E-commerce business has revolutionized the way people shop today. Before, people had to go from store after store to buy a product or get a service. However, today, virtually everything you need is just a click away from you. From products to services, the internet and e-commerce have made available to you almost everything that you can think of, without you having to leave the comfort of your home.
The e-commerce business is rapidly spreading and there are various services to help you run your own e-commerce business. One such web development platform is Wix. Now, why Wix? To learn why, click here. We will give you a step by step guide to set up your own e-commerce website on Wix that will make your business venture a success.
1. Strategize your brand
Spontaneity might be good most of the time, but it must be avoided when it comes to operating an e-commerce business. If you want to ensure success, you have to try to minimize the uncertainties as much as possible.
Therefore, regardless of the platform you have chosen to build your store on, before you even start to develop the site, you should have a general idea of what you want to sell on the website.
Who are your target audiences? What direction do you and your website want to take in the future? You should have answers to these questions and strategize accordingly. Identifying the market of your proposed business, researching customer behaviors, and learning who your competitors are, and defining brand identity, are the first and foremost tasks to create a successful e-commerce business.
2. Registration of your site
After deciding on the type of business you want to pursue, analyzing the market, and choosing Wix, the next step is to sign up for an account on Wix. You can either sign up with your Google ID or Facebook ID on Wix. This will give you access to your category page, where you are required to select the best template choice befitting your industry.
3. Choosing and customizing templates.
Once you have chosen the type of business you want to conduct, you will be directed to a section where you have to select the best template for your venture. Wix has a vast array of stunning templates, in which each template has its own layout and styles.
After the selection of the templates, all that remain is to add content and tweak parts of the design. You can change the colors, edit the text, making it relevant to your business. If you have any problem, you can consult the video in the gallery section for reference. Furthermore, you can add many features as well add extra dimensions to your website.
4. Add your products and publish your website
Once you have made your decision on the template, made the changes to your likings, it's time to add the product you want to sell on your website. After completing all the designing part, it's time to go live.
Publish your website. Sit back, relax and enjoy. No, I am just kidding, you might not get to relax just yet; there are many other things to do if you want create a successful e-commerce business.
Maintaining your site is very important after going live. I'd say, that is 25% of the task. Fortunately, maintaining websites couldn't be any easier than with Wix.
5. Prioritize usability
When you design your website, you must always keep user-friendliness in mind. Ecommerce sites lose lots of customers just because the sites aren't easily navigable. Creating a visually stunning e-commerce website with great content isn't enough if it lags in navigability and user-friendliness.
Therefore, you should maintain a good navigation between pages and subpages, arrange the hierarchy of the content (where the most important content occupies a prominent position) and all the content should be understandable. Thankfully, Wix has made this easy by letting you choose the right template that suits your needs.
6. Search engine optimization for your site
SEO is a never-ending process, which begins at the start of the developing phase of your website and continues over its lifetime. Search Engine Optimization is a very vast topic, so I won't go into details about it, but I will tell you that great SEO is a must have for a successful e-commerce business.
Wix provides various SEO tools to make your website search engine friendly. Since, good SEO means increased traffic and consequently an increased number of customers, you can improve the SEO of your site by incorporating the most used keywords on your site and linking your website to various other sites. Employ the SEO tools and techniques that Wix has offered to make your ecommerce website stand out among the crowd.
7. Add various other features
A successful e-commerce business is only possible if you work on providing a better customer experience. And for that very purpose, Wix provides you a whole range of tools to add various different functionalities on your website. Wix has taken into consideration that its customers are from different walks of life, and their needs are different according to their niches.
Different kinds of stores need to integrate different kinds of tools, depending upon the industry. For instance, if you are selling music products, there is WixMusic app for you. Wix Booking is great for scheduling an appointment and buy buttons are an easy way to start selling a few products from any site, not just a full store. Checkout the Wix App Market and you fill find an app to meet most of your website needs.
8. Increase the engagement
Setting up your website is just the beginning of the large journey for e-commerce business because once your website goes live, you need to attract and maintain visitors and you need to reach out to your target audience.
For this, you can use newsletter tool on Wix, which can be used to contact customers with an email. You can also try to integrate social media into your e-commerce business with the help of social feeders or you can integrate blogging with your business to make your e-commerce business successful.
9. Make your site mobile user-friendly
The impact of mobile on e-commerce business is colossal. Since there are many users who surf internet and e-commerce sites with mobile devices, it's only prudent that you make your site friendly for the mobile users.
Wix comes with the Wix Mobile Editor, which enables you to customize your website for the mobile.