Building an E-commerce Website in 2022: How-To Guide

The E-commerce market is growing day by day. Boosted by the Covid-19 pandemic, the switch to e-commerce keeps gathering pace in 2022. As long as the number of e-commerce customers is estimated into millions, no wonder the demand for creating ad hoc websites is on the rise, too.

If you also found yourself interested in leveraging this promising field, then this guide of how to build an e-commerce web space is just what you need to receive a common understanding of this beneficial topic.

Hire a Vendor

If profound IT expertise is not your cup of tea, you will surely need the assistance of professionals. Naturally, a solid expertise in web app development  and experience in e-commerce are top features distinguishing a reliable vendor. Additionally, feedback from a company’s previous customers is your best way to check whether the vendor’s expertise is worth putting your trust in. Such platforms as Clutch or GoodFirms are valid sources of coherent information about IT companies, such as a review of price & quality ratio.

Find a Fitting E-commerce Platform

The first step you take when opening a shopping place is searching for the right location. With e-commerce it’s just the same. A right location for your website is a cornerstone of its success  which, of course, is represented by a stable customer flow and, as a result, high sales. Deciding on which platform to give preference is all about identifying your business goals, its target audience, and the functionality you need to combine the two previous ingredients to their mutual benefit. In this regard, let’s concentrate on 3 types of e-commerce platforms: open-source, headless, and SaaS.

Open source platforms

Advantages:

• Has an open access to the source code for every user free of charge.
• Easily adjustable for your business unique needs.
• Simply installed and managed.

Challenges:

• It takes some profound development skills to interact with an open-source platform.
• Security threats are a common concern here so including a couple of digital field gatekeepers in your dream team is a must.

Headless platforms

Advantages:

• Boosted efficiency of processes and better user experience. Headless platforms use API signals to transmit real-time information about actions made by users at the presentation level to the web server and back.
• Remarkably friendly to IoT devices.
• Unprecedented scalability. Originally created to be implemented within IoT devices, headless platforms have no back-end. In practice this means that the back-end is not intertwined with a platform. Thus, you can use IoT devices, such as smartwatches, as another marketplace in addition to traditional ones.
• Security granted for both your e-commerce shop and its customers’ data (e.g., PCI compliance).
• Flexible for adjustments so any changes based on customer preferences can be implemented satisfyingly quickly.

Challenges:

• Requires technological background to handle the management properly.
• Relatively pricey option as most headless platforms charge their users with a subscription fee.

SaaS platforms

Advantages:

• Guaranteed security goes by default so no worrying about hacker attacks for SaaS users.
• Being designed to meet specific requirements of e-commerce business, a SaaS platform contains a line of in-built features tailored to optimize the digital trade, e.g., an automated checkout and payment.
• High scalability rate provided by the platform’s functionality ensures smooth switching between mobile and web dimensions of your e-marketplace habitat, depending on what device is in your user’s hands.

Challenges:

• The price bites. Just like entering a medieval merchant guild required paying a membership fee, joining a SaaS platform is a matter of a monthly subscription charge. Besides, additional fees are withdrawn via direct usage of the platform.
• The platform imposes restrictions on your e-marketplace design. Premium access is required to customize a design and make it “label-free”, i.e. without promoting a platform via tattooing your interface with its permanent sign.

Get Yourself a Hosting

Nowadays, the majority of digital entrepreneurs store their websites’ files on third-party servers. Hosting providers differ via a wide range of parameters, but when it comes to e-commerce websites, this narrows down to two main types of hosting: cloud hosting and the on-premise one.

Main features of cloud hosting:

• Website’s data is stored on a network of third-party cloud servers, both virtual and physical ones.
• Scalability of solutions and resources in compliance with user needs.
• Reasonable fees due to paying only for the used resources.
• Flexible for updates, upgrades, patches.
• Hostings are compatible with SaaS and headless e-commerce.
• Great option for enterprises.
• No efforts put on installation and maintenance.

Main features of on-premise hosting:

• Use local, on-premise servers that belong to a single company.
• Form a better synergy with open-source platforms.
• Works for corporations.
• Installation and maintenance takes essential human and financial resources.
• Security measures have to be taken by the company itself.

Choose a Catchy Domain

Choosing a domain is like taking the essence of your business and putting it into a concise shape of one to three words and preferably no numbers. Domain name is the first thing that reveals your company’s individuality and makes it stand out among competitors. Moreover, domain is what your potential customers will use to find your store and, if satisfied with the service, spread the good word to friends. But all the above is only true if your domain name corresponds to the following recommendations.

What to welcome:

• Easy spelling and pronunciation. Keep your domain simple for perceiving to avoid potential customers getting lost on their way to your website.
• Originality is a must. Domain name has to be unique so that there is no chance users begin with googling your website and end up with opening another one with a similar name and better SEO optimization.
• Keep it short and concise. Again, everything for the sake of stucking in people’s memory just like those catchy earworms, but in a good way. A recommended number of characters spans from 5 to 12.

What to avoid:

• Hyphens, numbers, any details that overload the domain unit.
• Too generic names as they tend to slip people’s memory or remain there in a distorted form.

Make an Outstanding Design

Clear and sound  UI and UX design is your next step in building a successful e-commerce space. In digital trade it is not enough to simply have goods that your target audience considers interesting, but it is crucial to also make the offer visually appealing. A good design is like a map using which each website’s element can be easily reached. Transparent goods catalog and smooth custom navigation are top spots to pay attention here.

There are 2 ways to pursue when talking about UI/UX design of your e-commerce website: fully customized design made by professionals, or ready-made design solutions issued by specialized platforms.

Talking about ready-made solutions, they can be effectively implied pointwise, for example, to create a sidebar menu and other elements of customer navigation. An obvious advantage of this option is its cost-efficiency and simplicity. At the same time, be ready that the end result won’t be unique and fully reflective of your business concept.

Things are different when creating a custom UI/UX design with a professional development team. Thanks to designers working on the project, each stage of the product development is accompanied by wireframes, i.e. rough images of the website’s elements before the final version of UI/UX is found and confirmed in the form of mockups. As a result, you receive UI/UX suiting your e-commerce business unique needs through and through.

Provide Payment Options

After the cart is filled with goods, it is high time for a checkout. Virtual stores here follow the same healthy capitalistic principles that the physical ones: a completed sale is the only satisfying result of a customer journey. Thus, you have to provide your customers with an opportunity to spend their money without giving the idea second thoughts. A payment method capable of achieving this goal equals to the next features:

• It is simple to use
• Minimal additional actions on user side
• It invokes trust

There are 3 possible payment gateways that comply with the above mentioned principles at various degrees. Let’s make a short review of these gateways presented via real-life examples.

• PayPal. PayPal is a payment method that redirects users from the site where a sale is initiated and runs checkout and payment on the home server. A huge advantage of the redirect payment method is that responsibility for transactions’ security fully lies with a third-party provider. However, additional actions are required to be made on the customer side which can drive some from your store in search of an easier option.
• Amazon. With both checkout and payment processing happening on-site, Amazon can exercise full control over its transactions while simultaneously ensuring its security. The option is suitable for large corporations.
• Stripe. Stripe uses a gateway implying that payment’s details are determined on the e-commerce website, while the actual payment’s processing happens on Stripe’s side. This payment method is an easy task for customers but takes special attention to the question of proper encryption for your transactions.

Launch Time

Now that everything else is ready, it’s time to launch your e-commerce website.

But before the final countdown, it’s crucial to ensure that everything works as it is supposed to. To this end, it’s necessary to run thorough checks of the website’s processes feasibility so that any errors and bugs are handled before being discovered by users.