If you have arrived at this article, you probably want to create an ecommerce and have some doubts about the process of creating it, what is it for, or some points and factors that you should consider the time of its creation.
Creating an ecommerce is an important step, and requires as much work as a physical business, so it is necessary to dedicate time not only to meet the possible order and customers, you must also work, making continuous developments with the aim of improving the user experience on the page and facilitate purchasing processes.
What are ecommerce
An ecommerce is a online sales platform , with which you can sell products and services through online payment systems.
Generally, they tend to be product stores, but we can also find course platforms, tools, online services, etc.
Types of ecommerce
The ecommerce, can be classified according to the type of audience to which you want to focus. These are:
B2B
Business to Business . This type of ecommerce, are companies that sell products or specialized services for other companies.
B2C
Business to Consumer . They are companies that use their ecommerce to sell the product to the final consumer, without going through another intermediary company.
C2B
Consumer to Business . This model is the inverted version of the previous one, where the consumer is placed at the service of the companies. Clear examples of this model can be the pages for hiring freelancers.
C2C
Consumer to Consumer . These are pages where the consumer makes himself available to the consumer. In ebay or airbnb type pages, this happens.
The best ecommerce platforms
Once we have seen the types of ecommerce, it is necessary to know which platforms we can work on and which one best suits the needs of our project.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce works in conjunction with WordPress , a centralized platform in web services and blogs, but with this powerful plugin, we can add the functionality of online store.
You can create it for free and after a few clicks, in addition, if you need some specific development, it can be much easier to find a person who develops the work (if it does not already exist) since has a large community.
The downside, is that needs more extensions that you must install for almost anything quite basic.
PrestaShop
This platform is specialized in online stores . It has a large community behind it, although not as big as the previous one, but it works much better for online stores.
It’s something more complex to manage but it has enough features.
Magento
For developers it is much easier to create developments on this platform, because it is quite scalable. In addition, it is created thinking about SEO and web security.
The bad thing about this platform is that very difficult to manage , especially for those who are not developers
OpenCart
This platform has more functionality than WooCommerce but less than PrestaShop , it is an intermediate step between both, besides that the management is quite simple.
On the other hand, the designs that it offers are usually something old, so you may need to develop a design.
osCommerce
It’s a bit old platform, but it has a huge community behind it and it’s quite easy to manage and create ecommerce.
Not recommended for large stores because is not scalable .
Open Real Estate
It is a specialized platform for the sale of real estate and territories so it works quite well for this type of ecommerce, but does not work so well for other types of ecommerce that are not from your niche since it is quite specialized.
Almost anything you need for this platform will take some development or payment.
Steps to create an ecommerce
So far, we have identified the existing ecommerce types and platforms , so you probably already have an idea of what you want to work on.
Now it is necessary to know what steps we should follow in the creation of our store and the points to take into account.
Analysis of the environment
It is convenient that we first carry out a internal analysis and an external one , with the aim of detecting everything that may affect the project and future strategies that we carry out
Some elements that we can investigate can be competitive strategies, competitors, distance from them, the image we are going to offer, the resources we have, functionalities will be prioritized in the project, etc.
DAFO
Once we have made our analysis with all the information, we will proceed to create a SWOT board , which will help us detect our weaknesses, threats, strengths and opportunities.
The SWOT will look something like this:
This will not be much easier to develop our strategy, as well as visualize our weaknesses and what we should support.
Competitive advantage
The competitive advantage is usually quite useful to establish the different prices of our products or services in our ecommerce platform.
With the analysis made at the beginning, looking at the prices of the competition and the quality it offers, in addition to our SWOT analysis, it will be much easier for us to understand the concept and set a final price.
Buyer person
The buyer person is the definition of our perfect client based on different variables , such as age, gender, salary range, if they have children, their marital status, the sector they are in. dedicate, etc.
You can define several types of profiles, but to understand this, it will always be much easier to sell a high-end phone to people with higher salary ranges or women’s shirts to women, as well as men’s shirts to men.
It may seem that our type of audience is everyone, but there is always one much more prone than another.
The ecommerce
For the creation of ecommerce, it is necessary to take into account some points that will be very important, for example, that people remember us, offer better service, etc.
Name
The first thing we have to think about is the store name and our domain. If we already have a physical store and want to create an online store, it is recommended that we use the same name.
On the other hand, if the store is new, we can use a name that is easy to remember or use a word that has searches and understand that the store is a specialist in that product or service.
The use of the word that have searches in the domain, is only recommended if the product or service is a niche.
Products or services
It is important that we select the products or services that we are going to market in our ecommerce platform when we create it, as well as which ones we want to highlight.
If our list of products is very large and we must upload all of them manually, it is recommended to make a prioritization system .
This prioritization system will depend on the analysis made at the beginning.
Hosting
It is highly recommended to hire a good hosting provider , which makes our website work quickly , because the slower our website is, the less sales we will generate when we give a bad experience to the user.
For every second that the speed of the web improves, you can increase conversions by up to 30%.
Technological platform
We have previously seen all the existing platforms, now it is only necessary to see with our analysis, which is best suited based on our needs , knowledge and resources.
Attractive and intuitive design
The web design is a critical piece if we want to improve our sales. Offering a design that is attractive to the user, intuitive and that transmits the image of our brand, as well as sufficient security for the user to make a purchase, is something quite complex.
There are many resources on the network, but it is always better to have the help of experts to carry out this task .
Define the types of payments
Something quite important, is to define the form of payment that users can make on the platform. Today there are numerouss platforms and systems that we can connect to our ecommerce and that guarantee the user confidence in using these payment platforms.
From transfers, through tpv banks or platforms as a stripe, in addition to the classic paypal, are some of the possible options.
Define the transport company for online stores
If we offer a service, it will not be necessary to take this into account, but if we sell products we will have to study the different shipping options to offer the user, as well as the cost of hiring each one of them. these companies.
There are many companies so it is advisable to inquire about the prices and services of each of them.
Logistics
Whether a company of products or services, we must take into account the logistics of our company to control all internal management , until we finally deliver the product to the client or complete the contracted service. < br>
To do this, it is convenient to create a work system that follows all the evolution of the order and that is easily scalable .
Marketing
It is important to have a good dissemination strategy to publicize our ecommerce. For this, there are different types of strategies that we can create and try to adapt it to our growth.
It is important to study especially the competition , to try to follow and improve their communication strategies, besides being creative to differentiate ourselves from them.
A follow-up and analytical process must also be taken into account, which detects navigation problems or features of interest to the user, and continuous evolution to our store , always in parallel with the growth of this.
Pricing policy
Finally, we must establish a pricing policy of our products or services, as well as detect key dates, where to raise or lower the prices of these.
That’s because on certain dates, it is much easier to sell than in others, so if we establish a good price policy in parallel to our marketing strategy, we can improve our sales.
Conclusions
As you can see, creating an ecommerce is a fairly complex process , and although it is a process that can be done by yourself, it is highly recommended to go hand in hand with experts that help us in the whole process and can help us improve.
If you need recommendations on the type of platform you need based on the project, we can advise you and develop the whole system ecommerce for you, including the design and marketing part, you just have to request more information about our services for ecommerce.