Building Ecommerce Web Sites: Where Do I Start?
Web design and development is a hugely competitive market, and it can be hard to figure out where to start. There are tens of thousands of new websites launched every day, and so many in the industry are just as good as one another. The fact is that building ecommerce websites doesn't have to be difficult or expensive — if you know where to look for quality advice for building ecommerce sites with WordPress, WooCommerce, or Shopify. You can find a team of experts who will help you build your online store from scratch. And you can hire one of them for about the same rate as hiring someone new to the trade.
To help you choose where to start, we asked a team of experts to answer a few questions about the pros and cons of various ecommerce systems. These included:
Building Ecommerce Web Sites: Where Do I Start? [ARTICLE END]
A short series on eCommerce by Michael Ambrogio, 2009. Updated February 28, 2017. This is a great list of DIY eCommerce tips in WordPress themes that are responsive (or look best in both Mobile/Tablet and Desktop).
Building Ecommerce Web Sites with WordPress - A Beginners Guide by Andrew Mackenzie, 2014. Updated August 19, 2016. Building eCommerce websites can be very expensive. See the article below for an easy way to do it yourself using Wordpress themes which are responsive.
How To Create Your Own WooCommerce Website by Chad Fritsch, 2014. Updated December 7, 2016. This is a good list of tutorials and other ways to impress customers in a WordPress store with a simple retro-futuristic theme .
Building Your First Ecommerce Website With Shopify - How To Get Started by The Art of Manliness, 2015. Updated January 15, 2017. This article is one of my favourite "How to" guides on using Shopify's platform for your eCommerce business (or you could use it on your own website).
Building Ecommerce Sites with Shopify by Dan Tamin - New Business Starter, 2016. Updated July 31, 2017. This is a great list of tips to make sure that your store looks awesome and is easy for customers to buy from. It also has some good shopping cart plugins for Shopify .
The Complete Guide to WordPress Ecommerce Plugins by Matt Stinchcomb - Feb 2015. Updated June 19, 2016. There are hundreds of plugins that can be used with WordPress themes and can improve the customer experience of an eCommerce site based on WooCommerce or other custom plugins and scripts .
Building Your Own Website With WordPress Templates by The Web Guy, 2015. Updated August 17, 2016. If you're a WordPress newbie, this article is an excellent collection of advice for building eCommerce sites with WordPress.
Building a Fully Customized Shopify Store - Tips & Tricks by BOB Walters - 2014. Updated August 24, 2016. This is a great post for more advanced users who might not want to use the default Shopify theme . It includes some useful information on how to integrate your own themes, including some shopping cart plugins for Shopify .
Backup Your Website and Ecommerce Sites With BackWPup - Beginners Guide by Usman Ahmed, 2015. Updated January 23, 2017. This guide makes it easy to backup your entire ecommerce website and make sure that you never lose your customer's data or shopping cart by using this WordPress plugin .
Build Your Own Website Using Shopify And WordPress Templates by Sites-Site, 2016. Updated July 2, 2017. This is a great article for beginners who might not know where to start with building an eCommerce site . It has some good tips on setting up a site design that can be customized and offers advice on using the free Divi theme from Elegant Themes.
Building Ecommerce Websites On The Wordpress Platform - Complete Step By Step Guide by Tech Listicle - 2014. Updated May 18, 2017. This article is a good introduction for people who have never built eCommerce sites before and who might not know where to start. It's also a good read for people who have built sites before and want to know about the latest techniques.
Building Your First Ecommerce Website With Shopify by Startup Biz Hub, 2016. Updated July 20, 2017. This is one of my favourite "how to" guides on using Shopify's platform for your eCommerce business (or you could use it on your own website).
Ecommerce Website Tips & Advice For Beginners by The Attorney Podcast - 2015. Updated August 18, 2016. This podcast episode has some useful tips from a lawyer with experience building ecommerce sites .
Building Ecommerce Sites: Where Do I Start? [ARTICLE START]
Since the beginnings of modern commerce , websites have been used to sell goods and services online. Today, people regularly visit web pages that are built online, which can be either company-provided or created by an administrator such as an employee. If you're starting your own web business, you'll want to get your store up and running fast with a theme or design that's easy for customers to learn and use quickly. There are plenty of eCommerce plugins (or add-ons) out there for WordPress that can help you to do just that.
WordPress eCommerce Plugins
What These Are: WordPress eCommerce plugins are tools that help to standardize online transactions between buyers and sellers. Using one of these plugins, you can build a "one-page" store that lists a wide variety of products for sale. Themes built on top of WordPress often use this type of approach, and with good reason! You can provide a simple interface for buyers to add items to their shopping cart or make a purchase, and simplify the shopping process even further by using an eCommerce plugin. Themes like Divi and Barefoot will allow you to build a website based on the Shopify platform as well as integrate the payment processing capabilities of WooCommerce or Prestashop . Plugins for WordPress help you to build a custom eCommerce site from scratch, and you can also use these elements of an eCommerce theme to create a simple WordPress web shop based on DNN's Marketplace .
How They Work: You can add these tools to your existing WordPress blog; or you can create new blogs dedicated entirely to your online business. Some plugins run on the server side of the browser , so that the plugins' code is downloaded when it's needed by visitors to your site. Other plugins simply modify core code to change how the website works and alters some settings without having any impact on visitors or their browsers.
Conclusion : Building a successful eCommerce blog or site requires planning, strategy and the right tools to make sure that your website offers visitors what they need and that it gives you a good foundation for growth. Today, eCommerce sites combine the best elements of web design with the latest web technologies like WordPress and Shopify . You can build an online store that uses WordPress templates as its basis, add shopping cart plugins for Shopify if you want to use the Shopify platform , or change an existing blog into an online store with WooCommerce . Be warned: building an eCommerce site isn't easy, but if you build a business plan that considers all of your options from the very beginning , then you'll be well on your way to success.