Social media marketing is unavoidable. Create a unified approach on all platforms and cross-post for maximum efficiency.
Different social media sites give you opportunities to receive user-generated content (UGC) via different campaigns and occasions. Be creative and your influence and popularity will grow.
10. Personalized outreach
It’s not enough to target every follower together. To advertise more effectively and improve on your conversion rate, you need to adopt a personalized outreach.
Be candid, but not overly informal. Organize sporadic email campaigns for launching new products, including cart recovery emails.
11. Optimize and scale
The period until this point is known as the “test period” for any eCommerce site. Gather data about everything and accommodate your next moves according to those analytics.
Optimize your social media campaigns and change your prices if needed. From this moment onwards, it’s all about analytics and adapting.
To sum up
Knowing how to build an eCommerce website is not something that happens overnight. Instead, you need to follow a series of steps that will determine your success down the road. All the successful eCommerce businesses have become so big because they paid attention to details such as paperwork and hiring the best web developer.
Pay special attention to analytics and changing trends, as they can make or break your website in a matter of weeks. Stay inspired and work on developing new content and ideas. Remember to order custom content to supply your readers and followers with fresh information that will help them make the right choice.
