An e-commerce website is your store on the internet. It conveys everything about your business, right from the brand characteristics and customer experience to the exclusivity that you attach to the company.
These attributes are portrayed through the various elements on your online store – whether it is the content, themes, colours, navigation or payment options. Therefore, designing, building and launching an e-commerce website is an intricate process and requires detailed attention towards every feature and function.
When asked what visual elements they value on a company website, 40% of consumers said images, 39% said colour, and 21% said video.
Most businesses overlook the importance of an e-commerce website and many others are unaware of the ways to build one. 24% of small retail businesses without a website responded that their reason for not having one was that they don’t know how to create/run a website.
If you are wondering how to build a custom e-commerce website, here’s a detailed guide that will help you systemize the process. But first, let’s begin with understanding what is an e-commerce website.
What is an e-commerce website?
| An e-commerce website is a platform that lets users buy and sell products and services on the internet. A business can efficiently manage a multitude of functions such as displaying their products, processing orders, enabling transactions, offering customer support and so on through an e-commerce website. |
Apart from enabling shopping on the internet, an e-commerce website aids a business in many other ways, some of which include:
Creating a business identity: Speaks for and about the brand through the website design, shopping experience and ease of use
Reaching a global audience: Makes the businesses accessible to more people, helps tap into new geographies and widens the customer base
Offering data and insights: Helps you understand customer behaviour and engagement, through their preferences, interactions and feedback.
It only takes 50 milliseconds for users to form an opinion of your website, making it extremely crucial to have a well-optimised and impressive e-commerce website.
How to build a custom e-commerce website?
Assuming you have completed the groundwork of determining your business model, finalising the product/service, deciding their price point, etc, here’s a look at how to build an e-commerce website step-by-step, that covers all the processes towards opening your store online.
Finalise a domain name
Picking a business name is a creative and interesting process where you explore multiple options to see what best reflects your business.
A domain name should be looked for at the conceptualisation stage of a business. That’s because, even as you read this, hundreds of domains are being leased by businesses, reducing your chances of finding the perfect name for your business.
MIT researchers estimate the value of the domain industry to be worth $8 billion.
One of the most important things to keep in mind while zeroing in on a domain name is the copyrights and other legalities associated with it. Some of the other cardinal rules of leasing a domain name are:
- Keep it short and easy to remember
- Look for the .com extension
- Avoid complicated spellings, hyphens or numbers
- Ensure that your brand name is a part of the domain
Here’s a detailed read that shares 7 valuable tips while leasing a domain name.
Choose an e-commerce platform
An e-commerce platform is a software solution that enables buying and selling on the internet by managing the website infrastructure.
There are three main types of e-commerce platforms – open source, SAAS and headless commerce. Picking the right one will depend on its alignment with your business needs. Let’s look at how they differ from each other.
SaaS: Software as a Service is a cloud-based system that can be availed on a subscription basis with fixed monthly fees. Since it is not installed on-premise, a business does not have to worry about the maintenance, security or upgrades of the platform. SaaS platforms offer a robust and scalable solution for an e-commerce website.
Shopify is a popular example of a SaaS solution known for its ease of use and multiple functionalities.
Open source: Open source platforms are easily accessible and free for businesses to use. They can be obtained from public repositories and offer full access to the code resulting in a far better scope for modifications and customisations. However, unlike SaaS, open source platforms require a business to look into their maintenance, security and other compliances.
Magento is an example of an open-source platform that offers advanced customisation options for an e-commerce website.
Headless commerce: This platform separates the frontend experience from the backend infrastructure allowing businesses to use your preferred tech at the frontend and integrate it with an e-commerce backend.
Headless commerce is known for agility and flexibility that helps enhance the user experience. Businesses can easily modify the content and design without interfering with the backend.
When choosing an e-commerce platform some of the primary things to check are the performance consistency and traffic handling capacity of the platform. Most importantly the platform should be secure, especially in the case of open source that has a greater chance of cyber attacks.
Lastly, hiring the developer to build the e-commerce website will further simplify the process for you and their technical experience will help you launch it faster.
