How To Plan an E-Commerce Website: A Beginner’s Guide

If you want to start your own e-commerce business, now is the perfect time.

U.S. government data shows e-commerce accounted for 14.5% of all sales in the second quarter of 2022. That’s a huge figure when you consider total retail sales for the period were over $1,776 billion. By 2040, the Nasdaq predicts 95% of all retail sales will happen online.

While there is clear opportunity here,  e-commerce is already a crowded market. There are anywhere between 12 million and 24 million active e-commerce websites globally. But only about 1 million of those websites exceed $1,000 in yearly sales. What this means for you is that you need a value proposition that separates you from your competition.

This article will take you through all the necessary steps to get your new e-commerce website off the ground. Here, you’ll learn how to:

• Purchase a domain name
• Select an e-commerce and website hosting platform
• Customize your design
• Prepare website copy
• Add products
• Develop a plan to measure and track key performance indicators (KPIs)
• Set up payment options
• Determine and enable taxes
• Develop a shipping solution
• Test and launch your site
• Market your site

1. Purchase a domain name

Your domain name, or URL, will represent your brand image. It’s one of the most significant decisions you’ll make about your online store.

There are two major considerations in deciding on a brand name: uniqueness and discoverability.

If you’re going to rely on social media, affiliate marketing, or pay-per-click advertising to drive traffic to your website, a unique brand name will work for you (even if it’s a made-up name like Etsy). On the other hand, if you plan to rely on organic traffic, having a targeted e-commerce keyword like shop, cart, or store in your name will be an advantage. A brand name that combines uniqueness with keywords—like Walmart—is another alternative.

Finally, choose an appropriate domain extension or top-level domain (TLD). The most common is .com, but finding an exact match could be difficult. Other options include .store, .shop, and .mart.

2. Select an e-commerce and website hosting platform

An e-commerce platform is an all-inclusive software solution that enables seamless management of e-commerce functions like sales, marketing, and operations.

A dependable e-commerce platform will offer these benefits:

• Competitive pricing
• Functional integrations and plug-ins
• Editable themes and templates with a website builder
• Speed and scalability
• A straightforward product management system
• Multiple payment gateways with support
• Mobile optimization
• Personalization
• SEO optimization
• Platform security

You need a website hosting platform to get your e-commerce store online for potential customers. There are four types of website hosting:

• Shared hosting. This format involves sharing server space with other websites. It’s cheap but often too slow for an e-commerce website. Bluehost’s shared hosting plans start at $2.95 per month.
• VPS (virtual private server) hosting. This also means shared server space but with isolated resources. It works well for small to medium-sized e-commerce websites. Hostinger’s plans start at $3.49 per month.
• Dedicated hosting. This means you have your own private, physical server. It’s expensive but considered the best choice for e-commerce. GoDaddy’s dedicated server hosting plans start at $129.99 per month.
• Cloud hosting. This option is both scalable and affordable. With cloud hosting, you’ll never outgrow available server space. Hostinger’s cloud hosting plans start at $9.99 per month.

Once again, you must consider several key factors when choosing between competing web-hosting platforms. They include:

• Fast and reliable performance
• High bandwidth and storage capacity
• Scalability
• Dedicated customer support
• Full security with hack-prevention capabilities

Depending on your needs and the size of your e-commerce website, you can choose a hosting plan from GoDaddy or Hostinger.

3. Customize your design

Start with market research on competitor websites and determine which design elements work best for your business and which don’t really fit. You’re free to experiment with fonts, color schemes, and design elements that create a unique look and help your website stand out from the crowd. You’ll want to create a brand identity, so sticking with a cohesive color palette that you’ll use throughout your branding is a smart choice. However, the overall design priority should always be about creating a good customer experience.

