Setting up your eCommerce website is an integral part of your business. You don’t want to ignore this process. Otherwise, it will affect your customer experience, growth, and sales. While creating your website from scratch requires lots of effort, you can consider using premade eCommerce platforms such as BigCommerce. Most of these platforms come with unique features and add-ons that allow you to integrate them into your store.
Notwithstanding the option you choose, the website doesn’t just complete itself. This blog will guide you through the seven steps to set up your site.
Create a detailed plan
You must always have a concrete plan before you start with your eCommerce website. Any mistake during this period will negatively affect your performance. In other words, a rigorous plan would save you precious time, effort, and resources.
One important part of your plan is the resources, which include both human and technical resources. You must know who will be in charge of each stage of your website, who runs the daily affair, and what other things will be needed. Once you create a detailed plan, you can start transforming your plan into reality.
Choose a platform
Before jumping to a decision, make sure you check out all available options. Every platform has its strengths and drawback and might serve some demands better than others. If you have a strong IT department and want to have full control to build your website, Magento and alike would be a good choice. But if you want to get things done quickly, consider website providers such as Shopify and BigCommerce. These platforms offer unique features and functionalities that can ease your shipping and fulfillment process.
Choose and setup domain name
It would help if you chose a domain name that suits your brand. The domain name is what distinguishes your store from others. For instance, shoe stores often include the word “shoes” in their name. Clearly, it’s better to use www.bestshoes.com instead of www.buyanything.com. You need to give your store identity, such that once a visitor sees the domain name, they understand the kind of business you are into.
Adding products, categories, content
After selecting a theme, you need to add content, categories, and products to your new BigCommerce website. When writing product descriptions, don’t forget to optimize the content according to SEO guidelines. This makes it stress-free for customers to find your products when they do a search online. You should also give as detailed a description of your products as possible, including the product name, price, color, size, weight, and dimension. Furthermore, you might want to upload a high-resolution video and photos for customers to get a feel of what they want to buy.
Test and launch
Before onboarding your website, you need to preview and test all important functions to ascertain everything is working perfectly. It will turn off your customers when they access your page only to discover a particular section of your site isn’t working. In your testing, make sure to check the compatibility and workability on both mobile and desktop devices.
Some points to keep in mind is:
- Are the product photos and descriptions appearing as they should?
- Is the website responsive? Is the checkout page is working seamlessly?
- Are the shipping and payment integration working perfectly?
Once all of these works well, you can launch your website immediately.
