In this era of online sales and marketing where numerous large-scale businesses are benefiting from having online stores, understanding the importance and the need to create an e-commerce website to maximize your existing business, is very important. The surge of e-commerce is at an all-time high and the trend is likely to gather even greater momentum. Increased market sales and a global reach reinforce the fact that e-commerce is here to stay!

Most small and medium scale enterprises face some major challenges, of which lack of awareness about technology and marketing tools stand out as prominent roadblocks.

In this scenario, an inexpensive and effective solution is to create a DIY (do-it-yourself) e-commerce website step by step. An e-commerce platform like LINKER.store makes it incredibly easy to set up and create your very own customised online store. The icing on the cake is that LINKER.store is absolutely free! Having an e-commerce website helps create brand awareness, improve customer reach and expand your market globally.

6 key points to help you get started with creating your e-commerce website

It is a common practice for business owners to constantly upgrade their brick and mortar stores functionally and aesthetically as per the time of year or for festivals and special occasions. The same needs to be done for your online store. The process to create an e-commerce website from scratch can in fact be quite simple and hassle-free.   

Below are few key points to get you started:

1. Hire a developer or use a DIY solution

Hiring a good developer may prove to be challenging for an SME as it requires extensive research and considerable resources. On the other hand, utilising a DIY e-commerce website builder where you can easily register and set up your store is much lighter on the pocket. LINKER.store allows you to register and create your e-commerce website for free. You just have to create an account, add the products to your store, provide business verification details and voila! You have it. Your very own e-commerce store. A customised e-store will ensure greater brand recognition and an opportunity to increase sales and expand your customer base. Setting up an e-store will also allow you to connect with customers globally, thereby overcoming the geographic limitations of a brick and mortar store.

2. Beat the obsolescence

With rapid advancements in technology the biggest challenge any business faces is being obsolete or not relevant in the changing times. By leveraging a solution like LINKER.store an SME can safeguard themselves against obsolescence as DIY e-commerce website builders keep upgrading and equipping themselves with latest features and technology.  

3. Adopt a mobile first approach

The world is increasingly adopting smart technology. 36% of the world's population uses smartphones. Therefore, adopting a mobile first approach while creating your e-commerce website will benefit you. The mobile first approach is a term used while developing an online application or a website. Now imagine you are trying to open a desktop friendly website on your phone and you constantly have to adjust your eyes or zoom in and zoom out to view the entire website. This isn’t very convenient, right? The mobile first approach ensures that you start the product design from the mobile end and then move up to tablets and computers. This enables the web to fit the screen size of different devices automatically. DIY e-commerce website builder like LINKER.store also provides their users with beautiful design themes which are developed using this approach.

4. Keep navigation and product discovery simple

A poor navigation can sabotage your e-commerce website. Having a user-friendly navigation is the key to attract and retain more customers. Unless a user is provided with a seamless browsing experience, it is highly likely that they won’t be returning to your site.

A well-structured site has the following benefits:

• Quicker product discovery
• Lesser steps, enabling customers to swiftly get to their desired products
• Allowing customers the flexibility of choosing filters such as price range, colours, size etc

5. Set effective meta tags and meta descriptions

When you are setting up an e-commerce website, it is very important that you create the right meta tags and descriptions. Not doing so will affect your rankings and visibility. The importance of meta description for SEO can’t be stressed enough. A powerful meta description has the potential to improve the click through rate of your organic search results. This automatically means you will get more traffic directed to your page.

6. Stay in touch with your visitors

The key to running a successful website is to get your e-commerce SEO right. Getting the right amount of traffic is what business owners strive for. SEO ensures you get organic traffic directed to your website, thereby improving your searchability. Website technical tools like the webmaster also helps you evaluate and maintain your website’s performance in search results. SEO also lets you keep a track of the all the customers who visited your page, whether the visit ended in a sale or not, how many customers are visiting your page on a regular basis and so on. By keeping a track of these factors, you can:

• Create mailer alerts specific to customers
• Create a newsletter list by adding a subscribe button to your website (this will help you get in touch with your customers for special announcements and promotional offers)
• Generate some special offers to invite more traffic to your website
• Be in touch with your visitors
• Improve your website content and thereby improve sales

Another point is to make sure you install remarketing codes on your website to track your visitors who have already made a purchase or shown interest in your store. With the help of these codes you can show them custom ads which will lead to better conversion.

We hope this article helps you get started with online sales. And now that you know how online stores can increase your sales by leaps and bounds, get started with it and never worry about having a bad sales day.

Sign Up on LINKER.store and create your very own e-commerce website for free.