Build the website structure
This step includes a series of tasks to create a structure for your website. For instance adding a list of pages, themes, customisation, plug-ins and so on.
Let’s look at the main pages on an e-commerce website
Home page: Gives an overview of your store with product categories. Also features special offers, deals and discounts
Product page: Lists the various products from each category
About page: Talks about the business story and introduces the team
Customer service and contact page: Shares the contact details for customers and partners to reach you. Also mentions the business address and email details.
Resources page: Offers information about your business and products through blogs, case studies, videos and other forms of content
Payments page: Helps customers proceed with transactions and shipping of purchased products
Also Read – What is a Payment Gateway & How does Paytm Payment Gateway Work?
There are several other sections that can be added depending upon the product/service. They include login/create account, cart page, guest checkout, checkout review, order confirmation page, purchase history, account and payment settings, address page, signup page, returns and terms & conditions/privacy page.
The next step is to further improve the website experience with the help of following elements
- Depict your products clearly with the help of images and videos
- Add descriptions that mention product details
- Add sections for customer ratings and reviews
- Mention prices and availability for each item
- Curate content for the website, banners and blogs
- Design your brand logo and finalise the brand colours
- Optimise the website for SEO
- Mention the shipping and returns policies
- Create a targeted keyword list
- Finalise the list of necessary plug-ins
- Set up an e-commerce analytics and tracking account
Here are a few more tips to consider when building a website:
User experience: In a customer-centric world, a seamless user experience is the most important aspect for a strong website impression.
Navigation: Simplifies navigation helps your users shift from one page and product to another without getting lost on the website.
Communication: Establishing a strong value proposition, especially on the homepage creates interest and influences the user to explore the website further.
Customisation: Colours, fonts and themes that represent your business help contribute to a better brand recall.
Secure your website
To protect your website from data loss, cyber-attacks and malware it is important to run frequent vulnerability and security checks and equip your website with the best security features.
Additionally, backup the website from time to time to be able to safely recover it in case of data loss. PCI-DSS compliance for your website as well as the payment gateway you partner with is of utmost importance to protect the credit/debit card data of your customers and ensure safe transactions.
An SSL certificate is an equally important digital certificate to authenticate the identity and ensure an encrypted connection for your website.
Integrate a payment gateway
A payment gateway is instrumental in enabling transactions on your website.
The software connects your bank account to your website and also ensures that the payment done by your customers is seamless and secure. A payment gateway supports multiple payment modes, including credit cards, debit cards, net banking, UPI, and digital wallets.
Paytm Payment Gateway supports some of India’s biggest brands as well as startups in the e-commerce space. It offers a seamless customer experience and hassle-free payments.
Here’s a look at how Paytm Payment Gateway simplifies e-commerce for businesses:
Quick integration: Fully online onboarding process with minimum documentation. Plug-in support for e-commerce platforms such as Shopify, Magento and WooCommerce
Multiple payment options: Supports 100+ payment sources with payment options such as credit cards, debit cards, net banking, EMIs, and UPI
Fastest settlements: T+1 settlement cycle which is fastest in the industry and is irrespective of weekends or bank holidays.
International payments: Enables payments in 100+ currencies without separate API integration.
PCI DSS compliant: PCI DSS Level 1 compliant with a dedicated team of 200 cybersecurity experts to ensure secure transactions
Before you go live
Once you have incorporated all the tools and finalised your design, it’s time to check and fix issues if any before launching the website for your users.
Here are some basic checks to do:
- Check each and every link and button on the website.
- Conduct a trial run by shopping products on the platform
- Access the website on a mobile to check optimisation for the device
- Ensure that the website responds and opens on different browsers
- Inspect the settings for language, address, contact details and time zone
What is needed to build an e-commerce website: Conclusion
A well-built e-commerce website is an extension of your brand and business. It should match the same experience that your product is expected to. The easy availability of tools and services makes it easier to create a website of your choice.
Picking the right platform, a reliable payment gateway and incorporating the above-mentioned features shall assure an impressive online store for your e-commerce business.