With that in mind, here’s what a well-designed website should incorporate:

• Organized structure with product categorization, advanced search functions, and product filtering
• Easy search bar and navigation optimized for both mouse and touch applications
• A responsive design that easily adapts to mobile devices and desktops of all screen sizes
• Professional, high-quality photographs
• A feature-rich environment offering multiple product layouts and custom notifications

Your web design choices speak a lot about the nature and values of your business. Take your time creating an e-commerce site that will appeal to your target audience.

4. Prepare website copy

Effective website copy for an e-commerce business means a lot more than just product descriptions. It also includes your Homepage, About Us, and Mission or Values pages. And all of these, including the product descriptions, should be written in a cohesive voice with on-brand messaging.

This is where e-commerce storytelling comes into play. E-commerce storytelling is about using website copy to create a narrative for your brand and its products—and telling it in a way that captivates your customers and builds brand loyalty. It creates a unified voice that extends from your website to your social media pages, emails, and messages.

Product descriptions are pivotal for e-commerce websites, and you’ll want your brand’s voice to carry into them. Including the standard roster of product details alongside a few boilerplate photos may not cut it in today’s competitive market. Customers expect high-resolution, interactive images. They expect text to answer more than the basic questions, such as compatibility, best-use practices, and social proof.  

You’ll want to give consistent, detailed, well-written messaging across all of your channels to convey a consistent personality that stays on-brand and relates to customers in a positive and enriching way.

5. Add your products

Product pages are the most important part of your e-commerce website. They influence first impressions and help reinforce a product’s quality. Ensure your product pages are curated to offer the best in terms of stand-out images, comprehensive descriptions, and engaging customer experience. Although anyone with a decent camera, a few lights, and some experience can shoot photographs, it’s best to leave e-commerce photography to professionals.

Use two types of photographs for each product:

• Product-only photographs that cover the product from all angles
• In-context photographs that show a person using the product in real-life situations

Image consistency plays a large part in branding your website, so it’s smart to have all your products shot against a common background color. Stick to pre-arranged technical standards for focal length, saturation, composition, and color palette for consistent photographs across product categories.

6. Develop a plan to measure and track key performance indicators (KPIs)

KPIs are a set of metrics businesses can use to measure performance and monitor the success of their e-commerce website against set goals.

Numerous KPIs relate to e-commerce, like sales, business growth, conversion rates, revenue-per-click, customer support targets, and more. You should base selected KPIs on four essential considerations:

• You must be able to measure them accurately
• They should provide real-time data
• They must be actionable so you can make appropriate changes in your business strategy
• They must have a positive impact on your business model

Here are some of the most crucial KPIs for any e-commerce business:

• Average order value
• Average profit margin
• Customer lifetime value
• Customer acquisition cost
• Purchase frequency
• Inventory turnover
• Average session on website
• Social media engagement
• Customer retention rate

That is just a tiny sample of key KPIs for an e-commerce company. Your plan should only include KPIs that are relevant to your business.

7. Set up payment options

Accepting payments for the products sold is one of the most important functions of an e-commerce website.

There are three elements of e-commerce payment processing:

• Payment gateways, where customers enter their payment information
• Payment processors, like Amazon Pay, PayPal, or Stripe, which process and receive payments from customers
• Merchant accounts, where payments are delivered once they have been processed

Today’s customers have varied payment preferences. You should customize your website to accept a wide range of payment options—including credit and debit payments, mobile wallets, buy-now-pay-later solutions, and cryptocurrency.

Your choice of a payment processor must take several considerations into account:

• Security compliance. By law, any company that handles credit card information—receiving, storing, or transmitting such information—must comply with guidelines issued by the Payment Card Industry Data Security (PCI DSS).
• Tokenization. Reliable payment processors convert customer information into a token to protect details from hackers. This is especially important if your e-commerce website lets customers save payment details like their credit card number for future purchases.
• Accepted payment methods. This is a crucial e-commerce solution for any payment processor. The more payment options they allow, the better you can serve customers with diverse payment preferences.
• Fees. Payment processors will typically charge a percentage plus a per-transaction fee. Others charge a monthly subscription fee. For a start-up e-commerce website, you’ll want to have a reasonable fee structure that allows you to grow.

