How to Make a Website to Sell Products: A Comprehensive Guide 2024

If you’ve been thinking about starting an online store but feel unsure about how to make a website to sell products, you’re not alone. Creating an e-commerce site from scratch can feel really daunting without any experience.

Luckily in this guide, BSS Commerce will break down the entire process into easy steps. By the end, you’ll understand exactly how to make a website to sell products even with no technical skills. We’ll cover everything from choosing the right sales platform and finding products to market, to setting up payment processing and accepting online orders. The best part? You don’t need to know how to code at all. There are simple tools now that allow anyone to build a fully functional online boutique with just a few clicks.

Are you ready to learn the secrets to starting a successful ecommerce business on your own? Keep reading and let’s get started.

How to Make a Website to Sell Products? 8 Easy Steps

Step 1: Planning Your Website

It is important to start with the right planning when developing an online store. This step is very important on how to make a website for selling products because it defines the course that you will take in every decision that you are going to make while constructing your website. It is good to note that planning will assist you in making sure that your website is relevant to your business, relevant to your target market and well suited for usability and growth.

• Define Your Business Goals: To begin with, make sure that you have well-defined objectives of your website. Do you want to target the consumers who are interested in a particular category of products? Do you wish to create awareness about your brand? Knowing your main goals will assist you in targeting particular features and content which are related to these goals.
• Identify Your Target Audience: Knowing your audience will also dictate such aspects as the look of your website and the language you use in your content. Think about the age, gender and geographic location of your potential customers, as well as their interests and activity on the internet. Are they the millennials or Generation Z, are they busy with their families or simply business people seeking for particular tools? The more you understand your target market, the better you will be placed to ensure that your website addresses the needs of the audience as well as their choice.
• Research Competitors: The analysis of competitors’ activities can help to define what strategies are effective and which ones are not in a particular field. Analyze the websites of your direct rivals and try to identify their advantages and disadvantages. This means that one should observe their layouts, ease of use, products, and promotional techniques. This research will assist you in finding out how to set your store apart and give your customers something that they cannot find elsewhere.
• Decide on Your Website Structure: Website organization entails the ability of a website to be well arranged and enable the visitors to be able to locate what they want within the shortest time possible. Determine the primary pages to have in your site like the home page, the product pages, the about us page and the contact page.
• Create a Content Strategy: Content is a key element of your website that can attract visitors, convey your brand message, and drive conversions. Plan out the types of content you’ll need, such as product descriptions, blog posts, and multimedia elements like images and videos. Develop a content calendar that outlines what content will be created, who will create it, and when it will be published.
• Set a Budget: Building a website involves various costs, including domain registration, hosting, website design, and marketing. Establish a budget that covers all these aspects, and allow for some flexibility for unforeseen expenses. Consider the ongoing costs as well, such as software subscriptions, plugin fees, and potential advertising campaigns.
• Outline Key Features: Based on your goals, decide on the key features your website will need. This could include an easy-to-use shopping cart, customer reviews, a blog section, or social media integration. Prioritize features that enhance user experience and support your business objectives.

Step 2: Choosing the Right Platform for Your Store

Understand Your Needs: First, you need to know clearly what you want before going out to look for what is available in the market. Consider factors such as:

• Budget: What is your budget for the e-commerce platform that you want to establish? Some of them come with a monthly subscription fee while others will take a certain percentage of your sales.
• Technical Skills: Do you like coding or would you rather use a tool that can be utilized with little coding skill and more of a graphical user interface?
• Scalability: Is it possible that your platform will expand as your business develops? This is especially relevant when picking a platform to sell your products as the business grows in terms of traffic and sales.
• Integration Needs: Is there a need for integration with other tools or apps such as accounting software, email marketing software or social media networks?

