Move over brick and mortar. The future of retail is online, and ecommerce is leading the charge. With more and more consumers turning to the convenience of online shopping, ecommerce sales are projected to reach a staggering $8.1 trillion globally by 2026. That's right, trillions.
What does this mean? If you're looking to start or grow your business, building your own ecommerce website is a no-brainer.
Don't know where to start? No problemo! Strikingly, or rather, we, have got you covered. As a free ecommerce builder, we make it easy to create a professional-looking website that showcases your products and attracts customers. With our simple design tools and user-friendly interface, you can have your free online store up and running in no time.
Let's get down to the nitty-gritty of building your ecommerce website with Strikingly.
Getting Started with Your Ecommerce Website
A. Nailing Your Niche: Finding Your Perfect Product
1. Identifying Your Passion: What Are You Interested In?
Are you a foodie, a fitness buff, or a fashion enthusiast? Start by looking at your own interests and passions. Your enthusiasm for your product can be a powerful motivator and will help you weather the ups and downs of entrepreneurship.
Image taken from Strikingly templates
2. Analyzing Your Competition: What Are They Doing Well?
Take a look at other ecommerce websites in your niche. What products are they selling? How are they marketing themselves? What is their unique selling proposition (USP)? Analyzing your competition can help you identify gaps in the market and find ways to differentiate yourself from the competition.
3. Identifying Gaps in the Market: What Are People Looking For?
Look for opportunities to fill gaps in the market. Is there a product that you can't find anywhere else? Is there a need that isn't being met? Identifying gaps in the market can help you find your niche and create a unique selling proposition.
B. Researching Your Market: Who Are Your Customers?
1. Defining Your Target Audience: Who Are You Selling To?
Who is your ideal customer? What is their age range, gender, income level, and education level? Defining your target audience can help you create a more targeted marketing strategy and improve your chances of success.
2. Analyzing Their Needs: What Do They Want?
What are your customers looking for in a product? What needs do they have that aren't being met? Understanding your customers' needs can help you create a product that meets their needs and generates sales.
3. Understanding Their Behavior: How Do They Shop Online?
Image taken from Strikingly templates
How do your customers prefer to shop online? Do they prefer to shop on mobile or desktop devices? Do they like to read product reviews before making a purchase? Understanding your customers' behavior can help you optimize your ecommerce website and improve the user experience.
C. Building Your Brand: Creating a Unique Identity
1. Choosing a Name: What's in a Name?
Your brand name is one of the most important decisions you'll make. It should be memorable, easy to spell, and relevant to your niche. Spend time brainstorming different name options and choose one that resonates with your target audience.
2. Creating a Logo: How to Make a Great First Impression
Your logo is the face of your brand. It should be simple, memorable, and easy to recognize. Consider hiring a professional designer to create a logo that reflects your brand's personality and values.
3. Developing Your Brand Voice: How to Speak to Your Customers
Your brand voice is the tone and style in which you communicate with your customers. Are you funny, serious, or informative? Your brand voice should reflect your brand's personality and values and be consistent across all your marketing channels.
When building your ecommerce website, the right tools can make all the difference. Platforms like Strikingly offer free ecommerce builders that allow you to easily create an online store and start selling your products online. In the next section, we'll explore how you can use Strikingly to build a website that stands out from the competition.
Building Your Site with Strikingly
A. Designing Your Site: Making It Look Great
Finding the right design for your business means selecting a website template that matches your business's style and brand. Strikingly offers a wide range of templates for various types of businesses and industries, allowing you to choose one that suits your needs.
- Customizing Your Site
Making it unique to your brand means personalizing your website design by changing the layout, color scheme, font styles, and other design elements. Doing this makes your website stand out from competitors and helps establish your brand identity.
- Creating A User-Friendly Experience
Making it easy to navigate means designing your website intuitive and easy to use. This includes organizing your content clearly and logically, providing easy-to-use menus, and ensuring that your website loads quickly.
Image taken from Strikingly templates
- Incorporating Branding
Adding logos, fonts, and colors means using consistent branding elements across your website to help create a cohesive brand image and reinforce brand recognition. Using the same fonts, colors, and logos throughout your website makes your brand recognizable and memorable to your customers.
B. Creating Your Content: Writing Product Descriptions That Sell
- Killer Copy: Writing Compelling Sales Pitches
Creating engaging and persuasive product descriptions is crucial in convincing potential customers to make a purchase. Your copy should highlight the benefits of your product, address pain points that your customers might be experiencing, and create a sense of urgency to buy now. Using persuasive language and storytelling techniques can help make your product more appealing.
- Picture Perfect: Taking Great Product Photos
High-quality product photos are essential to showcasing your products and making them look attractive to potential customers. You want to use clear, well-lit photos that show your products from multiple angles and highlight their best features. Consider investing in a good camera or hiring a professional photographer to take your product photos.
- Creating Videos: Adding Product Demos And Tutorials
Video content is becoming increasingly popular and can be a great way to showcase your products and give potential customers a closer look. Creating product demos or tutorials can help customers better understand how your products work and what they can do. Videos can also be used to create engaging content for your social media channels or website blog.
