Creating a robust eCommerce website set up to work properly for the unpredictable nature of online shopping is important. That’s why I use some of the most well maintained and safest products to create an amazing eCommerce solution.
The four general topics I’ll cover is the hosting, website platform, an eCommerce platform, and store optimization. Looking at each one as it relates to a building will help you see how it all fits together. Each part is important to create a stable and secure platform for your customers to buy products.
It all starts with a stable foundation for the rest of your store to rest on. Hosting is the foundation and nothing else can work well if you don’t start with a stable foundation.
Hosting
The foundation of your entire eCommerce website setup starts with the hosting. If you put your store on a weak foundation, it’ll likely come tumbling down under the slightest pressure.
A powerful hosting solution will make sure your website will work fast no matter how busy your store gets. Now that the holidays are coming up, it’s likely you’ll have a lot of people on your website at the same time.
The website and eCommerce platform that I recommend below needs a solid host to make sure everything runs smoothly. I use WP Engine specifically because it’s built to handle the weight of an eCommerce store.
WP Engine is able to scale to meet the demand of an eCommerce website. Now that the foundation for a great eCommerce website setup is in place, it’s time for a website platform.
Website Platform
Before you get into the eCommerce part, a website platform will give what you need to run the non-product pages of your website. It’ll also give you the part of your website that your products rely on to look great.
The website platform of choice for eCommerce websites I build is WordPress. The platform is the most popular website platform on the Internet and that’s for good reason. It’s secure, simple, customizable, and robust.
There are a lot of eCommerce platforms that can sit on top of WordPress, too. There’s only one eCommerce platform that is robust enough to give you almost limitless eCommerce abilities, though.
eCommerce Platform
Now that you have a stable foundation (WP Engine) and floor (WordPress) you’ll need an eCommerce platform that’s fit for a king (or queen). WooCommerce is the eCommerce platform of choice for eCommerce websites I set up because it has a great community of developers that stand behind it.
WooCommerce also is robust and has hundreds of plugins that can extend its capabilities. WooCommerce is an amazing eCommerce platform because if it doesn’t do what you want it to, there’s a plugin out there that will.
WooCommerce powers over 39% of all online stores. Share on XThe core of WooCommerce is free and so is their basic Storefront theme, but there are important add-ons that make it a reasonably priced solution. WooCommerce is rarely free because of the add-on requirements, but it still ends up being the most economical eCommerce platform available.
With your eCommerce website set up like a castle, you need a way for people to get to you, though. Optimizing your store is important and there are some basic ways I help you do that.
Store Optimization
Making sure your eCommerce store is indexed correctly by search engines and displayed properly on social media will help you get seen better by customers. Even a WooCommerce eCommerce store just shows up as a regular website if you don’t do proper optimization.
The plugin I use to optimize the website for search and social media is Yoast SEO. But then there’s optimizing the eCommerce part of the store. That takes a nice plugin that builds upon Yoast SEO, Yoast WooCommerce SEO plugin, which will optimize your store specifically for eCommerce.
The SEO plugin for WooCommerce does a lot of things to make your store stand out. It’ll give you rich pins for Pinterest, and product Twitter cards. With ratings on one of your products, Google will show the star rating inside the search results which is proven to increase the chance someone will click your link. It really stands out.
Product pages can benefit from showing star ratings in Google search results. Share on XThese are the basics I use for an awesome eCommerce website setup that will get your store running as it should be. That means you have the foundation (hosting), floor (website platform), and building (eCommerce platform) to get people in your door and looking at your products (optimization).
Once I have all this setup there are many essentials that will help you build towards a successful eCommerce store.
Moving Forward
If you’re in the process of setting up your eCommerce store, you should be talking to someone who has been through it before. I’ve laid out the general steps and some of the pieces that help create an awesome eCommerce solution for you. They are general steps, though.
To learn more and talk to me about getting your eCommerce solution up and running, check out my eCommerce page. The essentials of an eCommerce website will also help you grow your store once you’re online.