Compare Popular E-commerce Platforms: The most used e-commerce platforms are as follows, which are briefly discussed below in order to understand their pros and cons. Here’s a quick comparison of some of the most widely used options:

• Shopify: Shopify is one of the most widely used e-commerce platforms characterized by its simplicity, a vast app repository, and responsive customer service. It has a variety of price options depending on the client’s needs and is very flexible in terms of price. Shopify is suitable for both – small businesses that are only starting their journey and experienced companies.
• WooCommerce: WooCommerce is a plugin for WordPress and is an open source software which has a lot of flexibility and can be customized. It is an open-source platform and therefore does not cost anything, however, you will need to purchase a web host, theme, and plugins. If you already use WordPress, WooCommerce is perfect for you because you’ll have full control of your store.
• BigCommerce: BigCommerce is a strong platform that comes with integrated capabilities such as; SEO, selling in multiple markets, and multiple payment options. It is appropriate for big companies that require more functionalities than the third-party applications can provide.
• Wix e-commerce: Wix is ​​known for its drag-and-drop website builders, and its e-commerce platform allows users to create online stores with ease. It is user-friendly and offers a range of beautiful templates, making it ideal for small businesses and entrepreneurs looking for simplicity.
• Magento: Magento is an open-source platform known for its robustness and scalability. It’s highly customizable but requires a lot of technical skill to set up and manage. Magento is suited most for larger companies with in-house staff or those looking to hire technical experts.

>> You may concern:

WooCommerce vs Shopify Full Comparison

Shopify Plus vs Magento

Wix vs Shopify

Consider hosting requirements: Some e-commerce platforms are self-hosted, while others are hosted by a provider. The difference here is:

• Self-hosted platforms: Platforms like WooCommerce and Magento require you to manage your hosting, giving you more power but also adding complexity. You will need to handle security, updates and backups yourself.
• Hosted platforms: Platforms like Shopify, BigCommerce, and Wix are hosted by a provider, which means they take care of security, updates, and hosting for you. This technique is generally easy to deal with, especially for beginners.

Check costs: Cost is an important factor when choosing an e-commerce platform. Consider the following:

• Monthly Fee: Platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce charge a monthly fee, which varies depending on the plan you choose.
• Transaction fees: Some platforms charge a fee for each sale you make, either as a percentage of the sale or a flat fee.
• Additional costs: Know the additional costs of themes, plugins, or extensions that may be needed to make your store successful.

Check the payment table integration

Not all platforms support every payment gateway. You can choose a platform that integrates with your preferred payment options, such as PayPal, Stripe, or Square. Consider whether the platform supports multiple currencies and offers secure payment processing.

See customer support

Good customer support can make a huge difference, especially if you face issues setting up or running your store. Look for platforms that offer 24/7 support through various channels such as live chat, email and phone. Also consider available resources such as community programs, courses, and mentors.

Test the platform

Many ecommerce platforms offer free trials or demos, allowing you to try out the interface and features before committing. Use these tests to find out how easy it is to use the platform, customization options, and overall functionality. This hands-on experience will help you determine if the platform meets your needs

Step 3: Setting Up Your Website

Select a Theme or Template

Many e-commerce software’s include different types of themes or templates, which serves as a starting point for web development in many cases. While picking a theme, the following should be considered.

• Relevance to Your Brand: Choose the template that complements your brand. Supposing you are into high-end products, go for a minimalism template. Trickier name that might be better for playful brand is, full of colors and movement template.
• Responsiveness: Make sure the theme is also tailored for digital devices since a big percentage of your clients will be shopping using phones and tablets.
• Customization Options Availability: From looking at and using the theme, it is important such or a similar theme can be easily customised. This will assist you because you will be able to modify the interface to suit your company’s needs in terms of colors, font and even the arrangement of various elements.

>> Explore 100+ Best Shopify Themes Collection For Each Store Model

Customize Your Website’s Design

• Logo and Branding: Add your logo and apply the brand color and fonts in many places within the website. The same given identity system assists the target audience in developing confidence and ease of use with the series of products.
• Homepage Layout: The homepage layout is usually reverse of the homepage ‘above the fold’. Re-organize this layout to give prominence to critical areas such as featured products, tools of persuasion promotions and buttons.
• Navigation: Create a clear and intuitive navigation menu that helps visitors easily find what they’re looking for. Categories should be logically organized, and the search bar should be prominent.

