The pandemic has accelerated the move to sell and shop online which has changed consumer behaviour immensely in the last two years. A survey revealed that over 70 percent of customers purchased products online in the last 12 months in India and that the internet user base is 622 million now. This shows that building an online store to promote and sell your products is essential in today’s day and age.
Building a website is not a tedious task anymore with the availability of some great website builders and hosting providers in the market. If you want to expand your small business to connect the consumers online or want to start a brand-new online store, read on to know how to set up a store using the powerful WordPress e-commerce website builder.
A step-by-step guide to build your online store
- Find out the best platform to start
The first step to building an online store is to choose the right e-commerce platform. There are plenty of options available. You can choose an e-commerce website builder that suits your niche and business needs. Most people choose WordPress, for it is a powerful yet customizable platform. You can get more out of it with regard to features, design, security, etc.
- Choose a reliable web hosting provider and a plan
With a good quality web host, you can have WooCommerce hosting for your online store to gain exceptional performance and speed. There are some providers offering specific hosting plans for a WordPress website.
You can choose between shared hosting and VPN hosting and go through the plans provided by them. Or else, you can opt for a special WooCommerce hosting plan, which starts from Rs. 799 per month. Such plans come with unmetered bandwidth, free speed-boosting CDN, automatic WooCommerce installation, free call setup, free SSL certificate, etc.
- Register a domain name
A domain name is your website’s address using which the internet users can find your business online. With the best e-commerce platform and plan, you get a domain free for one year, along with the hosting plan. However, you have to choose a suitable domain, which should be short and simple but appealing. Using a combination of keywords related to your business or industry will help your customers know more about your product or brand. Once you have chosen the most suitable domain, you need to register it. Most providers offer domain registration along with the hosting plan.
- Select and customize the template for your store
You can choose from the template library of your B2B e-commerce platform and finalize the template that fits the best for your store. Once the template is chosen, you can use the provided tools to customize it accordingly. Try giving your website a classy yet unique look and feel.
- Add products to your e-commerce store
This is the most important step in the process. While adding products to your store, make sure to add good quality and clear images of your product, to add apt but not so long product descriptions, and to add the dimensions and other attributes of the product. Customers should get a maximum idea about a product, and why they should buy it without scrolling too much.
Once this is done, you need to set up the payment methods based on your business requirements. You can find several add-ons if you are using WooCommerce to install the payment gateways.
As the last step here, set up the shipping methods. Consider adding discount codes, if necessary, options for free shipping, etc., as required for your online store.
- Run a final check before going live!
Now that you are with your own WordPress e-commerce store, go through the entire website one last time to check that everything is intact. Once the detailed testing is done and the payment methods are checked, you are ready to launch your online business.
Conclusion
With the help of top e-commerce platforms, creating an online store has now become a simple task. Once you have a solid business plan, conduct a SWOT analysis and fix target customers. Then, follow the steps explained above to set up your WordPress-based online store successfully.
We at Bluehost also provide additional assistance with our Blue Sky service to help you establish, manage, and grow your WordPress website smoothly.
For more information and tips, head to us WordPress Category page. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to drop them below.
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