eCommerce is growing faster than you can read this line. According to Kinsta, It is estimated that more than 95% of all purchases will be made online by 2040. In the year 2017, more than 2.3 trillion in sales and this number is set to double to about $4.5 trillion by the year 2021.
You could be selling your services. Or perhaps you might want to try Dropshipping or Print-On-Demand. Or maybe you’ll go all out and do actual eCommerce with respect to products.
Whatever you do, you are right in the flux of rapid eCommerce growth globally. Now is as much better time as any to get started with your eCommerce store the right way.
There are three broad areas that you’d need to take care of when it comes to your eCommerce store.
How to Find eCommerce Business Ideas
The most important thing about your idea is that it doesn’t have to be innovative (so much so that no one ever heard of it).
Instead, you could take an existing idea and tweak it a little (aim to do it 10% better than others do, or 10% faster maybe?).
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So, what’s your big idea?
Is it something innovative or a better variation of what already exists? Are you selling products or services? Are you selling memberships, online courses, or digital products? Do you want to sell physical products?
Think about it. While you are at it, here’s some inspiration for you:
Read:
The 17 Best Places Ecommerce Entrepreneurs Go To Find Product Ideas 💡💡💡
Stay Sexy, Don’t Get Murdered, Build an Empire
From a Viral Idea to a Product in 60 Days #ecommerce #MVP
Create eCommerce stores: Get the right foundation
Without the right foundation for your eCommerce store, you’d go too far with whatever it is that you are starting. It’s like you can even keep your opinion (whatever that is) about which CMS to use for eCommerce, whether or not you should invest in better hosting (hint: there are several options for hosting, depending on the decisions you make), and more.
Here are some of the best ways to create eCommerce stores that are built to last:
Embrace Shopify (or WordPress)
Don’t want to deal with servers, CDN, server management, website upkeep, eCommerce site security, compliance, and all of that stuff that comes with running and creating an eCommerce store? Use Shopify. Period.
When you use Shopify, you don’t deal with server management, CDN, upkeep, security, or compliance (like PCI compliance for eCommerce). You just choose a theme (paid or free) and get started.
Upload your products, write great product descriptions, and just go live. The focus, when you start with Shopify, is purely on marketing your eCommerce store and getting leads or sales.
Shopify truly leads the way when it comes to building eCommerce stores. It’s also the most secure, efficient, and fastest way to go live with eCommerce today.
If you are familiar with WordPress and love it, be sure to choose reliable eCommerce hosting solutions for your business. Note that you’d have to actively manage your WordPress store (on top of marketing and conversion optimization work)
But, if you don’t want to for whatever reason, then you have options:
Get The Power of NoCode With Webflow
Webflow has grown from a simple drag-and-drop, #nocode website building tool to a comprehensive suite that can help you create eCommerce websites (among several other types of websites such as simple business websites, blogs, real estate websites, and other complex website types) giving WordPress a run for leading position when it comes to choice.
Webflow eCommerce was first launched with only Stripe as the option for payment processor that you could use then.
Now that Webflow has both Stripe and Paypal Checkouts enabled, build a complete eCommerce store using pure HTML/CSS with Webflow — the world’s most advanced builder.
Webflow enables you to accept other payment processors as well such as PayPal (thereby opening itself for use across the world where PayPal is accepted).
There are several pre-built eCommerce templates that you could pick up and use, including the free (and popular) Prospero UI Kit
Webflow allows you to complete design freedom to design your eCommerce stores the way you like them, including customizing the checkout flow for your eCommerce store. That’s a winner in an age when you are restricted by templates when it comes to design.
Create eCommerce Stores with WordPress (+WooCommerce)
The days of WordPress being clunky have changed. There’s WP Engine with eCommerce Optimized services and managed hosting for eCommerce.
There’s Elementor with optimized WooCommerce layouts, themes, and elements.
WordPress is unbeatable when it comes to the sheer flexibility and choice available for you when you decide to create eCommerce websites, built on WordPress.
However, it’s not as simple as picking up some random hosting, choosing a theme, and just going live with your eCommerce store on WordPress.
This is eCommerce we are talking about. You want your website to load fast, be secure (almost bullet-proof), and expertly managed (which you simply won’t have the time to do).
That’s why you’d need to do the following (before you do anything else):
- Pick managed hosting from the following leading hosting providers: WPEngine, Flywheel, Kinsta, or 10Web. If you are capable of going a little deeper with hosting and if you want more options to choose from options such as from DigitalOcean, Vultr, Google Cloud, or Amazon Web Services, you could also choose Cloudways and deploy WordPress on it.
- Choose an appropriate WordPress page builder such as from Elementor (along with the Ultimate Addons for Elementor and Crocoblock ), Divi, or Beaver Builder (along with Ultimate Addons for Beaver Builder).
- Choose from the various pre-made eCommerce sites from Astra, Premade templates or sites from Crocoblock, or one of the several eCommerce-ready templates from Divi or Elementor.
Create eCommerce Stores with Simvoly
Simvoly started out as a simple web page builder. Then, they launched a complete Whitelabel eCommerce system that you could take advantage of. Simvoly also has landing pages, funnels, and pop-ups. Now, Simvoly also has complete eCommerce enabled on any of the pages you design.
As if that wasn’t enough, Simvoly is a true drag-and-drop system to build absolutely anything you like. So, you could:
- Create complete, marketing-ready eCommerce websites or regular websites (with funnels, pop-ups, and landing pages within Simvoly)
- Develop standalone sales funnels, pop-ups, and landing pages.
- Create beautiful eCommerce websites (with the ability to upsell and cross-sell, thereby pushing your chances of generating more revenue).
- Start out providing Whitelabel services for your clients with The Simvoly Whitelabel program.
Which route will you pick when it comes to creating your eCommerce store?