Start Selling Online: Benefits of an eCommerce website

With many businesses struggling to break even and redundancies becoming commonplace, we would all be forgiven for thinking that nothing good has come from the year when Covid-19 hit the UK.

However, as my mother always says, ‘one door closes and another opens’.

The challenges brought upon us can often bear fruit. Forcing businesses and entrepreneurs to adapt to new market conditions tends to lead to new opportunities and then if things work out well – as we all hope they will – great reward.

One of the biggest changes that businesses have had to embrace in 2020 is to start selling online. If you design and make your own goods or are just a reseller, investing in an eCommerce website is something you should be doing if you have yet to do so already.

Make the Switch to an Online Business

With stock sitting idle in stores and warehouses across the country, it’s time to take the plunge and make the switch to an online business.

This does not mean that you abandon your bricks & mortar store altogether. You are simply expanding your business to take advantage of the rise in online shopping.

Online sales have been rising steadily for several years now. Covid has just accelerated that trend forward a few years, with many consumers vowing never to go back to the high street for certain types of products, such as food and beverages.

To take advantage of this trend and avoid becoming another lockdown casualty, it’s time to look at your e-commerce platform options.

From the smallest boutique store to the largest of retailers, there are gains to be made from setting up an eCommerce website or upgrading the one you already have.

The likes of Shopify are great for those on a tight budget who wish to sell a simple product range.

Bigger businesses with a larger range of products may find they are outgrowing the limitations of an off-the-shelf solution such as Shopify or Wix and could benefit from migrating to a platform such as WooCommerce or Magento. Both of which are more suited to enterprise-level organisations.

Benefits of an eCommerce website

Aside from the desire to increase your revenue, let’s look at some of the practical benefits of running an eCommerce website.

When you start selling online, it is likely that your website will just be a replication of your physical store, but in future, your website will offer you a space to sell products that you can no longer hold in-store.

You may be a clothing retailer with stock that is going out of style or just needs to be removed from sale due to the change in season. Either way, if you have a place where you can keep the goods, your website will offer you the opportunity to sell those items beyond their usual shelf life.

Another boon to running an eCommerce website for your business is the ability to sell items that are too big to stock in-store due to limited space.

You may wish to diversify your usual product lines and start to sell items that would otherwise be too big & expensive (per square foot) to keep on a shelf in a physical store, but you will have the chance to offer these items for sale via your online presence.

Online stores also offer a great testing ground for products that may or may not do well in-store. If sales are low you can easily reduce costs and sell the items to clear the stock, or simply remove them from the store with a few clicks. If sales are strong, you can look to migrate the new product lines to the physical locations and gain more sales.

The benefits of running an eCommerce store are wide-ranging, but it’s the speed at which you can adapt that is key.

Key Features of an eCommerce website

Once you have decided that you’re going to launch your own eCommerce website, there are a few things to look for in your choice of template.

There’s nothing worse than choosing a website template only to find out that it doesn’t offer all the functionality that you need. So if you are going to go with an off-the-shelf solution, try to make sure that it offers the widest selection of features.

eCommerce website functionality

1. Product variations – Make sure that your chosen template allows you to add characteristics to your products, such as colour and size. This means you only have to list an item once and your user experience is better.
2. Share products with friends & family – Make sure it’s easy for users to share your products on social media to help grow awareness of your brand.
3. Profile your physical location – Sounds obvious, but making it easy for local customers to drop in and perhaps pick up online purchases will help build brand loyalty.
4. Mailing list – Email is still the number one method for reaching your online customers. Social media is obviously very important, but building a database of customers and being able to send them product announcements is a cheap and effective way of generating more sales.
5. Easy checkout – This is where so many purchases fail to complete, so if you can employ a checkout process that is as frictionless as possible, you will convert more sales.
6. Wish list – Not a ‘must-have’ item, but it’s handy for users to be able to create lists of items they may want to purchase later. Customers can return to your website anytime, log in and purchase directly from their Wish List rather than have to search for an item again from scratch.

It’s often the case that off-the-shelf systems require the addition of plugins to deliver the functionality that you desire. In this instance, you may need the assistance of a web design agency such as LWDA.

We can walk you through the pros and cons of using an off-the-shelf platform and give you a guide to how much an e-commerce website costs. That way you can make an informed choice for your brand.

The Importance of Design in an eCommerce website

The key benefit of working with a web design agency to build your eCommerce website is that the resulting design will be unique to your brand.

One of the pitfalls of using an off-the-shelf system is that the pre-built templates are likely being used by hundreds if not thousands of other websites around the world, many of which may be in a similar sector as your company.

Although colours, fonts and logos can be changed, it is often felt that template websites have a particular look & feel to them. They tend to lack a unique identity that customers can identify with.

Beyond the brand identity, there are several areas of the website design which require special attention…

Important eCommerce design features

1. Easy navigation and search – You need to make sure that your customers can find your products as easily and quickly as possible. People are seemingly more time-poor than ever, so if they can find an item and checkout within a few clicks, you’ll reap the financial benefits.
2. Uncluttered layout – eCommerce or not, it is often the case that many site owners wish to include a vast array of information and options on the page at any time. Our key advice is to resist this urge. We prefer the ‘Less is More’ approach, focusing the user’s eye on the product and guiding them through the path to conversion. Remove all unnecessary distractions from the page to achieve this.
3. Clear CTAs to purchase – Make those ‘Buy Now’ buttons obvious. Not too small or muted in tone. They need to attract the eye of the viewer and be consistent throughout the site, making it easy to add items to the cart and then progress to checkout.
4. Important information ‘above the fold’ – Along with the CTAs mentioned above, all key info needs to appear on the screen when the page first loads. Don’t make the user work hard to find what they need, especially the ‘Buy Now’ button, which you can repeat further down the page if required.

Follow these rules and you will be well on the way to delivering a good user experience for your customers that translates into sales for your brand.

In conclusion

If you are considering taking the plunge and creating an eCommerce website for your brand, now is the time.

The race is on for retail brands to get online or revamp their current website to maximise their reach and regain sales that have been lost on the high street.

2021 will be a make-or-break year for many, so delay taking this step at your peril.

Engage the services of a web design agency to help you find the right solution for your brand. A platform that offers the correct functionality for your customers and integrates into the right systems for your staff.

Create an online presence that is unique to your brand by avoiding off-the-shelf templates where possible, and make sure that you resist the temptation to throw too much content at your website. Keep things simple, elegant and easy to navigate.

If you would like help creating an eCommerce website for your brand, feel free to get in touch with us at LWDA and we’ll take you through our processes.

Our aim is to help you become one of 2021’s survivors and not one of its casualties.

Start selling online: Additional Reading

We tend to specialise in Shopify and WordPress eCommerce websites. If you would like to know more about these platforms, we suggest you read our article What are the differences between WordPress & Shopify eCommerce Websites?

If you already sell online with Etsy and are looking to move to a new platform, you may want to read about How to migrate your website from Etsy to Shopify.