With the increasing trend of online business, having an online store has become an obligation for a business. If your business is late to the party or doesn't even have an online store, then you can be sure you will lose the potential shares of online sales and customers.
Fortunately, owning an online store is not as difficult as you might think. By using an online store builder, you can easily create an online store and start to sell online.
However, in the midst of many options, how do you choose the right online store builder for your business? What do you need from an online store builder to create a great ecommerce shop?
This makes choosing a store builder a big decision considering that an ecommerce store will be a big part of your business.
Let’s take a look at what you need to have on your online store to make it an important asset for your business!
Features You Need in Your eCommerce Store
Selling through an online store is an experience that is very different from selling in a physical store. The most striking thing is that you don't serve your customers directly where customers can ask you about the availability of goods, ask you to pick up an item and pay in person.
To ensure transactions in your online store run smoothly as in a physical store, you need a variety of features to help you and your customers. Let's take a look at what features you need in your online store:
• Secure Payment Methods
Secure transactions are very important for online shops. You don't want your customers' money to be lost and they are demanding compensation from your shop and leaving bad reviews for your shop.
Besides secure transactions, your online store also requires various types of payments. The rise of online transactions has led to various types of wallets or online payment services, such as Paypal, WeChat Pay, and banks that have started offering online payment features via credit cards. If your online store does not have different types of payment, it is possible that you will lose some customers who prefer certain types of payment methods.
• Mobile-Friendly Design
This one is mandatory for all online stores. Why? Because almost half of total digital sales occur via smartphones.
If your online store doesn't have a mobile-friendly design, your shop will definitely not benefit fully from the rising trend of online business.
• Create a Member-Only Shop
One of the advantages that an online store brings to customers is that they can easily browse through extensive product catalogs and choose the product with the best price for them. You also want the same thing to happen with your online store.
However, you can still offer a wider choice at a more special price. You can do this by creating a members-only shop in your online store. You, for example, can offer a membership for a fee where members can access a new product catalog faster or get a special discount.
When creating a membership make sure you also consider the conditions of people who are not members of your online store. Don't let customers who are not members of your store feel left out by membership in your online store.
When creating a membership, you have to make sure you don't put up promises of benefits that you can't fulfill. You certainly don't want your customers who are members to claim rights that you can't fulfill and make your online store name become bad.
• Order Management System
As previously mentioned, making transactions in an online shop is an entirely different experience from the experience in a physical store. For example, how do you let a customer know when the item they're looking for isn't available? Or, how do you tell the customer the date when your item will be delivered to the customer's home?
The answer lies in the order management system (OMS). OMS can help you to manage the goods in your warehouse. You can find out the number of items in stock and update the data on your website so that your customers always know whether the item they want is still available or not.
OMS can also help you in the process of shipping goods. You can set shipping costs and keep track of where the goods you ship are.
Make sure you get these features from the online store builder you choose. Because, without these features, your online store will not be able to contribute much to your business, and there is a possibility that you will end up losing money because you bear the costs of maintaining your online store.
How to Set Up an Online Store With Strikingly
Strikingly is the right online store builder if you want to grow your business online. At Strikingly, you can get all the features you need in your online store.
Apart from great features, Strikingly also offers other advantages. Strikingly is an intuitive online store builder so anyone can easily create their own online store. Strikingly also has 24/7 customer support that can help you wherever and whenever your ecommerce store is having trouble.
Let's take a look at several examples of ecommerce stores created with Strikingly!
• Inspire Organics
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
• Runway Prints
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
• Nice Cream
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
Do you have the inspiration to build your dream ecommerce store now? If you still need inspiration, you can check out other online stores that have been created by other Strikingly users.
If you're ready, let's start building your ecommerce store using Strikingly!
How to Build Your Ecommerce Store With Strikingly
1. Choose a Template for Your Ecommerce Store
Image taken from Strikingly website
Strikingly is an online store builder that offers a wide collection of templates. You don't have to bother with your website design because each eCommerce store template from Strikingly is well-designed.
You can also find other eCommerce store websites created by Strikingly users. You can learn how they built their eCommerce store website or use their online store as your website template.
2. Build Your eCommerce Store Content
Once you have a template you want to use, it's time to start building the content of your online store. What do you have to prepare?
The first is photos of your product. Make sure you use attractive photos with high quality in your eCommerce store. You also have to adjust your photo resolution with the size specification from Strikingly.
You can edit your picture directly on your website. Strikingly has a photo editor feature where you can immediately adjust all the images that you can use directly on your site editor.
Next, you need a description of your product. Make sure your product description is user-friendly and search engine friendly.
After that, you have to set the prices for your products. If you want to use the same price as your physical store, that's fine.
If you want to use different prices, then you should do a little research because the prices of goods on eCommerce can vary widely. You can take a peek at the prices used by your competitors or you can do a survey by looking at eCommerce platforms, such as Amazon, to see the average price of similar products.
In addition to the price of the goods, you also have to determine the price for shipping goods. As an online store builder that always tries to help its users, Strikingly has an order management system that is integrated directly with your website that can help you to manage your store’s order and shipping policy.
With OMS from Strikingly, you can set shipping prices to each of the different locations. You can also determine the amount of tax on the price of your goods and the delivery of your product.
3. Add Features to Your eCommerce Store
Image taken from Strikingly website
After you finish adding your products to your online store, it's time for you to add other features that can increase the effectiveness of your eCommerce store.
As an online store builder, Strikingly has many features that can help you run your online store. To be able to serve your customers better, you can use the LiveChat feature from Strikingly.
This feature can help you to serve customers who are visiting your website. LiveChat from Strikingly can connect to desktop and mobile which makes it easier for you to serve customers anywhere and anytime.
Apart from LiveChat, you can also add a newsletter feature from Strikingly. This feature can help you to inform your customers about new products or the latest information from your online store.
4. Optimize The Seo Of Your Website
Image taken from Strikingly product
SEO is the backbone of an online business. If you don't understand what SEO is and optimize your SEO, your eCommerce store that you have designed in such a way and has lots of features will only be a website that people never visit.
Why is that?
Because SEO is about how people can find your eCommerce store through the keywords they use when doing searches using search engines, such as Google.
For example, you want people to find your website to enter the first page of Google when people search for "online store selling health products in New York.", then you should use those keywords in your eCommerce store, whether as a description of your website, or in the about us section.
The SEO complexity doesn't stop there. There is still a lot you have to do, such as linking domains, using headings, adding alt-text to each image you use, and so on.
However, you don't need to worry. Strikingly has provided an SEO checklist that you can use as a guide to optimize the SEO of your eCommerce store.
Those are the steps to build an ecommerce store using Strikingly.
Strikingly is the right online store builder if you want an online store with great looks and powerful features.
With Strikingly, building an online store is really simple. All you have to do is choose the mobile-friendly ecommerce store template you want and start to sell online.
Strikingly offers a variety of features that can help your online business. You can have an integrated order management system that can help you process customer orders for your online store.
Your ecommerce store can also accept a variety of payment methods, which gives your customers more options for shopping.
So what are you waiting for? Build your online store now with Strikingly and seize opportunities online
