Ecommerce has been around since the 1990’s. Today, people have shifted to shopping online much more than shopping in person. The internet provides a bigger selection of products to the consumer conveniently from their home.
When you open an ecommerce store and set up the right shipping plan for your products, you can reach more customers than ever before. Since ecommerce has been around since the 1990’s, it’s become easier to build an ecommerce store on your own.
What are the steps required to set up an ecommerce store?
With more and more people using cellphones and tablets to do their shopping, are you interested in taking your business online? With the following steps, you can build an ecommerce store in no time! They are as follows:
Your overall plan should include all of the different steps listed above. In addition, you’ll need to determine what kind of personnel you’ll need to run your ecommerce store. That leads us to your budget. You will have a few different expenses, including hiring a web designer, hiring personnel, and the average shipping costs for your products that will be shipping out later on once your store is up and running. Next, when it comes to finding a web designer, you will have to rely on your budget to determine who to hire and work with that person on branding and style of your website. Otherwise, you can use one of the website creator tools.
If you already know what products you’ll be selling, you can shop around for shipping options that match your budget and add your policies to the site. Then it’s a matter of uploading your products to your ecommerce store, which your web designer will explain to you, or will be intuitive enough to do yourself. Then, the final step to build your ecommerce store is to set up a payment method for your potential customers, such as PayPal and work with your web designer to integrate the payment methods you accept into your website.
How long does it take to build an ecommerce website?
The amount of time it takes to build an ecommerce website varies. If you choose to hire a web designer for a custom ecommerce website, the project could take many months depending on what you need. Otherwise, if you’re building the website on your own with a tool like Wix or WordPress, depending on the amount in your product inventory, you could have everything ready in less than an hour.
If you’re only selling one item and you use one of the pre-designed templates for your website’s style, you could have it published in under an hour. However, to build an ecommerce store with hundreds or even thousands of items, you will have to make sure the inventory has product pictures ready to upload and other product details on hand, such as a catchy product description.
What is the best ecommerce platform?
If you decide not to hire a web designer and go with using an ecommerce platform, you have a few options to choose from. The number one platform is Shopify. It offers more than 6,000 website apps to choose from to help you customize your ecommerce store.
The price to build an ecommerce store is $29/month, so it is a more affordable option than hiring a web designer. Another benefit is that it is very intuitive to use, so even if you don’t like using computers, Shopify will be easy to use.
Why should you sell online?
There are many reasons you should sell online. The shift in popularity from shopping in person to shopping online is due to the advantages and conveniences it provides. Selling online is advantageous because you can reach a bigger percentage of customers than you would from a single store.
In addition, when you sell online, customers can conveniently access your shop without facing crowds or the need to travel far because your store goes to them, so to speak. People can shop from their laps with their laptops, tablets or cellphones or at their desk on their personal computers.
What are the requirements for ecommerce website development?
Here is a list of requirements for ecommerce website development:
A good web host, such as Shopify, will provide you with the strong foundation you need to build and run your ecommerce store. You will register your brand name as your domain name using the web host. Then you can pick a store plan according to the size of your business. Shopify will provide you with enough bandwidth and storage for running it. Just make sure you select the Shopify ecommerce plan that is right for your business. Prices will vary depending on what your business needs.
Shopify also provides templates for you to build your ecommerce store. It’s important to pick a mobile friendly website design. If you are hiring a web designer, you will need to let him know to create a mobile friendly design for you. In addition to having a mobile friendly front page and product pages to your ecommerce store, Shopify will provide the intuitive customer management platform and inventory management platform, where you can return emails from customers or add products to your online inventory. Shopify also provides analytics tools to help you measure your earnings.
Next on the checklist is having an easy to use, quick checkout process ready to use for your online customers, a product review option and low shipping fees. Product reviews will help your store build a reputation. Additionally, low shipping fees will make customers more comfortable with checking out their items. So, with all of the above, you can rest assured that you’ve successfully built an ecommerce store.