C. Optimizing For Mobile: Making Your Site Responsive And Accessible
- Designing For Mobile
Creating a mobile-first experience means designing your website with the mobile user in mind first. With the rise of mobile devices and the increasing number of users browsing the web on their phones, it's essential to prioritize the mobile experience. This involves using responsive design, optimizing page speed, and designing with mobile usability in mind.
- Testing Your Site
Making sure it works on all devices means ensuring that your website is accessible and functional on all devices, including desktops, laptops, tablets, and mobile phones. This involves testing your website's responsiveness, load time, and compatibility with different browsers and operating systems. It's crucial to ensure that your site is optimized for all devices to reach the widest possible audience and provide a seamless user experience.
Creating content to attract and engage customers. Adding a blog to your eCommerce website can help attract and engage customers by providing valuable content related to your products or services. A blog can also help improve your website's search engine ranking and increase traffic.
- Adding Social Media Buttons
Connecting with customers on social media and adding social media buttons to your eCommerce website can help you connect with customers on social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or LinkedIn. Having a social media presence can help increase your brand's visibility and engagement with your customers.
- Offering Live Chat Support
Offering live chat support can help you provide real-time assistance to customers with questions or concerns about your products or services. Great customer support can help improve customer satisfaction and reduce the likelihood of abandoned carts.
- Enabling Customer Reviews
Enabling customer reviews on your eCommerce website can help build trust and credibility with potential customers by providing them with feedback from previous customers. When people read what other people have said about your product or service, this can help increase sales and improve customer satisfaction.
- Offering Multiple Payment Options
Providing convenience and flexibility - Offering multiple payment options, such as credit card, PayPal, or Apple Pay, can help provide customers convenience and flexibility, increasing the likelihood of completed purchases.
- Providing Personalized Recommendations
Providing personalized product recommendations to customers based on their browsing and purchase history can help increase sales and customer loyalty by providing them with a more tailored shopping experience.
Optimizing your eCommerce website's loading speed can help improve user experience by reducing the likelihood of abandoned carts and increasing customer satisfaction.
D. Integrating With Other Tools: Adding Features To Enhance Your Site
When building an ecommerce website, it's important to consider adding other features and tools to enhance the overall experience for your customers. Integrating with other tools can make your site more user-friendly and engaging, which can help increase sales and conversions.
- Adding A Blog: Creating Content To Attract And Engage Customers
One great tool to consider adding is a blog. Creating a blog allows you to create content that is related to your products or industry, which can help attract and engage customers. By providing valuable information to your customers, you can build trust and establish yourself as an authority in your industry. Additionally, a blog can help improve your website's SEO by providing fresh, relevant content that search engines love.
- Adding Social Media Buttons: Connecting With Customers On Social Media
Another useful tool to consider is adding social media buttons to your website. Social media is a powerful tool for connecting with customers and building brand awareness. By adding social media buttons to your website, you make it easy for customers to follow and share your content on their favorite social media platforms. This can help increase your reach and build a strong online community around your brand.
Other features include live chat support, customer reviews, and email marketing integrations. These features can help improve the overall customer experience and make it easier for you to connect with your customers and drive sales. Ultimately, by integrating with other tools and features, you can create an ecommerce website that is engaging, user-friendly and designed to drive sales and growth.
Building a successful ecommerce website is more than just a good idea. You need the right tools and strategies to make it work. Strikingly's free ecommerce builder is the perfect solution for building your online store. With its easy-to-use interface and powerful features, you can create a professional-looking site in no time.
Launching Your Ecommerce Website
You've done the hard work of building your online store. Now it's time to get paid and let the world know about it! Here are some essential steps to launch your site and start raking in the dough:
Image taken from Strikingly templates
A. Setting Up Your Payment Gateway: Getting Paid
Are you ready to make some money? Of course, you are! Setting up your payment gateway is crucial for your eCommerce website. It's the tool that enables you to accept payments from your customers. With so many options out there, it's important to choose the one that works best for you and your business. Popular payment gateways include PayPal, Stripe, and Square, but there are many others to choose from. Whatever you choose, make sure it's easy to use and secure for you and your customers.
B. Marketing your site: Getting the word out
You've got your online store up and running, but how do you get people to find it? Marketing your site is essential to driving traffic and sales. Here are a couple of ways to start building buzz:
- Social Media Marketing: Building Buzz On Facebook, Twitter, And Instagram
Social media is a powerful tool for reaching your target audience and building your brand. By creating engaging posts, running targeted ads, and interacting with your followers, you can drive traffic to your online store and increase sales. Start by setting up business accounts on popular social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Then, develop a content strategy that aligns with your brand and engages your target audience. Don't forget to include links to your online store in your posts!
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Getting Found On Google
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing your website to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). By improving your site's SEO, you can drive more organic traffic to your online store and increase sales. To get started with SEO, identify the keywords and phrases your target audience is searching for, then optimize your site's content, meta descriptions, and title tags to include those keywords. You can also improve your site's SEO by building backlinks from high-quality websites in your industry.
Conclusion
You've made it to the end of the guide, and we're thrilled that you're ready to take the next step to build ecommerce sites! With Strikingly, you can easily create a professional online store to help you grow your business and reach more customers.
Don't stop here! Continue to use Strikingly to enhance your ecommerce site and drive sales. With our free ecommerce builder, you can easily add new products, optimize your site for SEO, and connect with customers on social media.
Act now. Start building your online store today and watch your business thrive!