Set Up Essential Pages

• About Us: Describe the story of your brand and tell why your products are special. It makes the customers relate to the products.
• Contact Us: Give details such as a phone number, email address, contact form and so on for the purpose of making it easy for the customers to reach you.
• Privacy Policy and Terms of Service: These pages are very significant in legal statutes and also give the customers with an overview on how their data will be managed.
• FAQ: Discuss the basic questions that customers are likely to have regarding your products, shipping, returns and many more. That would reduce inquiries from customers and enhance the shopping process.

Install Necessary Plugins and Integrations

Depending on the platform you’ve chosen, there may be a variety of plugins or apps that can enhance your store’s functionality. Some core plugins are as:

• SEO Plugins: Applications like Yoast SEO (for WooCommerce) and SEO Manager (for Shopify) can offer great services in promoting the site to various search engines.
• Analytics Tools: Attach Google Analytics or similar programs to basing on the website’s performance and customers’ activity.
• Security Plugins: Use anti-viruses and other security applications to protect your website from infections.

Configuring Your Domain and Hosting

If you haven’t already done so, it’s time to connect your domain name to your website and ensure your hosting is properly set up. This involves:

• Domain Connection: Point your domain name to your website’s hosting server, in most cases all the platforms offer guides that help in this process.
• SSL Certificate: There is a need to install an SSL certificate on your website to protect customer’s information. It is also beneficial in search engine optimization as search engines prefer secured websites.
• Hosting settings: In cases of self-hosted platforms, adjust the hosting settings for all round hosting management covering site performance including speed and up time of the site.

Test Your Website

You should also test your website to ensure that it performs properly before going live. The following tasks as to testing include:

• Functionality Testing: Run links, buttons and forms and check if the functionality is as expected, and aspire to have errors on the end of checkout.
• Cross-Browser Testing: Your website should be effectively designed in such a manner that it displays and operates in various web browsers (e.g. Chrome and Firefox, Safari among others) and devices. (For example; desktop PC, Tablets and Mobile Phones).
• Load Time Testing: Test if the speed of your website is good by using tools such as Google PageSpeed Insights which does a complete test of the website’s load time. A well loading site is important in ensuring that users retain on the website as well as important in search engine optimization.

If you do not know how to optimize your website’s speed, you can refer to our Speed Optimization Services.

Step 4: Adding Products to Your Store

After you have created your online store platform and developed your website, it is now the right time to input your products. This is a very important step because your products are of course the primary reason that customers will be coming to your site. The time spent on adding and organizing your products as well as presenting them on your online shop is the foundation of your success. Customers need to know where to look and what you have to offer and what it means to them.

Read more: How to Add Products to Shopify: Complete Guides

Step 5: Setting Up Payment and Shipping Options

When choosing the type of an online store, there is a need to provide the customers with easy payment and delivery methods. This will enable them to make their purchase and get their products as a result.

And do not leave out the thank you pages that customers view after they have made their purchases. Such pages should assure the customers of the order they placed, inform them of the tracking details and call for more business through promotions. The additional efforts made to optimize the payment and shipping process will ensure that more visitors of your site become customers of your new online store.

Step 6: Optimizing Your Website for SEO and User Experience

Search engine optimization and user experience is very important for the success of online business or e-commerce in order to attract customers and make sales. Here are some key things you should do:

Optimize Your Website Content:

• It is important to ensure that the page titles, headings, images and the content of the website contain the right keywords. Ensure that you conduct a detailed keyword research so that you can know the relevant keywords for your products/services.
• Ensure that you write at least 300 words per page so as to give enough information to the users and also the search engines. Content should be easily readable and easily scan-able.
• Always use internal and external links within your content to enhance users’ experience and to guide search engines on the relevancy of topics.

