Do want an online store but don’t want to spend thousands of dollars to build one? If the answer is yes, why not build your own store using inovies ecommerce and the Design and Pages app.
We’ll show you how to create an eCommerce website in 7 steps, quickly and easily, without any special technical skills or experience. And for only a few hundred dollars a year.
We’ve created an app called Design & Pages, which makes the process mega easy. Here’s what you need to think about when creating with the best eCommerce platform.
Step 1: Decide on your domain
Do you need a custom domain for your eCommerce website? The short answer is no, you don’t need one as you get your own sub-domain for free when you register for free with inovies ecommerce.
If, you plan to sell multiple products and build a brand, a custom domain is the way to go. A custom domain gives your eCommerce store:
- A recognizable brand that belongs to you e.g. mystore.com
- A professional email address linked to your domain where people can contact you.
- Search engine optimisation (SEO) benefits
Using a custom domain with your inovies ecommerce store can be accomplished in a few clicks. If you don’t have a domain name already you can get one from our partner “iwantmyname” and the domain will be setup automatically.
If you already have a domain, you can use it for your inovies ecommerce store using the Custom Domain app. Here are more detailed instructions for using a Custom Domain.
Step 2: Choose the right platform
This is easy. You ideally want an eCommerce platform that’s flexible and easy to use. Most small business owners don’t want to be bothered with hand coding their website. Business owners and solo entrepreneurs need a platform that integrates easily with their existing site or allows them to set up a site from scratch in only a few steps.
That’s why inovies ecommerce and the Design and Pages app is a popular choice. It’s designed to help you create a professional and stylish eCommerce website and a competition-beating price point. Plus, the store can easily be customised, as you’ll see in the next step.
If you‘ve already got a website, you can easily add buy buttons, widgets or embed a simple store to any page on your site. If using WordPress for your site, there is a free WordPress eCommerce plugin available for you to use.
Step 3: Design your store
Next, it’s time to design your store. inovies ecommerce allows you to add pages to your online store so you can give buyers more information about you, your products, and your services to make them feel more comfortable about making the purchase.
Include an about page and a contact page at the very least to help potential buyers connect with you. You can add video and text onto your pages. Other important items for your eCommerce website include:
- A photo: People like dealing with real people
- A store name: inovies ecommerce uses your account name by default, but you can always change this.
- A logo: For branding and recognition
- A color scheme: You can easily change this in the inovies ecommerce dashboard for better brand alignment
- Trustmarks and payment logos: These help people feel comfortable shopping with you and are built into inovies ecommerce
Give your whole store a professional look by using the themes built into Design & Pages. This provides a business-like design at a click of a button, making it more likely that people will want to buy. Design & Pages includes 7 themes to start with, with more on the way.
Or you can design your own if comfortable with editing CSS. Design & Pages uses Liquid Syntax which is the same as Shopify.
Step 4: Set up payments
There are two key aspects of payments for your eCommerce website: how customers are going to pay you and how you are going to get those payments into your own bank account. In many cases, this means finding a third party payment processor to act as the go-between.
Luckily, when you use inovies ecommerce, there’s no need for that. It couldn’t be easier and quicker. inovies ecommerce offers:
- Secure payment handling
- Integrated SSL
- Acceptance of payments from anywhere
- Payments via PayPal or into your own bank account
- WordPress eCommerce integration
Set up your location and default payment currency for shoppers and yourself in your store dashboard to make this happen.
Step 5: Add products
Next, add some products to your eCommerce website. Here’s how this works with inovies ecommerce:
- Choose your product type (physical, digital or service). If you’re offering a video course, it’s worth noting that inovies ecommerce has no bandwidth or storage limits and you can upload files up to an enormous 15GB
- Give your product a name and description
- Set the price and the quantities available for sale
- Create a preview of your item by uploading a photo, an audio file or including a YouTube or Vimeo video URL
- Choose from a range of delivery and pricing options as well as specifying any variants
Note that great descriptions and clear images are proven to convert, so it’s worth spending some time on this step.
Step 6: Check out the checkout
Shopping cart abandonment is the plague of eCommerce websites. Avoid it by:
- Making sure your website and especially your checkout works on tablets and smartphones. There are no worries on this score as inovies ecommerce as it’s designed to work on desktops, smartphones, and tablets.
- Letting people purchase multiple items at once using the inovies ecommerce Shopping Cart app
- Offer free shipping if you can, or be very clear about shipping costs upfront before customers get to the checkout)
Recent UK research shows that 28% of shoppers abandon their purchase if they don’t like the payment options offered, and the percentage is even higher (32% in the 18-24 age group). We’ve found that one particularly popular payment option is PayPal, which is why we’ve integrated it into inovies ecommerce via an app. With PayPal as a payment option, you can take payments from anywhere and give those customers extra peace of mind.
Step 7: Look after SEO and analytics
One thing that is very important in creating your eCommerce website is search engine optimization (SEO). Use the latest guidance on SEO to help people find your eCommerce website, products, and services online.
Track the performance of your eCommerce website with an analytics solution. Integration with Google Analytics is built into inovies ecommerce. This will help you monitor site and product pages so you can improve them for more sales, reach, and effectiveness.
Extra Credit: Market Your Website
That’s it. You’re done! You now have your own online store.
But, now the most important step. Once you have created an eCommerce website, you need to promote it to drive sales. inovies ecommerce helps with this by including:
- Linking your eCommerce site with Facebook which has one of the biggest audiences for your products. Make use the free Facebook store that comes with every inovies ecommerce account
- Enabling social sharing for your products – a one-click process
- Adding customers to your existing email marketing lists (free integration with MailChimp & Campaign Monitor) so you can inform them about new offerings.
Follow these seven steps and you will soon have an eCommerce website that works – and it will only take a few minutes.
Summary
Here’s a recap of what inovies ecommerce and Design & Pages offers for your eCommerce store:
- Easy store builder so your website is ready in a few minutes
- Use of a custom domain name
- Multiple payment options, including option of offering PayPal
- Secure shopping and checkout with SSL
- Customization via themes and apps, including WordPress integration
- Email marketing integration with MailChimp and Campaign Monitor
- Unlimited bandwidth for audio and video
Try out inovies ecommerce and Design and Pages to build your eCommerce website today.