How to build an e-commerce website from scratch

The competition in online business continues to grow every day, which means that the later you launch your online store, the more difficult it will be to stand out and grab your share of the market.

With this handy guide on how to build an e-commerce website from scratch, you will become familiar with the steps that have helped thousands of businesses make the move online smoothly, greatly benefiting from the added presence.

Analyze Your Niche and Assess the Competition

Before you create an e-commerce website, it is important to conduct market research and get answers to the following questions:

What products are trending at the moment?How tough is the competition?What are the current prices of similar products?What skills are needed to build an e-commerce website?

At the beginning of the research, the most valuable tool you’ll want to use is Google Trends. To get comprehensive answers, you just need to type in the query you are interested in.

Try to stand out

Your business can’t live by website alone, especially in a highly competitive environment. When working on your e-commerce business strategy you must clearly define your competitive advantages.

The best option for today is to incorporate a global position into your business strategy. For example:

1. Minimizing energy consumption, managing greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental practices.2. Focusing on greening your business and developing sustainable business practices.3. Choosing eco-friendly delivery and shipping options.4. Showing your business’ inclusivity, etc.

With the help of such tactics, it is much easier to build your brand awareness and the company’s social media strategy, which, today, is one of the most efficient ways of e-commerce business promotion.

Define Your Business Model

Before starting an online retail business, every smart startup should address the challenge of deciding on an e-commerce business model.

The selected model determines the main aspects of the business, including its purpose and further promotion strategy. Let’s consider which business models are most used today:

1. B2B model is represented by e-commerce businesses selling their products or services to other businesses. GRAINGER.com and FERGUSON.com are examples of prominent B2B e-commerce websites.
2. B2C is a common business model where the products are sold to the end-users. Anchor & Crew and JPMS are great examples of B2C stores.
3. C2B model can be applied if you want to connect customers to businesses. For example, the customer wants to either sell goods to businesses or offer them services. Upwork is one of the earliest innovators in this niche.
4. C2C Generally, this model lets consumers sell or exchange their goods with other consumers directly.

Choose a Domain Name

Prior to your e-commerce development, you should choose and register your small business website’s domain name. Here are a few useful tips you can use at this stage:

Aim for a top-level domain name and extension. About 50% of all websites use the.com extension for their domain names, so for your potential customers, a website URL with a.com extension will be much easier to remember.

Choose an easy-to-type and easy-to-pronounce domain name. To test the chosen name, ask several people to spell it.

Make sure the domain name you want isn’t blacklisted or penalized.

Do not try to choose a domain name that is very similar to another company’s domain name.

Make the domain name instantly intuitive. Your website name must correlate with your brand. If you have a succinct brand name, use it as your domain name, as eBay and others have.Here you can get full information about the steps to create a unique, high-performing online store in a matter of weeks.

I work at Whidegroup, an e-commerce development company, which specializes in providing feature-rich e-commerce solutions in web development, UI/UX and consulting.