How To Make Your Own Online Shopping Website

Over the past few years, there has been a significant shift in customers’ shopping behavior. Customers now feel more comfortable buying things online rather than physically visiting a store. For this very reason, it is now vital for small and big businesses to create their own online shopping website to pick up the pace. 

According to Statista, eCommerce revenue in the US was roughly around 768 billion US dollars in 2021. The online shopping market is expected to become a 1.3 trillion dollar industry by the end of 2025.

Looking at the above revenue stats and changing customer behavior, it’s not hard to understand why building your eCommerce platform is important. If you want to make your own shopping website for your existing business or simply create a new one, this post is for you.

Here in this post, we are going to discuss how you can create your own online shopping website in just five steps. So keep on scrolling to know how you can turn your eCommerce store into a reality.

First things you will need while creating an online shopping website is a – 

Domain Name

Just like a brick and mortar business needs a name, similarly, an online website needs a domain name. Your target customers will land on your eCommerce website by searching your domain name. Remember, the domain name reflects you and your company. Make sure it is easy to read, spell, short, and perfectly aligns with your business.

Take your time and come up with a unique and catchy domain name. Your name will stay with your business forever and act as an important connection between your customers and brand.

Done finalizing a domain name for your online shopping website. It’s time to move further to the product list.

Choose Your Niche Product

The first thing that you need to set up your own eCommerce website is to decide what products you want to sell. Choose a niche product to lower down the competition and better target your ideal customer base. To move further with your online shopping website, just answer the following questions –

• What niche products do you want to sell?
• Who are your target customers?
• Why will your target customers buy from you?

Answering these questions will help in moving further to the next stages of online shopping websites. Adding niche products or products will help in better targeting customers and provide them with a variety of products in the same niche. Most budding entrepreneurs make the mistake of trying to cater to a large customer base to earn huge profits. But what it does for them is increase the overall competition and ineffective customer targeting. So, avoid falling into this trap and choose niche products for your online shopping website.

Choose an E-Commerce Platform

After finalizing your domain name and niche product list, it’s time to turn your online store dream into reality. There are plenty of eCommerce building platforms that can help you build an eCommerce platform for your business, and no coding knowledge is necessary. To ease out your struggle, we have shortlisted the top three eCommerce building platforms for you –

Etsy

Have a niche unique and vintage products that you are planning to sell on your eCommerce store? Then Etsy eCommerce building platform is the perfect option for you. The storefront feature of the platform allows you to customize the buying process while keeping customers in the center. The eCommerce building platform is capable of catering to a variety of customers, from small entrepreneurs to big enterprises, which is why there is a huge demand for Etsy clone in the market. The platform welcomes every entrepreneur from big to small to create and start their online store.

WooCommerce

The next popular eCommerce building platform is WooCommerce. It is a powerful WordPress tool that converts existing websites or creates a new online shopping website. WooCommerce offers some must-have and unique features that enable developers to create a user-friendly eCommerce platform. If you are planning to create a basic online shopping store on your own, then this eCommerce building platform is perfect for you. However, if you are looking to make some customization to your online store. It is best to get in touch with an eCommerce development company to enjoy smooth customization services.

Shopify

Shopify is the perfect eCommerce building platform for someone looking to target multiple locations with a single online store. The platform makes it easy to design and customize their eCommerce store. With advanced tools, it’s easy to change products display, market, design, and manage online stores with ease. The platform offers a fairly transparent pricing plan depending upon their customers’ needs –

• Shopify Lite – $9 per month
• Basic Shopify Plan – $29 per month
• Shopify Plan – $79 per month
• Advanced Shopify Plan – $299 per month

Getting in touch with a Shopify web development company at the initial stages simplifies the overall development process. They will also guide you in choosing a perfect Shopify plan that best suits your online shopping store needs.

Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

So, till now, you have selected a domain name, product list, and eCommerce building platform for your online shopping store. But the real question is why someone will or should buy any X, Y, Z product from your eCommerce store and not from the competitor. For this, you need to brainstorm on the USPs of your online shopping store. Your business’s unique selling proposition (USP) can be anything from – low cost, fast delivery, unique product, or anything that sets you apart from others.

USPs play an important part in the success of your business. So, devote a fair amount of time while selecting USPs of your eCommerce business as they also play a vital part in marketing.

Optimize Your Shopping Website

So, until now, you have almost everything needed to create an online shopping store. But how do you expect your clients to reach or find your online shopping website? For this, you need to optimize your shopping website using keywords in your products. So, when your target audience will search for a specific product using keywords, they will land on your website with SERP. This is a great start to increase your business reach and target your audience. Later on, you can focus on local SEO to draw more traffic and sales to your online shopping website.

It’s Time to Take The Bull by the Horns

Once you have planned everything from choosing a domain name, product list, eCommerce platform, USPs, and optimizing your shopping website. It’s time to give your online shopping store dream a green signal and turn it into reality. Launch your eCommerce store with confidence and start implementing your marketing or website optimization strategies.

Make sure you give a proper focus to the tax collection laws and other state laws your business needs to follow. Keep a close eye on the popular, hot, and seasonal products to add more sales to your business. Hope this post provides you with valuable information needed to start your online shopping store. We wish you great success in your new business venture.