A simple formula has defined business success for centuries - Try to secure a good spot for your Business to attract more fall foots or operate at a lower cost to pocket more profits.
Now, in the 21st century, it's not that simple. Even large, vocal brands often need help to connect with modern consumers. The physical location can be a nuisance than a convenience for businesses, and even a small store can be operated with a less budget and no inventory.
Having your own eCommerce store is an excellent way to expand your brand online and attract more customers. The best part of an eCommerce store is that it can be perfectly manageable.
Additionally, it can also be a great add-on to your physical store. Multiple advantages when you create your online store include 24/7 availability and low operating costs. But the most remarkable thing is; it's very cheap and easy to set up.
The above benefits make it easier for digital-first retail brands to carve out a spot even in the most saturated markets. Therefore, you have plenty of headroom if you plan to create your online store.
With Typof, setting up an online shop in just a few clicks takes minutes. Choose one of our pre-made designs, add categories, add your products, and set up your payment methods, and you're done! Here are the steps for creating and launching your store:
5 Steps To Create Your Online Store
A functional, simple, yet highly efficient software like Typof can launch a website that enables you to sell products. However, how do you keep growing past the "minimum viable product" and take your business to the next level? Read to know how.
Whether you're just getting started with your side-project-turned-venture or if you already own a business and want to expand it online, this detailed article will guide you through the process from beginning to end.
- Choose your eCommerce Website Builder
- Add Categories
- Add your Products
- Set theme using theme edior
Let's dive in it one-by-one.
1. Choose your eCommerce Website Builder.
The initial step is to choose a reliable eCommerce website builder platform like Typof. Those who haven't already signed up on the website can sign up by providing basic details like a contact number and email address. After this, they will get a verification mail on the registered address. Verify it and login into the Typof website.
2. Add categories
The standard website navigation helps create and manage relationships between different product pages. For example, Product categories are needed to show your catalog and make it more discoverable.
Let's take an example - Most garment retailers go with "men's, women's, accessories, new in and sale." categories. Most eCommerce websites with more extensive stock also add bonus categories to facilitate discovery. Frequently, there are based on typical customer search queries or seasonality.
Around Christmas or festival time, you can also add "gift categories" or "Featured sustainable brands" in case that's a rising demand among your target audience.
You can use categories like "Topwear," "Bottomwear," etc., along with extra filters when designing product category pages to help customers narrow their choices. "Size," "Price range," "Colour," "Material," etc. are the handy ones.
3. Add your products
To make your store easier to shop in and your products easy to find, you should set up your product category pages, upload product images that will sell, and write great product descriptions.
Product descriptions
A product description is persuasive if it addresses the customer's problem, highlights the primary benefits to prompt a sale, and lists the product's features.
The key to product descriptions that convert is a formula that most pro copywriters use:
- To explain who this product is for.
- To list the essential product characteristics (size, material, etc.).
- To suggest when someone needs this product.
- To help the buyer envision where they'll use it.
Keep your product description devoid of the following:
- Complex jargon
- Clichés or odd pop-culture references
- Long rambling sentences
Product images
- You should not skimp on product photography.
- Hire a professional photographer for the photo shoot if you can afford it.
- Create a DIY photography setup for shooting attractive eCommerce photos if you can't. Here is a tutorial for you.
- Consider getting a 360-degree photo for higher-value items like clothing, furniture, equipment, or certain types of garments. As per Webrotate 360, business owners report a 5% to 40% increase in online sales just after adding a 360 product view functionality to their website.
Theme Sections
These sections are parts of your theme that can be customized when you create your store online. You can add, reorder, and remove content on your store's home page. In each theme, there lie its sections to choose from. These sections enable you to pick the types and the order of content you want on your homepage—for example, slideshows, collections, videos, and featured products.
You can add different types of content inside each section. Such content types make up the content inside each section of your homepage. In a theme, each section has its content types that you can add, for example, products, images, or text, giving you complete flexibility to create your online store as per your branding.
Fixed sections
Some sections, like the theme's Header and Footer, cannot be moved. However, you can customize their content the way you want.
4. Set theme using theme editor
It allows you to add and reorder sections in your theme. The theme editor menu appears on the upper side of your browser window: The theme editor is given two options: General and additional settings.
In the General tab, you can see the page content available with your plan. Each part of a page is called a section, and you can customize it, add more themes, and move sections around on the page and to your online.
The Additional Settings tab allows you to make changes to your store, which includes fonts, text, and background color with links to your official social media accounts.
Your website is ready!
You are finally ready to launch. You can remove the "my password" page (under Settings > Preferences) and start telling the world that you are open for business.
The entire journey to create your online store ends here for your store with Typof. However, it's just the beginning for you. Below mentioned are some next steps and resources to help you ramp up your business after launching:
Things to Do Before Going Live with Your eCommerce Store
- Be well organized
The most important thing is always to be organized. Time loss from disorganization amounts to 38 hours per person per year. This could be due to the duplication of effort and communication errors. The checklist is a great start to being organized. You must ensure that you know everything that needs to be done on schedule and what you need to accomplish.
- Test your product
You must ensure that your product is A+ before it is shipped to paying customers. Does it look exciting enough? Does your product work as it should? The test is getting it in front of your target market and getting all their feedback. This need to be considered before you create your online store, as it will help you keep from having a lot of customer complaints.
- Check your shipping logistics
Fulfillment can be a complex process due to all the moving parts. Ensure that everyone involved is in sync. The people fulfilling the order need to know when it has been placed, and you need to know when it has been shipped.Customers expect messages confirming their purchase, notifying them when it has been shipped, and notifying them that it has been delivered. Communication is so effortless these days that if people don't hear these updates, they will be uneasy.
- Include the correct information
In addition to the great product pages you have created, an About us page, a Contact Us page, and an FAQ page will increase conversions and create less work for you in the long run.People visit FAQ pages in eCommerce to learn more about your return policy, whether you do gift wrapping, how your products are made, etc. Any common questions you can answer here, you won't need to have a person manually answering, and you won't lose out on a sale because they couldn't easily find the information.
- Make sure payments are being processed correctly
A payment processor is a must to have a sustainable online business. When you're launching your eCommerce shop, you need to be able to accept payments automatically. You'll also want to accept your buyers' most common payment methods – as a minimum, start with Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal, and add more local payment methods later, depending on your key markets.
And That's all that you need to kickstart your dream of building a sucessfull eCommerce store.