Te market's consumption logic has changed a lot in the last decade and continues to change more and more. With the digital transformation, many businesses had to adapt to keep growing and gain a competitive advantage. Thus, the internet and search engines gained great space in the purchase process and today are, in most cases, decisive elements in the decision-making process.
Therefore, many entrepreneurs are looking to migrate from traditional retail to e-commerce. That's why we've separated here the best practices for you to know exactly how to set up an e-commerce and expand your sales even further.
Initial steps for creating an online store
The first step of the tutorial on how to set up e-commerce is to buy the domain of your virtual store. You can see if the domain you want is available for purchase and choose how long you want to extend the initial contract.
The next step is to choose the hosting for your website. Hosting is nothing more than a storage provider, where all information, files, documents and images will be located so that they are always available when a user accesses your domain. To choose the best hosting for your website, consider the following criteria:
Availability;
Safety;
Free SSL;
Server region (the closer to you, the better);
IP range quality (to avoid blacklists).
Next, you will need to choose your e-commerce platform and a monthly fee plan. Don't worry too much about these prices, there is a great diversity of plans that fit in any budget.
Choose and install payment options
Typically, the most complete e-commerce platforms already come with several payment options. The process works as follows; the tool receives the payment data, confirms the transaction with the bank or credit card company, releases it so that the seller can send the order and after this process, the money goes to the seller company's bank account.
If you have opted for a cheaper e-commerce plan that does not include payment options, opt for traditional methods and payment companies with wide coverage and well known by consumers, such as PayPal and similar.
Register and organize your products
The third and most strategic step in setting up your e-commerce is to organize your virtual store. So remember; you have to always think about the customer and how easy it is to buy from him. Then, create categories and specify the products as much as possible, place measurements, material characteristics, etc. Here are the best practices to have a virtual store with great usability:
Register the products and put as much information as possible (in an organized way);
Have a striking visual identity and don't forget to have your company's store on every page of the site;
Have an About page and a Contact page: this conveys trustworthiness to the customer;
Specify payment methods even before check out;
Have an area dedicated to banners, where promotions and news will be placed.
Optimize check out
According to E-commerce Radar, the average cart abandonment rate is 82%. One of the main reasons people put products in the cart and don't buy is the complexity of checkout.
So don't extrapolate at this stage; be as objective as possible and ask only for essential information. In addition, offering multiple forms of payment and having friendly shipping that is not too expensive can greatly increase your sales conversion rates.
Finally, another point that helps a lot is having a chat on the site so that customers can clear up any doubts during the purchase process. Thus, consumers will feel more secure and will be more likely to place an order at your store.
Monitor your results
Nobody hits a first-rate online sales strategy, especially if the company doesn't have experience with internet sales. However, this can be easily resolved just by tracking the results and optimizing your strategy according to data analysis. After all, it's no use following all these steps on how to set up an e-commerce and not having a regular follow-up.
Number of visitors, conversion rate, number of clicks, all of these (and many others) are essential indicators for you to monitor the performance of your online store. To be successful in this process, you need to track and analyse these strategic KPIs.
Start now!
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