Building an eCommerce website can be challenging. But imagine building one from scratch. Now… add some product data to the mix and you have yourself a project on your hands.
Website building is not for everyone, but if you can follow, these steps will make it easy for you to start an eCommerce from scratch.
There are so many things to consider when creating an eCommerce website for the first time. These considerations include: picking a niche, deciding on a business model, hardware and software considerations, choosing a domain name and web hosting service, making your designs come alive, developing your checkout process, and setting up your payment gateway.
Steps to Develop an eCommerce
1. Pick a niche
The first step that most successful entrepreneurs take is choosing a niche in which they want to operate their business. Niche marketing is extremely important because it allows you to focus everything on serving a very specific type of customer, rather than trying to be everything for everyone.
2. Decide on a business model
Once you have decided on your niche market and products, the next thing to do is decide on the business plan for your online store.
This includes whether you would like to go for a retail or wholesale business model, and so on. An ecommerce business model depends upon how big your business is and how many products you want to sell online
3. Hardware and Software Considerations
Hardware and software considerations depend upon the type of ecommerce website that you are going to create.
For example, if you are planning on creating an ecommerce portal where users can purchase tickets for events, then you will require the help of some third-party software like PayPal payment gateway, credit card processor etc.
4. Choose a Domain name and Web hosting service
Registering your own domain name is fairly inexpensive, and you can get a site up and running quickly.
If you don’t have your own domain name, you’ll need to choose a web host and create a subdomain. This can be done through your web host. The costs for this will vary depending on the web host that you choose.
5. Make Your Designs Come Alive
Choosing a template is difficult because there are so many options out there.
Don’t forget that you also need to take into consideration the cost of the template and whether or not it includes all of the features that you want in your ecommerce website, for example, shopping cart software like OSCommerce or Magento, which will run anywhere from $50-$800.
6. Develop a checkout process & Set up a payment gateway
Now you need to create a checkout process for your website in order to start making sales. The first step is to register an account with a payment gateway provider.
A payment gateway accepts the user’s credit card information and charges the designated account on file. Next, you’ll need a shopping cart– or an interface for users to add items to their carts, choose shipping options and make payments.
The most popular shopping cart services are Shopify, BigCommerce and Magento. They all offer easy-to-use payment gateways that will integrate seamlessly with their platforms. If you choose not to use one of these platforms, however, you’ll need to find a third-party solution to handle your online payments.
Author bio
Payment industry guru Taylor Cole is a passionate payments expert who understands the best merchant services for ecommerce. He also writes non-fiction, on subjects ranging from personal finance to stocks to cryptopay. He enjoys eating pie with ice cream on his backyard porch, as should all right-thinking people.
