The e-commerce market is in full development thanks to the multiple platforms that make it easy to create your own online store.

However, it is necessary to have skills in various and varied fields (logistics, SEO communication, customer management, etc.). Only in this way, you will be able to stand out and attract an ever-increasing number of customers. So, if you have an idea for an online store, read our guide that will allow you to avoid the obstacles in the creation of an e-commerce site.

Choose a product to sell

The first step in creating your e-commerce business is: know the products you want to sell. This is often the hardest part when you want to start your business online. Once you have found and evaluated your product idea, you will now need to know where and how you will obtain or source your product.

Treat the concept and design

Your e-shop must have a nice design and be adapted to your goals. Having one or more differentiating elements is valuable if you are tackling an already busy market. It will be harder and longer, but not impossible to impose. The entire transactional part must be well studied. If you have never heard of “UX design”, you need to be updated on this side.

As any user experience, if it is simple, neat and enjoyable, it will help to retain your customers or at least they will have a good impression of your e-shop.

You can even lose up to 30% of the traffic due to poor graphics and ergonomic choices. Also, do not forget to set the elements of the corporate identity on your site. If you still do not have them, you can use online services, as, for example, Logaster, to create your logo saving time and energy.

Create an e-shop

There are several ways to make your e-shop. Of course, you can do it by yourself or choose to go through external providers. It all depends on the complexity of your project and the time/budget available. The e-commerce CMS market now has many solutions, and choosing the right solution for your project is not easy.

There are many computer tools that you can use to open an online store. According to your needs and your knowledge, you can choose the Wizishop, Oxatis, Prestashop, WordPress, Magento application etc. Some solutions provide you with turnkey e-commerce, other applications for CSS and HTML skills. For the record, one of the most popular platforms to set an e-shop is Shopify.

Catalog of the products

The success of an e-commerce website depends greatly on its product catalog. The challenges are many: organize references, write sales descriptions and optimized for SEO, take quality photos, optimize the layout to maximize basket additions, etc.

To increase productivity, you can use online tools for creating and then updating your catalogs, for example, Catalog machine, Sumitomo and many others. On this step it is also important to choose the right design template, so your customer feels comfortable on the site. Plus, there are lots of free web templates to use. For example, Shopify offers both creating a store and providing templates for it.

Payment process

Online payment is the basis for any business. This method of payment offers great speed and especially flexibility in the methods of online shopping. Everyone can then validate their purchase without leaving home. To this end, PayPal is one of the leading solutions and allows buyers and sellers to securely send or receive payments online.

This solution also allows you to pay by credit card without having an account on its interface. Plus, PayPal is the method of payment most requested by customers. Some of them are even ready to give up their current basket if this method of payment is not offered.

Launch social media

It is still difficult to determine which platforms work best in certain markets, especially when you own an e-commerce business. But there is a simple solution: diversify and possibly reduce the platforms that do not work well. It’s like investing. You spread the risk and realize which options let you earn. Create Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest pages.

Distribute your content on these media and use analysis tools to understand which ones work best. In addition, you can make this process even simpler – services for social pages frees up time for other tasks in your business. For example, Hootsuite, Buffer, SocialOomph offer you an all-in-one platform to manage all your social networks.

Even if one works better than another, broadcasting your presence on social networks allows all your customers to connect to your business. Who knows? You can only have 100 followers on Facebook, but one of them can be your best customer. If you remove this presence on Facebook, you risk losing this person.

So, as you see starting and maintaining your e-commerce business is not without difficulties. Although much of it depends on hard work, lack of know-how and technical skills can contribute to failure. We tried to help choose the right tools, but you also need to know your strengths, match the needs of your customers, and then set realistic expectations and follow through.