How to build a successful e-commerce website

1. Invest in AI chatbots

“[Including] AI chatbots in your digital marketing strategy helps foster communication with customers, leading to quicker conversations. While conversational marketing has become essential for any business, it’s the speed of that conversation that fastens the sales process and keeps leads from jumping to your competitor’s website.

“AI chatbots use data mining to understand your leads’ preferences and tastes in seconds. This feature enables them to immediately serve up the most appropriate answer or content, reducing the time a user spends searching for information themselves. And because an AI chatbot can drill through billions of documents and social media conversations at a pace impossible for human teams, they can guess each customer’s needs and preferences. This hyper-personalization results in better user engagement and higher conversion rates.

“And, since chatbots don’t require a salary, they are a one-time investment for your business.”

—Chris Gadek, AdQuick

2. Prioritize SEO

“If e-commerce brands want to be successful, they should start prioritizing their SEO strategy. You can get started by prioritizing keywords which you can easily create great content around. Pick several keywords that are all related and create a blog post. When selecting keywords, it’s important to consider the user’s intent when they are searching with those keywords. Along with this, having the keywords chosen beforehand will allow you to include them in your sentences in a natural sounding way.”

—Maegan Griffin, Skin Pharm

3. Continually test your website’s user experience

“A/B testing should really stand for “always be testing.” But testing a button color here and a font size there can be tedious—not to mention time-consuming. This is where A/B testing tools can take the pain out of optimizing your website.

“Tools like Optimizely and VWO offer easy-to-use and robust platforms that enable you to perform split tests and see the differences side-by-side. You can even run dozens of tests at once. Point-and-click visual editors allow you to edit any element for testing without needing a developer, enabling you to test, analyze, edit, and target campaigns more frequently.

“Heatmaps and funnels provide actionable insights into how visitors interact with your page and where they drop off. Data visualizations generate deep insights that take the guesswork out of website optimization.”

—Jason Sherman, TapRm

4. Utilize a reliable backup service

“Continuity of service is critical, and even the most reliable platforms have disruptions, which is why it is critical as a part of the process of building a successful e-commerce site to use a reliable backup service. If a site outage occurs, there is a possibility that data could be lost, making your website non-functional and costing your business tremendous financial loss in the ensuing hours, and possibly days, to get it running again if not prepared.

“By backing up your website periodically, if an outage occurs, you will ensure little disruption of service, recovery of e-commerce templates, data retrieval, information collection maintenance, as well as avoiding the need for full site reconstruction. In addition, customer information will also be secured and protected, providing your customers with peace of mind.

“By taking preventive measures to back up your e-commerce site, you can ensure continued success even with unexpected circumstances.”

—Adelle Archer, Eterneva

5. Have the mindset of “people, product, profit”

“To set up an e-commerce site for success, you need two things: products with healthy margins and a large enough audience within your niche.

“Starting with your audience, you need to know exactly who you serve. This information helps you build detailed buyer personas and craft marketing materials which capture the attention of your target audience and convert them into long-term customers. If your content is too generic, you’ll reach more people but attract far less. By being specific about the group of people you’re looking to serve, you can tailor everything from the ads you produce to the style, colors, and branding of your store.

“As for your products, be specific about what problem your store solves. It’s better to be a market leader in one industry than to be forgettable in all of them, so choose wisely and vend profitable products that you believe in.

“These factors can all but determine your store’s success before you even launch.”

—Aaron Gray, NO-BS Marketplace

6. Thank your best customers

“Thanking your best customers is a great way to show them that you appreciate their business. It also helps to motivate them to continue shopping with you, and may even lead them to refer their friends and family members to your site.

“There are many ways to thank your customers, such as sending them a special offer or discount, or writing a personalized thank-you note. Whatever method you choose, be sure to make it personal and unique to each customer. This will show that you took the time to appreciate their business and went above and beyond what was necessary.”

—Rick Elmore, Simply Noted

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7. Ensure easy navigation

“Your e-commerce site must be easy to navigate, so customers can find what they’re looking for with as few clicks as possible. The fastest way to lose a customer is to make it difficult for them to find what they are looking for. If a customer can’t find the product they are looking for pretty much right away, they will hit the back button and visit your competitor’s site. Make your products easy to find and easy to buy, and you’ll have much higher conversion rates.”

—Mark Daoust, Quiet Light

8. Select a keyword-rich domain name

“One of the first steps that businesses should take when looking to build a successful e-commerce website is to thoroughly explore available domain names. They should conduct keyword research to identify commonly searched for terms related to their product, and then crafting a domain name that somehow incorporates the most relevant term.

“This is particularly beneficial for e-commerce businesses in highly competitive niches, as a powerful and authoritative domain can often boost rankings, drive traffic, and increase trust in a brand. Whilst only forming a small part of the overall SEO puzzle, the selection of a relevant domain name will provide any e-commerce website with a solid foundation for future success.”

—Clare Jones, OfficeSpaceAU

9. Attract subscribers with a unique “coming soon” page

“Get a jump start with an engaging ‘coming soon’ landing page that will entice customers to sign-up to your mailing list prior to official launch. Add fun audio, like Racket Media, to said page by playing testimonials in the background. Incentivize early sign-ups with a contest, like digital marketplace Lemon Squeezy did with its MacBook Pro giveaway. Use memorable language in your CTA, like social media game site Gowalla does with its ‘sign up for your passport’ waitlist.

“Getting people excited about your e-commerce site before it’s up and running will not only help you gain loyal subscribers, but spark social media buzz about what’s to come!”

—Jeff Goodwin, Orgain

10. Choose the right platform

“A key step to building a successful e-commerce site is choosing the right platform. Your e-commerce platform will either be an automated sales machine or an obstacle to overcome. Before you start, make sure your online shop is built on a platform that is futureproofed, flexible, easy to use, and fast. Steer clear of ‘beginner’ platforms, like Wix or Squarespace, as they may be ‘easy to use,’ but they are extremely limiting. You want a platform with features that will allow your business to grow. Here are platforms to use: WooCommerce, Shopify, BigCommerce, and Adobe Commerce (formerly Magento).”

—Nick Robb, Design Hero

11. Optimize the checkout process

“An e-commerce site is only as successful as its sales, and business owners should prioritize optimizing the checkout process. Customers should have access to their shopping cart and checkout on all pages of the website—most websites have it in the upper right corner.

“The checkout screen should allow for multiple payment options. Credit cards and direct debit are must-haves; they are the most popular purchasing methods. Aside from these options, a business should also permit alternative payment methods, such as PayPal, Google Pay, Apple Play, etc.

“In past years, buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) services have become increasingly popular. These services allow customers to commit to paying off their purchases over several weeks or months, making a business’s products/services more affordable to a larger demographic. Examples of these sites include Klarna and Afterpay.

“The newest payment method is cryptocurrency. This is less preferred currently but may gain popularity in the future.”

—Roy Morejon, Enventys Partners

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