How to Build an Ecommerce Website

E-Commerce has been one of the fastest growing sections since the last decade or so. How to build an ecommerce website – This question is frequently asked by many people.  People prefer to buy on the World Wide Web as it is much convenient rather than shopping from brick and mortar stores. The number of online shoppers has increased manifold and new e-commerce stores have been mushrooming everyday by thousands.

Exclusive deals and bargains offered quite frequently to shoppers makes it worthwhile and attractive for them. You can work with an e-commerce platform provider for setting up an online store. Here is a guide which will help you learn the basics of how to build an ecommerce website, while learning to set it up with an e-commerce platform, payment gateway and figuring out the best security features for your website.

Selecting Your E Commerce Platform

The two most common platforms on which E-commerce websites are hosted is Magento and Shopify. Both platforms have their set of advantages as well as disadvantages. Joomla is a free and open source CMS for publishing web content. It is easy to use and is one of the most popular website software available. Web Designers and Web Developers can use this software to build websites for clients with minimum amount of instruction. It is quite easy to manage your site using this. Joomla increases the usage of shopping cart which makes it easy for users to operate for the front end users and the webmasters as well.

Shopify is also quite a popular platform for e-commerce websites. You can also integrate Paypal, Google Payments and Shopify’s own payment processor. The other major advantage is that it is quite a user friendly platform and it is quite easy to set up a store and it has a variety of theme options which are offered both free and paid as well. The layouts can also be changed and designed in various ways using different colours, variations and design custom pages of the website. Other advantages include having contemporary templates, excellent customer service and affordable package plans which make it one of the most preferred platforms for e-commerce website owner.

Hosting Provider

Web Hosting is absolutely necessary to set up your website. Some of the most popular ones are Go Daddy, Affinity Internet, etc etc.  However as a small business owner some small business owners also prefer to sue local hosting providers. It is up to the discretion of the owner that which are the features they are looking for which they want to be included in their hosting package. 24 hours Customer support and other features are also some of the things you should be looking for in any hosting package. In fact some hosting companies offer a combo of various site building tools, shopping cart, tracking, domain registration, shipping and the basic hosting itself.

Picking a Payment Solution

The next step is to select a way to accept payments on your website. There are two categories – payment processor and payment gateway. Some of the most popular ones are- CyberSource and Authorize.Net. Another convenient and inexpensive way of handling payment transactions and accepting online payments is Paypal through which you can let an email. An even less expensive way to get started accepting online payments is to use PayPal , a system that lets anyone with an e-mail address securely send and receive online payments using a credit card or bank account.

You should make consideration about the transaction and service fees that every provider charges. You also need to understand that whether the payment services provider you are being offered actually offers automatic calculation for tax calculations. You also require to find out whether the processor lets you calculate the shipping costs automatically. This will surely help you in reducing the headaches and save yourself from botheration.

Security of the website

A beautiful web design and a smooth functioning integrated with the payment system is a great asset, however it is of no value in case you are unable to protect your customers from fraud. In this modern world of the virtual space, security is a major concern for customers who are online shoppers. The good news is that SSL security protects your website from fraudsters.

Having a SSL certificate will enable you to avoid cybercriminals to create any damage and interrupt any financial data associated with your website. A SSL certificate display surely instills confidence in your customers and increases their trust on your website for performing financial transactions. SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer and these are basically small data files that encrypts information sent using SSL technology. When any website user sends confidential; information to a web server the browser accesses digital certificate of the server and establishes a secure connection.

Shopping Cart

It is quite understood that shopping cart is the lifeline of any e-commerce website. While finalizing and taking a decision for selecting a shopping cart, it becomes quite important to pick the one that can be customized and personalized as per your business and flexible which grows along with the business. Select an option which is built around HTML5 and CSS3 and helps your customers access it across different devices as well as browsers. Prefer a shopping cart solution which has been around for minimum 10 years.

A shopping cart brand which offers online support resources and are design friendly will enable to create amazing ecommerce websites. Some of the popular brands are 3DCart, AgoraCart, ProductCart, CubeCart and so forth. Shopping carts act as an online store catalog as they also provide your customers a proper user interface while handling the ordering process and is the interface of the website as well as the payment gateway. As another option for business owners, you can also design your own shopping cart or integrate a standalone shopping cart.

These are all the major steps which will help you in designing an e-commerce website. It might not be the easiest mission you have attempted, however its worth all the efforts and hard work you have put in while building your first e-commerce website.