How To Plan Your Ecommerce Website

Think of any product you would want to purchase right now, and you will probably find it on Amazon. Indeed, it is the world’s biggest online seller, and a great example of a cluttered yet simple ecommerce website. Just as many similar projects before it, Amazon was founded from an idea that was brought into life by proper planning and hard work.

Today, it is easier than ever to create your own ecommerce site and begin selling products online, even if you have never built an online store before. Although the actual website creation process can be streamlined, coming up with product sourcing and product idea may take a while. So whether you are doing a large-scale ecommerce build or just theming a site, planning remains one of the most crucial parts of the whole project. It may seem like it is too time-consuming and tedious to draft an ecommerce development plan for your online business, however, it will save you lots of time and make the process run more smoothly. In this posting, we will talk about planning an ecommerce website to start selling online.

Ecommerce provides huge opportunities for anyone with an internet connection. But before you launch an online shop, there are some things to consider first. So what we prepared is a short guide on how to plan an ecommerce website. Let’s check it out:

Determine What You Want To Sell?

Since we have been talking about ecommerce, we probably plan to sell something. At this stage, you will need to decide what you want your website to do. In other words, you must decide what products to sell and how to source your merchandise. In order to do this you can:

Read reviews
Communicate with suppliers
Attend trade shows
Visit trade group sites
Explore popular online listings

Research Your Target Audience

In other words, you must define who is going to buy from you. Understanding your target audience is something that impacts your UI/UX design and development. Therefore, consider researching your auditory properly. Figure out if there is a demand for products you are going to sell online.

Find Out If Your Site Requires Special Features

Depending on what you plan to sell, your ecommerce website may require special features that other similar websites do not. For instance, a clothing e-shop needs a refined search to provide the visitors with the ability to filter their search results by brand or color. In addition, you may want to add a coupon code feature. As you can see, it is better to plan all these functions and features from the start.

Know Your Limitations

When you are building your website, do not forget to carefully define your limitations. In order to deal with the “tech” side of things, you need to understand if the technology limits your build if there are possible technical problems, and how will these impact what you do as you move forward. Hard work will help you achieve nearly anything, but not everything is achievable.

Determine If You Have All the Tools

Obviously, you will need things like a web hosting and domain name. Depending on the complexity of your ecommerce website, you may also require ecommerce software (for example, Shopify, Magento, etc.), some web development apps (like Dreamweaver), and graphic software (such as Photoshop). Also, you will have to decide who will help you make design decisions for your future ecommerce store.

Possible Ecommerce Solutions

There are numerous ecommerce platforms out there. At this stage, your task is to find the one that best meets your business needs. Let’s see what options you have in this regard:

Custom ecommerce web development

This is probably the most complex way. If you created a website yourself, you are guaranteed full ownership of everything. However, this approach will require you lots of time and some level of coding knowledge.

CMS with ecommerce plugins

Joomla, Drupal, and WordPress offer great and fully manageable ecommerce capabilities with shopping cart plugins such as WordPress MiniCart or eShop.

Platform options

You have probably heard about Shopify. It is a great hosted platform that allows you to get an ecommerce website running within minutes. Besides, it is simple to setup, update, and manage. Alternatively, Magento is one of the most popular ecommerce platforms that comes with promotional/marketing tools, variety payment methods, advanced customer support, product filter search, and much more. Certainly, the choice of an ecommerce solution depends on your business needs.

Key Takeaways

These were the crucial steps that every merchant needs to follow before creating an ecommerce store. Hopefully, this article will bring you closer to achieving that. At Loonar Studios, we understand how much work it takes to get an online business up and run it. So if you need any help growing or starting your ecommerce website, do not hesitate to contact us. Good luck!

SUBSCRIBE FOR NEWSLETTER