If you run an e-commerce business where products are moving fast and you often run out of inventory, you should enable the Magento-2 out of stock notification. It informs you when you need to reorder products and lets you notify customers when they’re back.

8. Determine and enable taxes

Once you’ve decided on a payment processor, you’ll need to configure it to collect sales taxes from customers at the applicable rates. All online business payment processors are equipped to let you charge and collect taxes on all or select items.

The exact sales tax depends on several factors, like the product category, the state where your customer is based, and, in some cases, your overall sales volume.

9. Develop a shipping solution

Your e-commerce website must have an integrated shipping solution to streamline the order fulfillment process. Integrated shipping lets customers select carriers, shipping methods, and shipping costs. At the same time, they allow e-commerce website operators to print labels and send automatic notifications to customers when their orders ship.

Several popular e-commerce hosting platforms offer shipping as a built-in solution that just needs to be set up. Others will have you connect to third-party shipping providers for an added monthly cost.

If you’re interested in dropshipping, consider using solutions like Shippo and ShipStation. Since dropshipping involves the product moving directly from the manufacturer to the customer, you might be able to reduce your costs since you aren’t storing inventory and are reducing some of the shipping and processing involved.

Research has found that 65% of customers are willing to pay more for faster deliveries. That makes it essential for you to include multiple shipping options on your checkout page. You can choose between offering real-time rates (or the actual cost of shipping for an order), flat rates based on the order amount, and free shipping for select orders or customers.

10. Test and launch your site

The final step before launching your online shopping website is to run a few test orders. Each hosting platform has different testing protocols. However, most of them should allow pre-launch test orders to check all functions, from product selection to shopping cart to payment processing.

Once you’ve completed a few test orders and worked out any bugs that might have surfaced in the process, you’re ready to open for business.

11. Market your site

E-commerce is one of the most saturated online industries; it’ll be tough to make sales until you’ve solidified a client base. To get things going, you’ll need a solid marketing plan designed to build brand awareness, drive sales, and grow your business in a highly competitive environment. Here are five digital marketing strategies to concentrate on:

• SEO. Search engine optimization (SEO) is how you rank in search results and drive traffic to your website. It involves researching and targeting keywords that customers use to search for products online and providing the necessary image and alt tags for search engines to scan your site effectively.
• PPC. Pay-per-click advertising is important for any new e-commerce website and can deliver fast results as long as you’re targeting the right keywords. PPC ads display when searchers type your targeted keywords, and you only pay when people click them.
• Social media. This is the ideal way to spread the word about your new website. Almost 81% of the U.S. population uses social media, making it one of the most lucrative places to advertise and connect with your target audience.
• Content marketing. Quality content can help you boost your search rankings. Useful content is a great draw for new customers. Experiment with a variety of content, including blogs, infographics, guides, and videos.
• Email marketing. This is a great way to engage existing customers while attracting new ones. Use targeted email marketing to advertise new products, send updates, and offer deals and discounts.
• Influencers. You can engage with influencers on social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok to promote your products to their followers. Using micro-influencers or super micro-influencers can lead to particularly high engagement rates.

Save time with an e-commerce expert

Is it possible to build your own e-commerce website from scratch? Of course! But like most entrepreneurs, chances are your time and energy will go toward other aspects of starting the new business—like writing an e-commerce business plan, getting funding, hiring, and working with suppliers.

Hiring an e-commerce expert to develop your website can save a lot of time.

Browse through hundreds of experienced e-commerce professionals who can get your website up and running in no time.

And if you’re an independent professional wanting to work with more e-comm clients, sign up with Upwork today.

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This article is intended for educational purposes and should not be viewed as legal or tax advice. Please consult a professional to find the solution that best fits your situation.

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