How to Build a Successful E-Commerce Store

Launching an e-commerce store is a popular route for entrepreneurs to take. The thought of opening a physical retail outlet isn’t very appealing in 2020, but here’s what you need to know to build your own e-commerce store.

Pick a Business Name and Buy Your Domain

It is worth putting some serious thought into the name that you choose for your business. A name that is memorable and catchy is much more likely to stick in an audience's head and will benefit your marketing enormously. On the other hand, a long and unwieldy name is going to present some practical challenges as far as developing marketing materials.

That's not to say that longer names cannot work. However, if you choose a particularly long name for your business, then you need to think about how you are going to approach your domain name and social media profiles. If there is an obvious short form for a longer name, then you can use that to make your business easier to find online.

Decide How You Will Build Your Website

Every e-commerce business needs a website. In fact, the quality of your website will have a considerable impact on how attractive your business is the customers. No one wants to spend their hard-earned money with an online business that they cannot trust. Having a cheap and lazy website is a guaranteed way of eroding customer trust in your business.

On the other hand, if they see a professional-looking website that is intuitive and easy to use them, they will be falling over themselves in their rush to spend money with you. Your website will instantly seem more trustworthy if you are using established payment processors or a reputable e-commerce platform.

If you are feeling brave then you can build your own e-commerce website entirely from scratch. However, this is going to be the most expensive and most risky way of approaching it.

Work Out Your Marketing Strategy

Once you have built your e-commerce store, you then need to let people know that it exists. The decisions you make in how to market your business are going to have a significant impact on your chances of success. A solid marketing strategy can help a brand-new business to start raking in orders as soon as possible. On the other hand, an e-commerce store that launches without any idea of how to market itself is going to have some significant barriers to overcome before it can start making money.

In the short-term, you can drum up traffic to your store by simply getting your marketing in front of as many people as possible. If you put enough links to your business out there, then people will inevitably start to follow them. However, this is not a sustainable long-term marketing strategy and you need to get creative if you want to be able to sustain and grow the volume of traffic to your store.

Building a successful e-commerce store doesn’t have to be difficult. By targeting the right areas beforehand, you can ensure that your launch is as smooth as possible.

Silvia Mazzetta

Web Developer, Blogger, Creative Thinker, Social media enthusiast, Italian expat in Spain, mom of little 9 years old geek, founder of  @manoweb. A strong conceptual and creative thinker who has a keen interest in all things relate to the Internet. A technically savvy web developer, who has multiple  years of website design expertise behind her.  She turns conceptual ideas into highly creative visual digital products.