If you are planning to launch an e-commerce business, you need three things – a good domain name, free hosting, and some of your free time. Your e-commerce platform is of great importance for the success of your business. Hence, you need to choose wisely. The best platform to opt for is WordPress since it is the most popular, easily accessible with tons of free features and chances are that you are already familiar with it through your website.
So, if you are about to launch an e-commerce business using a WordPress platform here are a few easy steps to follow in order to be successful.
Create a Comprehensive Business Plan
Before you launch any business, you need to create a comprehensive business plan as this is essential for the proper positioning and development of your brand. It is a necessity especially if you need to attract outside investors, however, it is also very useful even if you are financing the undertaking on your own. It will help you focus on various issues, ideas, perspective problems, and solutions. Make sure to include the following:
- Which products you are going to sell
- How you will acquire your inventory
- How to create your website
- How to market your website successfully
- How to grow your market share
- How to handle taxes, fees, and other charges and cost
- Which are the legal requirements you need to be compliant with
Note, that website creation usually doesn’t include any content. And content creation is one of the most time consuming and expensive tasks. It is important to decide in advance who will create your content. You can find bloggers who write product reviews and ask them to write for you, you can hire in-house writers, use a freelancer or the services of Handmadewritings in order to secure the awesome content your e-commerce needs.
Once your business plan is ready and your ideas are clearly set, you are ready to start.
Pick a domain name
It is crucial to pick up a domain name that will be easily remembered by your customers and which will make it easy for Google to identify what your store sells. It will be good for your domain name to include a keyword and be as short as possible so it is easy to type. Avoid hyphens or words that sound the same and may lead to confusion (site and sight, for example, sound the same over the phone). You need a name that is easy to say and that cannot be misinterpreted or has any bad or negative connotations. It is a good idea to get all domain extensions – .com, .net, etc. as thus you will be sure that you won’t fall victim to a copycat.
If you are struggling with the domain name, you can use a name generator tools such as DomainWheel that can help you find an original and available name for your e-commerce business.
Set up your WordPress Store Platform
WordPress is a great platform for your website and it gives you the base to develop your online store. You can use WooCommerce to transform your site into an e-commerce business. The best thing is that the basic package is free and it gives you enough flexibility to design your most important pages.
The setup wizard for the WooCommerce plug-in is very easy to download and install – it takes roughly 5 minutes and then you are ready to continue.
Decide on the Best Theme
Once you have WooCommerce installed you need to choose the best theme for your online store. It is worth investing some time into selecting the right theme for you as it gives the overall look of your site and can be the thing to turn browsers into buyers. Look for a theme, which is fully compatible with WooCommerce and has a responsive design. It is also good if there is a free or trial version that you can test prior to purchasing one. Some of the good theme suggestions include Ozisti, Coleo, (which is one of the most popular themes and as a downside, it means that your online store will resemble the majority of stores).
No matter if you opt for a custom-built or a ready-made WordPress theme make sure that it is responsive, functional and aesthetic.
Select Your Store Features
You need to make a list of the most important features that your store should contain and then start adding them one by one. You can browse your e-commerce competitors’ websites for inspiration.
Once you select the features to determine which are the most essential ones and integrate them first, in case you have a limited budget. Keep a list of the rest handy so that you can add them at the first possible moment.
In case you are not sure how to integrate those features using add-on plug-ins, hire a developer to do the job.
Integrate your storefront with your WordPress website
In case you already have a WordPress website with a faithful community, it is easier to integrate your storefront with it rather than start anew. The benefit is that you are already familiar with the user interface and you can devote more time to actually set up your e-commerce business.
It is essential to include several important plug-ins that will help you with the better development of your website and will contribute to the growth of your business:
- Anti-spam plug-in to protect you from potentially harmful links in comments
- SEO plug-in to help you with the rankings
- Backup plug-in to keep your information safe
- Cache plug-in to secure the smooth running of your site in times of high traffic
- Conversion plug-in such as OptinMonster that will remind visitors to subscribe to your newsletter and help you attract customers
Use content and SEO to attract customers
You need a lot of great content so that search engines can send motivated customers ready to buy to your website. Remember that you need to write in such a way that it is both optimized for search-engines with the necessary keywords, meta descriptions, page titles, image alt tags, etc. but never forget that you have to provide relevant content for the actual customers as well.
Make Use of Facebook Ads to Grow Your Traffic
Nowadays, social media are a powerful tool that influences the decision of many customers. Take advantage of that. Advertise your business Facebook page or use Facebook ads in order to popularize your products and grow your traffic.
Make sure to create a targeted list of potential customers both for your ads and for the blog post that you share on Facebook and thus you can drive traffic to your online store.
As you can see, it is pretty easy to use WordPress and its features to launch an e-commerce business. Make sure to follow the process step by step and take time to choose the best tools, themes or plug-ins that are really relevant for your brand and can attract the customers you are targeting.
