How To Build An eCommerce Website From Scratch? (2024 Guide)

Today, when everything and anything is available at the click of a button, buyers as well as sellers of a product or a service are becoming more keen to grow their businesses with the help of ecommerce. This not only creates a platform for the sellers to sell their products but also gives an opportunity to the buyers to access and reach the suppliers online readily available anytime. These websites have really bridged the gap between a consumer and a supplier. Building an ecommerce website  from scratch can be a very tedious task but at the end it is very rewarding as well.

There are many options available today to sell a product or a service online with renowned marketplace sites like Amazon, Flipkart and B2B websites like Indiamart which deals with wholesale consumers and buyers. There is another option also i.e. to create a business page on social media like Facebook and Instagram to attract customers. The best option here to mention which majority of businesses are opting today is to build their own store online with building an E-Commerce Website from scratch to widen business horizons and appeal to a mass audience.

Every entrepreneur or a craftsman at some point or the other dreams of opening an ecommerce store to set up a business which ultimately provides him a sense of achievement and freedom.

In this blog, we will learn how to build an ecommerce website from scratch . We will cover every minute detail to give you the best knowledge regarding how an ecommerce website is built from zero level sharing all our 10+ years of experience creating wonderful websites for our thousands of clients.

So, Stay Tuned!

Things To Consider Before Creating/ Building an eCommerce Website From Scratch

Most businesses flourish today with the help of online stores and creating an own Ecommerce Website is a step towards it, which not only showcases  your products and services but also manages to reveal your distinctive style of selling. In this section, we are going to list the things one must consider before creating an Ecommerce website from scratch. 

1) Select Your Products or Services ( What To Sell? )

The first and foremost step to make an ecommerce website is to choose a product or a service you want to sell direct-to-customer. This is the most challenging part of starting a new business. Your whole website design is going to revolve around this service or product.  Once you have finalized a product or a service you want to sell online, the next steps to take into consideration would be how much margin would this product leave you after selling it in the market, where and how you are going to arrange these products for selling etc. 

2) Select Your Audience ( Whom To Sell? )

Outside of sourcing and developing products, you are going to spend a majority of time getting the attention of customers. The real challenge here is to show your products along with its features to the right customers, that is who are really willing to pay to buy your products. Understanding your target audience will help you reach them faster and boost up your sales in the long run.

3) Analyze Competitors

After finding out which product to sell online, the potential evaluation of the product and successfully sourcing a supplier for the same, the main aspect is to deeply study your competitor in the market so that you know what you’re against and how you can differentiate your business from theirs.

4) Decide Your Budget

While developing a plan for designing your ecommerce website from beginning, you should always set a budget for building an online store. Various costs will be inculcated while choosing your domain name, marketing and hosting your website. Other genuine expenses may include plug-ins, themes, security and anyone you want to hire to help you with the task. 

5) Decide Your Development Partner

After putting all the efforts and pain in deciding about creating your own store via an ecommerce website, you can always feel free to get a development partner hired. A development partner can help you with design, development and maintenance of the website. They can also help you with integrating various ecommerce functionalities such as payment gateways, inventory management and shipping methods. 

Apart from the above mentioned points, there are several other factors which should be taken into account before setting up a business idea through designing one’s own E-Commerce website. These include Where will you store your products?, How to manage inventory in terms of overstocking and stockouts?, how to take orders— tracking an order?, How to ship— shipping management? and last but not the least How to manage returns?

Now, we will learn How to build an ecommerce website step by step!

Step-by-Step Approach to Build an eCommerce Website From Scratch

It is not an easy job to design an ecommerce website from scratch but the end results are very fruitful.  It is very important to have a clear understanding of the business requirements and target audience to choose the best approach and tools for the job. Here, we are listing some main aspects to design an ecommerce website from scratch. 

1) Select Domain Name

A domain name should be selected in such a way that it’s short, simple and easy to remember as well as type. Therefore, get started with a domain name that identifies your website to customers. It is also very necessary to avoid repetition in picking up existing domain names.

