Even though trading online is nothing more than a natural migration of retail into the digital environment, there are some differences that need to be addressed. First of all, while it is true that you don’t need to hire retailers and rent a place where you will set up a store, you have expenses on other fronts. Building and maintaining an e-commerce website both require a lot of work and resources. However, when constructed carefully and in accordance with all the unwritten rules of e-commerce, it becomes a powerful source of revenue. With this in mind, here are some tips and tricks for creating your first e-commerce website.
Research Your E-commerce Competitors
Before you even start making your store, it might be a good idea to do a quick survey of your main competitors. Of course, we are not speaking about some covert and highly illegal espionage endeavors. All you need to do in order to conduct this research is to go to few e-stores and browse around for a bit. The first thing you will see here is the design and the layout made for the website. Later on, you will also see the prices as well as whether or not the shipment and taxes are included in the price. Buying an item or two might also help show you how the entire process works. Everything you like you can just borrow, while any flaw you notice you will learn how to avoid.
Start with the Visuals
After you have done your fair share of research on both the competition and the potential customers, it will be time for you to start with the visuals. Here, everything matters including things like font, style, colors and the alignment of the page. Even though people are mostly there either to make a purchase or to compare prices, you should never underestimate the power of visual stimuli. There are many ways to make your website look nicer, like downloading additional fonts or texture packs. However, if you try to install too many things, you might overburden your site and make it much slower. Needless to say, this is one of the main reasons behind the high rate of shopping cart abandonment.
Mind the Budget
Although we mentioned how you don not need to hire retailers and rent the premises, your e-commerce website will be far from free. This is where you need to be frugal and one of the ways to do so is to go with the WP Engine coupons, which will allow you to save some money on hosting. This hosted service provider, for WordPress (WP) websites is well suited for creating blogs and e-stores alike. Along with these coupons, what you also get is a detailed tutorial on how to use it on your own, which means that you shouldn’t worry even if you are a complete layman in this field.
Integrate More Payment Methods
More payment methods usually mean more transactions. When you come to think about it, this makes perfect sense. Imagine a situation where you are set on buying a specific item and you find in on an e-commerce website. The price is great, shipment and taxes are counted in, everything is just perfect. Unfortunately, as soon as you are about to buy it, you find out that this particular e-store doesn’t support your payment method. What are you more likely to do: add one more payment option to your digital wallet or look elsewhere for the item in question? This is one of the things you shouldn’t allow, so you need to at least integrate some of the major payment options.
Conclusion
As you can see, making an e-commerce website is not precisely rocket science, but it does require quite the amount of patience and careful research. After you have all of this covered, you will have to deal with some technical issues like the domain name, the design of the page and integrating multiple payment methods. However, once you get the hand of all this, you will be well on your way to make a fortune in the world of e-commerce.
