Since online shopping is already a norm, there’s no better time to start an ecommerce business than now.

The global ecommerce market is estimated to reach $6.3 trillion in 2023. So, how do you get your share of that numbers? Simple. Put up an ecommerce website that makes purchasing easy and convenient for customers.

The market will continue to grow in the next few years and potentially reach $8.1 trillion by 2026. So, investing in an ecommerce website isn’t just about meeting your 2024 goals; it’s also for the future of your business.

In this article, we’ll teach you how to create an online store in 7 simple steps.

How to Create an Online Store

Whatever you do – selling handmade crafts, retail, wholesale, dropshipping, or anything else – having an ecommerce website helps you easily sell online.

To get started, you need to:

1. Choose your niche and understand your target audience

So, what’s a niche? It’s a specialized market segment for a particular product or service. Let’s say the market is “pop music”; its niches are American pop, K-pop, P-pop, J-pop, and so on. It’s simply the subset of a larger market – something specific.

The people you want to reach are just as important as your niche. You want to ensure that they’re interested in your products so it’s easier to make a sale.

When choosing your niche, consider if they’re profitable, in demand, and if you’re passionate about it.

Here are a few tips for finding a business niche for your ecommerce website:

Consider your interests 

Find issues that you can fix 

Focus on interested individuals; not everyone will buy from you 

Experiment and explore 

Get valuable insights from feedback

Check your competition

Identify your unique selling point

Test ideas

Reevaluate your niche 

2. Pick the products to sell

Once you find your niche and identify your target audience, you can start choosing the product or service line to sell. This step can be challenging, but make sure you’re not selling a product that no one is interested in buying. On top of that, ensure that you have the resources, such as shipping and storage, to accommodate your products.

When you pick a product with established competition, ask yourself the following questions before starting its production:

How do you set your product apart from the competition, especially if it’s a product that’s already well-liked?

Is it possible to enhance an existing product?

How will you ensure that this product is available only from your online store? 

To help you better understand this step, here’s our guide to picking the right products to sell.

3. Choose the name of your online store

One of your first chances to impress viewers is through the name of your online business. It’s a way to show your company’s identity while building trust in your brand.

Customers will mistrust you if you choose a name that doesn’t match your products, personality, target audience, or values. It can also become the reason customers leave you for other brands.

4. Register your online business

Even though you can run a business without registration, it’s best to do so as your company grows. By registering your business, you give it official status with the government and ensure that your personal and business assets are legally protected.

So, make sure to register your business. Not only does this give your personal liability protection, but you also get legal and tax benefits.

5. Pick the platform and hosting to build your website

Aside from a website’s design, usability, and efficiency, consider its long-term purpose and required resources. Many business owners overlook the long-term purpose of a website until they run into problems.

For example, as your business grows, your site traffic increases. If your site can’t handle it, you’ll waste many potential customers. So, ensure that your hosting service can accommodate the growth in your traffic. Otherwise, you’ll end up migrating your website to a new host – which can be a tedious and complex task.

Another thing to think about is website management. After your website goes live, when you make changes to improve the website or correct misspelled text, how easy is it for you? You wouldn’t want to always contact a developer to make minor changes, right?

The good news is you can use content management systems (CMS) to build your website. CMS, like WordPress, lets you customize your website through plugins. It’s user-friendly but can sometimes require a certain level of technical know-how to add specific functions.

As an alternative, you can use a drag-and-drop website builder. It’s an intuitive tool that lets you create a website from scratch without writing a single line of code. It includes ecommerce features, such as marketplace selling, ecommerce reporting, payment options, and more.

6. Promote your online store

Of course, you need to promote your online store!

A website that doesn’t generate leads is useless. The whole point of a website is to attract revenue-generating leads. With this comes the need to strategize your marketing game.

How?

There are a lot of things you can do to promote your online store. Here’s a list of a few of them:

Build and utilize your email list

Use social media

Use paid ads

Optimize your website for search engines

Create engaging and useful content 

7. Build a good business relationship with customers and promote loyalty

Customer loyalty makes the difference between a one-time sale and a customer who comes back. One-time customers help your reach your short-term sales goals, but loyal customers help create a sustainable stream of business revenue.

Taking care of your customers is important for many reasons. Think about these:

Repeat customers spend more than newer ones 

Loyal customers have better conversion rates

Retaining customers is cheaper than acquiring a new one

Loyal customers regularly shop 

The question now is, how do you build a good relationship with your customers? We’ve got you covered with some tips below:

Get to know your customers 

Offer a customer loyalty program

Start a referral program

Stay true to your brand values

Engage with your customers

Always ask for feedback 

What Ecommerce Products to Sell and How to Utilize Landing Pages

What do I sell online? Which products are ideal for ecommerce?

For first-time or aspiring entrepreneurs, these are the questions that naturally arise. While it’s true that any product can be sold online, some products do better than others.

When creating an online store, it’s always important to plan out the products that you’ll offer. You can choose the right products to sell by taking notes of these tips:

Check product popularity (selling trends, SEO trends, consumer preferences) 

Avoid market saturation

Pick products that sell within your budget

Sell products that you’re passionate about  

After choosing the products to sell, utilize product landing pages to increase your conversion rates. Ecommerce product pages can make or break a sale. So, pay attention to the details included in them.

There are several elements to include in your product pages, and each of them help provide customers a great online shopping experience.

A product page that sells includes the following:

Product title 

Product description

Product images

Return policy, if applicable

Shipping details

Customer feedback

Call-to-action 

Customers who shop online expect ecommerce sites to be convenient. Successful retailers understand the expectations of their clients and design their websites, including product landing pages, accordingly.

How much does it cost to start an online business

To achieve long-term success in the ecommerce industry, creating a budget that provides you with what you need and allows you to generate business revenue is necessary. Naturally, it requires some trial and error and might not always work immediately.

You can start an online business for as little as $300 or as much as $1,000. That is significantly less than building a brick-and-mortar store, which mostly requires a few thousand to several hundred thousand dollars.

Figuring out how much it will cost to start an online store requires tedious work. It’s because you have to consider many different things and assess what your company needs. So, to help you know how much you’ll need, here are a few items to note:

Hosting platform 

Site fees and other expenses

Product sourcing (supply chain)

Branding

Product images and videos

Inventory management (storage facility)

Shipping fees

Marketing 

Once you determine the initial costs of starting an online business, take into account the cost of product renewals. This helps streamline your budget and avoid hurting your business revenue from unexpected fees.

Build a Winning Online Store with Web.com

Regardless of the industry your online business is for, the items mentioned in this article aims to help your online venture succeed.

Complement that with solutions that help you easily start an online store. Check Web.com and find the products you need to get started.