Check the availability of your domain using a tool like ‘Instant Domain Search’. If the domain name is not available choose one of the similar recommendations. There are many names available online to just simply buy a domain or there is an additional option to register your domain name within the site builder for your ecommerce website. 

2) Choose eCommerce Platform

One has plenty of options to choose from when it comes to platforms for your business website. According to your goals and objectives, you can always try demos from various site builders. Always consider the budget you have set and read reviews based on functionality and security purposes. When choosing an ecommerce platform, there are various factors to be considered including the following listed:

1. Cost: Mostly some platforms charge monthly transaction fees while others have a free basic plan with additional costs for advanced features.
2. Features: One should always consider the features that are necessary to your business such as shipping integration, inventory management and payment processing.
3. Design and Customisation: Some platforms offer pre-designed templates while others allow for more customization.
4. Ease of use: If you are not familiar with web development techniques, always look and consider the platforms that are easy to navigate and use.
5. Scalability: While choosing a platform, make sure that it handles your present and future business needs. 
6. Integration: Before making a final decision in choosing a platform, check if the platform integrates with other software such as accounting, inventory and shipping management.
7. Customer Support: Do consider the level of customer support offered by the platform positively.  

3) Design Your eCommerce Website

If you’ve always wondered how to start your online business by creating an ecommerce website, you do not need to be a coding expert or months of work to pull it off. With various online site builders and tools available, building and managing an online store has become a relevantly easy task, even for beginners. 

a) Select a theme for your website

After choosing a platform for your website, the next step is to select a theme. A theme is basically chosen to give your website a professional, sleek and attractive look. You simply will have to follow a step or two and your website theme will be ready. You can further easily change fonts, size and colours to highlight your website.

b) Create your other pages

Besides being a star itself, your website still needs to be updated with supporting pages from time to time. These may include:

• Terms and Conditions
• Contact Us
• About Us 
• Shipping and Return

            You may also want to include a FAQ page, A size guide if your website is dealing with clothing and footwear brands, even a blog can be included. Try answering your consumer’s questions which will ultimately build their trust in your products resulting in low customer care calls and emails.

4) Add Products or Services

Your customers can not touch and feel the products you are selling online so it becomes very crucial for you to put up your products and services in such a way that it becomes easy for your customers to relate themselves as soon as they read the product description along with images. Replicate this experience as closely as possible with high resolution pictures and detailed descriptions. You can also add demos and videos to attract your customers further.

5) Select Payment Gateway

Most importantly, you need to set up a way to accept payment. You can connect your website to Paypal and Stripe or both or you can use a built-in tool like shopify payments. Before you officially launch your store, make sure to carry out a test payment and if this is successfully carried out you are ready to put your feet in the marketplace. While selecting the payment gateway, you should check for PCI compliance and SSL certificate in order to avoid any security problems in the future.

6) Publish & Gift To The World!

As soon as you are ready with your built ECommerce website and done with all testing of accepting payments, your ecommerce website is ready to be launched on a public platform and give a strong competition to the fellow retailers. 

Congratulations on launching your eCommerce website from scratch!

What Next After Building an eCommerce Website from Scratch?

Your work does not end after building an eCommerce Website rather it is a start to a long and unending journey of promoting and generating more and more traffic onto your website. In this section, we are displaying different after aspects to keep your website up to date with respect to the market trends.

1) Regular Testing & Maintenance

After the regular set up and installation of your eCommerce website to grow online, the next step to focus on is to maintain the reliability as well as maintenance of the products or services you are selling. Regular testing from time to time is also mandatory to attract more and more customers to buy your products. 

