Ecommerce is the ever-developing field. The technological advancements open the gateway of opportunity for eCommerce businesses. Do you know when eCommerce business started? It’s way back in 1991, since then to now, there are a whole lot of changes that have happened in the conduction of the businesses online.

There is always a lot of learning involved when it comes to eCommerce. However, the ease at which eCommerce business can be established is more hassle-free now. All thanks to technology again!

The arrival of eCommerce solutions and ecommerce platforms made the ecommerce website building a piece of cake. But, pre-requisite knowledge is fundamental for you to create an online store of yours. Let us guide you through this:

• Decide your business niche:

If you only have the notion of building your eCommerce website, you must know your target industry very well. You may not know much in the beginning, but planned research can lead you through the right path. When you know the target industry, you can decide whether you like to lead a B2B or B2C business. Your choice of the end customer is crucial for you to select the eCommerce platform that you must choose to build an eCommerce website.

• Purchase the domain name:

You can create your store with the eCommerce website builder sites and get the subdomain for your store. However, to build your authenticity as a brand, we recommend you to purchase your personalized domain name. When you own a website, there is a lot that you can experiment with. The renowned domain vendor sites are GoDaddy, Hostgator, Google domains, Bigrock, Namecheap, and a lot more. The cost of the domain name solely depends upon the popularity of the name.

While selecting the domain name for your eCommerce website, try to take a catchy brandable name or keyword reflecting your business. If neither of these goes well, you can take your domain on the name of your brand though that’s not compulsory to do so. You can keep your branding name and domain name distinctly.

You can opt for TLDs like .com, in, .org, .biz, and country-specific domain extensions as well. In most of the packages, you will find an option to renew the domain on a yearly basis. You can make the advance payment in a single go, or you can look for auto-renewal features. Our recommendation would be to opt for auto-renewal so that your website won’t be at risk anyway.

• Select your hosting plans:

When you are building your site on your own or getting it developed via a team of developers or hiring an agency, you have to host your website on the external servers. As a startup, you are probably unaware of the traffic that you will be getting on your site. But, when you are looking for the hosting plan, you must be aware of the estimated traffic, the storage space, security certifications, and type of server you are getting access to. When you opt for the shared hosting, your loading speed of the site will be automatically reduced unless you have unlimited file storage space.

The domain vendors’ sites offer hosting services as well. However, it’s not compulsory for you to purchase the domain and to host from the same vendor site. Mostly when the individuals are building their site on their own, they opt for a starter hosting plan. This can create problems during the website development as it will affect the loading speed of your site. While comparing the website hosting plans, check for the features, limitations, ad-ons, hardware specifications, email features, scalability, security patches, and off-course pricing. Don’t forget to pay attention to the count of years for which the discounted price is offered. For better performance and up-time, we recommend you opt for services from GoDaddy, Hostgator, Hostinger, Bluehost.

Don’t go for the cheap options! We know that you have budget restrictions to handle your eCommerce business in the initial stage, but the hosting will directly affect your customer experience. A poor hosting plan may take your site down multiple times and give reduced loading speed. With so many options available online to shop from, a visitor to your site won’t wait for a longer time to let your site load and leave. It will improve the bounce rate and reduce chances for customer interaction with your store. That’s why you must be very cautious while selecting the hosting plan for your store.

• Design your eCommerce store:

When you hire a web development company, you can rely on them for handling all the backend technicalities of building and launching your online store. From payment gateway installation to the security patches is now their worry. So, you can stay relax and wait for the launch of your site.

But, if you are creating your eCommerce website on your own, website builders can be a lot more helpful for you. Some of the hosting companies offer the website builder tool for free to empower you to build your store with a simple drag-and-drop design editor tool. In this condition, you have to select the appropriate payment gateway for your online store that meets the PCI DSS standards as well. Next, you have to check for API integration of the shipping services that you will opt for courier delivery, so your order processing will be streamlined. To experiment with the customization tricks on your store and develop it to the next level, you need to gain the technical skills to code it. The knowledge of HTML, PHP, CSS can serve the necessary requirements, but expertise will be required for you to have a professional take on it.

If you want your eCommerce activities to be streamlined in a set fashion, you can also look for eCommerce platforms to build and manage your online business.

Do you want to get rid of all these troubles?

Indeed that’s so possible now!

You can keep all this trouble aside by choosing the eCommerce platforms like Builderfly.

To start building your eCommerce website, you simply have to register your business with us.

We host your websites on our cloud-based server, so you don’t have to worry much about choosing the plan. Your website, maintenance, uptime, is solely our responsibility. You can check for space you will offer for storage and can connect with us for further queries.

Builderfly = Website builder + Mobile app builder + Ecommerce management tools

With Builderfly’s intuitive website builder, you can give a professional look to your store by opting for niche-specific exclusively designed eCommerce themes. We have ready-to-implement templates designed for different sections of your store. You can choose any of them to customize your store as per your choice.

If you are a techno brain, there is a lot that you can do! We enable you to access the source code of the theme as well as HTML/CSS codes for different sections of your store. When you replace one of the templates of any section with the other, you can edit that template as well, by updating HTML/CSS code in the backend. It’s not as problematic as it seems, but it empowers you to make the change by learning small tidbits from the online resources.

In this way, you can build your store exactly the way you want it to look!

Our store builder will get you a fully-functional store ready to launch. You can replace the content as well as a catalog with the offerings of your store. When talking about the policy pages, we have them ready for you. You simply have to add them and check if they are well-composed or not. In case you feel like updating it as per your requirements, you can do so from the backend of your site or the site editor.

Initially, you will have the subdomain link ready for your store. It will be the primary link for your store; you can search as your-store.builderfly.com. By connecting your link, you can personalize your store and let your customers find you as your-store.com. Later, it will be a secondary link to your store. You can remove it on your choice, but we recommend it to remain as it is. Consider it as a backup option. If your domain expires, your data can be fetched via your secondary link address. Also, when your subscription plan ends until you renew it, we have your data at our server linked to your secondary domain.

Your eCommerce store is ready now!

Irrespective of the path you take to build your online store, by using these basics, your online store will be ready. Now, it’s crucial for you to check your store before you make it live for your customers. In order to test your eCommerce website, follow the checklist below:

• Check the front-end of your website
• Recheck your product detail pages
• Blogs and media pages that can add value to your site
• Customer checkout, shopping cart pages
• Order fulfillment process
• Payment processing
• Policy pages
• Customer support modes & response timing

That’s all for now, for any other queries, feel free to write to us at support@builderfly.com.