Learn How To Build An Ecommerce Website From Scratch – 6 Step Simple Guide For Ecommerce Development

How to build an Ecommerce website from scratch? Here’s the answer to that.

1. Purchase a domain name and choose a website builder.
2. Pick a theme that matches your business nature.
3. Optimize the settings.
4. Upload the products.
5. Setup the pages.
6. Launch your Ecommerce website.

These were the 6 steps that you need to follow in order to build your Ecommerce website from scratch. Note that this process may help you set up your website in a day, although it may vary depending upon the number of products you have to offer.

While most of the Ecommerce platforms such as the Big Cartel and Shopify cater to the needs of newbies in Ecommerce, we’ll take you through the thorough rundown on how to build your Ecommerce site from scratch.

Related: Big Cartel Vs Shopify: Why Is Shopify A Better Choice For Ecommerce?

Let’s begin.

Step#1 Purchase a domain name and choose a website builder.

The domain name of your ecommerce website is what your users will remember you with. While it often goes neglected, this is the part that is highly responsible for Customer retention.

Therefore, it is important to remember that you need to choose a domain name that is highly relevant to your business, concise, generalized, and most importantly, easier to remember.

A great practice is to use Shopify’s business name generator tool to come up with a good name for your store.

Here are some best practices that you need to follow while choosing a domain name for your Ecommerce website.

1. Try to keep it short and concise: shorter names are easier to remember. The ideal length for a domain name is around 20 characters. Try to keep it within this count.
2. Try to use simple spellings: Although it may sound quite interesting to use creative grammar for your domain in order to stand out, it’s a disaster because people are most likely going to forget it after visiting your site once.
3. Avoid using too generic terms: You may initially think that using a significantly generic name for your Ecommerce website would be great in terms of ranking, but here’s the catch. First, Google does not consider the weightage of domain names for their ranking criteria anymore and secondly, names that are just too generic cannot help you easily build trust.
4. Do not limit yourself: You don’t have to be too specific about your niche when choosing the domain name for your Ecommerce store. Doing so would only mean that you’re limiting yourself to the same niche that you started working with and can’t expand in the future. A better idea is to set a generalized name so that you can easily expand in the future.

Once you’ve chosen the desired domain name, the next step is to purchase it.

You can either purchase it from registrars such as GoDaddy, Bluehost, and Namecheap, etc. or you can even purchase it from your website builder. Here’s how.

Suppose you’re purchasing a domain name directly from Shopify, you’ll have to

1. Create an account
2. In the admin panel, navigate to the online store and click on the Domains option.
3. Click on the Buy new domain option.

Talking of Shopify, it is worth noting that Shopify is the most superior choice when it comes to building Ecommerce websites. If you want to know why check out this link below.

Why Is Shopify A Superior Choice For Ecommerce Development?

Related: Shopify Website Prices: How Much Does It Cost To Build A Shopify Website?

Step#2 Pick A Theme That Matches Your Business Nature

Once you’re done finalizing and purchasing your domain name, the next step is to set up a theme for your Ecommerce website. Now, this is a crucial part as there are a number of aspects that you need to consider when choosing the right theme.

One of the most important aspects that you need to consider is that the theme you’re using should match your business nature and niche.

Suppose you’re a brand selling gaming products, then the theme and color palette of your website should be dark.

In simpler words, the theme that you choose would determine the look and feel of your website and it is a significant part of your brand identity.

Now Shopify comes along with access to 73 professional-looking themes that you can choose from. Out of 73, 9 of the themes are completely free to use – which means you still have options if you’re low on budget.

Just for a good reference, Boundless, Pop, and Supply are some of the best free Shopify themes that you can leverage for your ecommerce site.

In contrast, if you opt for the paid ones, then Mr. Parker, Symmetry, and Reach are some great options.

How To Setup A Shopify Theme?

It’s reasons like these that Shopify is a highly favorable option for Ecommerce – Ease of use. Here’s why.

Once you’ve chosen the right theme for your eCommerce website, all you have to do is to go on the theme page and click on the Add theme button, and you’re good to go.

After you’ve added the theme, you’ll be redirected to the admin panel, where you can tweak and customize the theme by clicking on the Customize theme option.

As for the paid themes, the process would remain the same other than the payment criteria where you’ll have to enter the credit card details to purchase the theme.

Step#3 Optimize The Settings

Once you’ve set up your Shopify theme, the next and most important step is to optimize your store’s settings.

On the left-hand side of the panel, find and click on the Settings option. Here’s how the screen appears.

Here’s what you need to do in each of the settings options.

General

First up is the general tab. Here, you can tweak the main settings such as your store’s name, address and email, etc.

Also, you have to set up information such as the time zone, unit system, default weight unit, and currency, etc. Shopify uses these details to set up your prices, shipping criteria and order timings, etc,

Taxes

Next up is the taxes tab. In this tab, you need to decide when you’re going to add up taxes, either in your prices or once your customer checks out.

Since we’ve been creating Ecommerce websites for quite a while, we believe that adding taxes up to your prices is a better option than revealing the tax amount once your customer checks out.

This is because when you add taxes upfront, your customers are mentally prepared to pay the amount.

Payment Providers

Next up is the payment providers option. Here’s how the screen looks like.

Now the Shopify stores are programmed to accept credit cards or PayPal payments by default. But if you want to add additional or alternative payment options such as the BitPay, PayDollar, GoCoin or ePay, etc. You can do it by scrolling down and clicking on the alternative payment providers list.

Notifications

Next is the Notifications tab. Now, this is important as you can edit the automated emails that Shopify sends to your customers for the following events.

• Order confirmation
• Order cancellation
• Shipping confirmation

Another great suggestion is to add some humor to the abandoned cart emails as they have the potential to increase your revenue 3 times.

Shipping

Last but not least – The shipping tab. This is the area where you specify where you ship your products from and the areas where you ship your products to.

Also, this is the tab where you determine the shipping prices for each region.

Here’s a tip, if you’ve got enough profit margin, you should give free shipping to the consumers as it helps you with more sales and ultimately, customer retention.

Step#4 Upload the products

Finally, it’s time to Upload your product catalog.

For doing that, Find the products option on the left side of your admin panel and navigate to the add product option.

Here’s how it looks like.

Although many people copy the product description from the original product website, we’d recommend you not do it.

There are two reasons for that. First, these descriptions have grammatical mistakes and secondly, Google hates duplicate movies.

Making the descriptions with timely content would help you appear better in the searches and avoid you from being penalized by Google.

Related: Shopify API Order: How To Get All Orders From Shopify

Step#5 Setup the pages

The final step before you launch your Ecommerce website is to set up the main pages. The main pages that ou must add to your Ecommerce website include the About us, Contact us, Shipping and returns, and terms and conditions.

It would be an added advantage if you add the pages like Blogs and FAQs too.

To add these pages, find the Pages option in the admin panel and click on add page.

Step# 7 Launch Your Ecommerce Website

Now it’s time to launch your Ecommerce website. To do this

• Click on the Online Store and select the Preferences
• Now remove your password and your store will go live.

The Job Doesn’t End Here

Once your Shopify Ecommerce store goes live, you can start earning. Although, the job doesn’t end here.

A website is never a matter of development, design, and deployment over the web. Ongoing Shopify maintenance is an ongoing process that you need to focus on in order to keep your store in perfect condition.

Fortunately for you, WP-Pals is offering top-tier Shopify services that you can avail of to keep yourself from all the hassle and focus on other important areas. Contact us now to get the best prices.