2) Marketing

Every product in the market reaches its customers when the customer becomes aware of its availability and capability in the long run. This is accomplished with the help of marketing services. A brand is only able to attract new customers and retain the existing ones by creating compelling and targeted marketing campaigns. It is further very important to build customer loyalty by creating a positive brand image and providing excellent customer service. This will not only generate leads but also multiply sales levels to new heights. APPWRK IT Solutions Pvt Ltd is an established name in promoting your brand and business through its services of distinguished digital marketing services, Search Engine Optimization’s techniques, Social Media Optimization to further improve search engine rankings of its ecommerce websites and last but not the least unmatched services in Content writing for various businesses. With more than twenty years of experience in managing and handling various services and brands, APPWRK has left a mark in every project it has ever associated itself with. 

3)Customer Support System

Undoubtedly, the customer is the king. If your customer is happy with your brand services it supposedly means that all your techniques of selling your products are going in the right direction. This not only ends with selling your products to the target audience but it also takes into account the after services. Many times with big brands also the customer support services are not so friendly which results in blocking out the customer in every sense. Amazon and Flipkart have very strong Customer Support Systems because of which today the businesses of these brands are reaching sky limits.

4)Feedback and Continuous Improvement

Feedback allows businesses to understand how their customers feel about their products or services, and identify areas that need improvement. It also helps businesses to measure customer satisfaction and make data-driven decisions to improve their offerings. Continuous support, on the other hand, ensures that customers receive assistance and guidance throughout the entire lifecycle of a product or service. This can include providing training and documentation, troubleshooting and resolving issues, and offering updates and upgrades. Providing both feedback and continuous support can help to build customer loyalty and trust, and ensure that customers are satisfied with the products or services they have received. It also helps to minimize customer churn and increase customer retention. Overall, feedback and continuous support play a vital role in the success of any product or service and should be an integral part of any business strategy.

Benefits of Building an eCommerce Website for Your Business

There are  enormous benefits of building an Ecommerce Website from scratch for your business which we are going to list below in this section.

1)Vast Audience

The first and foremost advantage of creating an ECommerce website for your business is wide audience as it narrows down all the geographical barriers and creates a one stop solution to all the requirements of a consumer. All you need is a working internet connection and a laptop/desktop. 

2)Cost Reduction

Obviously when you do not need to travel and do not  have any timely boundations, all you are required to do is to order your service or product from the four walls of your home or office there is an effective cost reduction. Many websites available today propose customers with an option of ‘ Next day delivery’ (if you require something very urgently) with of course some extra incurred charges of extra shipping or they ask you to be their premium customer. But it’s all worth it as long as the customer’s needs are met. 

3)Flexibility For Customers

Flexibility for customers refers to the ability of a business to accumulate and adapt the preferences and needs of a customer. It may include customising a product or a service to meet one’s specific needs and payment flexibilities i.e. how the customer wants to pay be it online or offline. Furthermore, having a clear return and refund policies helps in retaining old customers and attract new ones to a business brand. If a business is providing a productive and responsive service, a business will definitely sustain in a crowded marketplace.

In today’s fast paced environment, customers are looking for convenience  and only those businesses which are flexible enough are likely to retain more customers and further flourish over time.  

4)Repeating Customers

Repeat customers are certainly a crucial component of a business success as they provide a steady source of revenue and help build a strong and loyal customer base. Continuously innovating new and challenging ideas in the products and services provided by a brand is a clear cut way to survive the competition and also stay ahead in the marketplace. Regularly reaching out customers through emails, messaging or any other means can help to keep a business top of mind and encourage repeat business. 

5)Multiplied Revenue

When a business is able to retain its customers and also attract more and more customers it can be stated that this business is going to make revenues at multiple levels. There are various business strategies different organisations are achieving to develop more friendly relations with its existing customers so that more and more people in their family and friend circle get referred to them. These strategies may include offering incentives, such as discounts, rewards and various exclusive offers to make customers do additional purchases.

6)Business Can Be Operated From Anywhere

Recent developments in communication and technology have made it possible for the businesses to operate virtually from anywhere. It is very common for businesses these days to have a distributed workforce with employees working from various locations which has all been made possible with the help of cloud based softwares, remote working tools and virtual communication platforms. This not only allows employees to have a better work-life balance but also greater flexibility. Businesses can save on rent and other associated costs.

7)Better Sales & Customer Data Insight

Having better sales and customer data can unquestionably help a business make more informed decisions, improve its marketing and sales efforts and ultimately  increase overall revenue. Sales data can provide information about the products or services sold, the associated revenue generated and conversion rate of potential customers. Going in-depth about the customer details like demographics, behaviors and preferences which can be further used to design market campaigns to develop much further. This can be achieved by creating surveys and focus groups to provide qualitative analysis about customer behaviors and attitudes. 

8)Comprehensive Product Catalogue

The main focus of providing a product catalogue to its customer is to mainly make their purchase easy and without any hustle. These comprehensive product catalogues include the features, specifications, images and pricing details of the products or services a company is offering. These can be made available to the customers in a variety of formats such as print catalogue, an online catalogue or a mobile app. With the ecommerce website these catalogues are made readily available to the customers where they can read and make informed decisions about the intended purchases. 

9)Several Payment Modes

There are different types of consumers purchasing a product belonging to different financial backgrounds. Customers are really comfortable if your website provides different modes of payment after a purchase is made. These modes may include Cash on Delivery(COD), Direct transactions from bank account, Payments through UPI like Google Pay, Phone pay etc. Customers can pay from anywhere and anytime digitally without any hussle.  

10)Surviving in Cut-Throat Competition

An ecommerce website is solely responsible for establishing or destroying your business. There can be a number of strategies to be followed to survive in this competitive world out there. These may include the following:

a)Offering a wide range of products and services:

 Offering a variety of products or services from a lower to the most highest price ranges can keep customers glued to the website and increase the sales of the business. 

b)Providing excellent customer services:

Check up on big businesses, they do not end their services after they sell a product to a consumer rather they are judged on the after services they offer. This will create a positive mouth of advertising and finally increased revenues. 

c)Creating a user friendly website:

 Having a user friendly website which is easy to navigate, search and use can attract a lot of traffic to your website.

d)Optimizing for search engines:

 By optimizing an e-commerce website for search engines, it can improve your ratings and will give you a yield to grow further.

e)Marketing and promotion:

Implementing effective marketing and promotion strategies such as email marketing, social media marketing, and influencer marketing can increase brand awareness and drive more sales.

f)Pricing strategy:

 competitive pricing strategy with respect to other websites can attract more traffic to your website over the others.

g)Keeping a check on your competitors:

Always follow and keep an eye on what your competitors are doing and strategies they are adopting to standstill in the marketplace.

Conclusion – Building an eCommerce Website From Scratch!

In this Blog, we learnt how to build an ecommerce website from scratch. The success of your e-commerce website is completely dependent on many factors out of which the most prominent one is the quality of your products or services you are selling, competitive prices, easy-to-use and navigate web shop, your advertising and marketing skills etc. If all the steps are followed wisely and taken care of genuinely then for sure you are definitely in good shape.

In today’s digital era of high competition ecommerce business is all about creating value for customers and the more value you can provide the more successful your business will be.

All these aspects can be potentially taken care of by APPWRK IT Solutions Pvt Ltd. We literally hold your hand in the beginning when you just merely have a vision of a business idea motivating you to convert your idea and vision and put it into the market in the form of a product or a service. We do not let that thought of plan vanish into thin air without giving it a shape and bringing it to life. With a team of 110+ experts and completing over 20,000+ projects till date having happy customers spread all over the globe we are your ultimate solution to your every fundamental need relating to ecommerce website development. We have been connected with a number of clients who were working at a very basic level and after utilizing our digital marketing, web and mobile development services and not to forget our content writing services benefited a lot. The difference in the figures they were earning and the present values are really breathtaking and worth a mention. There is no doubt that we have so many happy clients spread all over the globe. So what are you waiting for? Come and avail our services and witness your business grow manifold. Be our next happy client.