Optimize Your Website Speed:

• Optimize images and try to reduce large images into smaller ones so that it can be loaded quickly. If you prefer to use services, you can opt for Imagekit or Cloudinary.
• Reduce the number of times that a user is forwarded to another page or has to refresh the page.
• Optimise content delivery using a CDN like Cloudflare to cache and deliver content at a faster rate.
• Add the lazy loading feature for the images that are not in the viewport.
• Zip, compile, query, and tune up file server.

Don’t know how to optimize your website speed? Refer to our Speed Optimization Services now!

Monitor and Improve:

• Integrated Google Search Console and Google Analytics to track the important parameters such as traffic, conversions and users.
• Make sure to receive backlinks at least once a week and acquire guest posts for off page SEO optimization.
• The content, speed and experience should be tested and improved based on the data analysis continually.
• Get and reply to customer feedbacks and ratings.

Step 7: Marketing Your Online Store

Now that your website is live, let’s drive traffic to it and get people buying your products. Effective marketing is key to the success of your online store. Here are some tips for marketing your online store:

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Continue optimizing your website for search engines on an ongoing basis. Improve keywords, add relevant and engaging content regularly, and focus on user experience. These efforts will help rank higher organically in search results.
• Social Media Marketing – Create business pages for your store on social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc. Post high-quality, engaging visual content daily that is relevant to your target audience. Drive traffic back to your site from your social posts. Consider social media advertising as well.
• Email Marketing – Collect email addresses on your site and send periodic emails with new product launches, discounts, and other promotional offers. This is a great way to re-engage past customers and get them spending again.
• Partnerships & Affiliate Marketing – Reach out to influencers and complementary businesses in your industry about partnerships, sponsorships, or affiliate programs. This expands your customer outreach.
• Google & Facebook Ads – Run targeted, optimized ad campaigns on search and social platforms. These paid channels can introduce your brand to new potential customers. Start with small budgets and optimize based on conversions.
• Blogging & On-site Content – Publish blogs, how-to articles, and other fresh content regularly on your site. This improves SEO and gives customers a reason to return to the site. Optimize content for shared learnings, problems or pain points in your industry.
• Offline Marketing – Consider traditional methods too like local events partnerships, print ads in related publications, and sponsorships if your target market is in specific locations.

Step 8: Monitoring and Analyzing Performance

Once your online store is launched, it’s important to consistently monitor and analyze its performance. This will help you determine what’s working well and what needs improvement. Here are some key things to track:

• Traffic sources: Use Google Analytics to see where your site visitors are coming from, such as search engines, social media, email marketing, etc. This will help you understand your most effective marketing channels.
• Site usage metrics: Pay attention to metrics like page views, average time on site, bounce rate, conversion rate, etc. They can reveal how users are interacting with your site.
• Top performing products: Keep an eye on your best selling products so you know what to promote and potentially order more of. You can also see which products are less popular.
• Conversion rates: Monitor your product page to cart conversion rate and cart to order conversion rate. Low rates identify areas for optimization like pricing, design, or messaging.
• Abandoned carts: See how many people add items to their cart but don’t complete checkout. Addressing common reasons for abandonment can boost sales.
• Returning visitors vs new: It’s important to retain as well as attract new customers. Analyze traffic patterns to strengthen loyalty programs.
• Customer behavior: Tools like heatmaps can show you where people spend time or get stuck on your site. Make informed changes.

Consistent performance tracking and analysis is key to continuously improving your online store. The right adjustments keep customers happy and your business growing strongly.

Tips to Build Your Website Easier

It might sound like a difficult task to build a website, especially if you are doing it for the first time, but it is not. Let’s break down how to make a website for selling products with easy tips below:

• Start with a Plan: First of all, define the purpose of your website and what it is that you expect from it. Consider who your target audience is, what the purpose of your site is going to be (for instance, if it is going to be an e-commerce site or a portfolio), and what special functions you are going to require. This will assist you to avoid distractions.
• Pick the Right Website Builder: But if you do not know how to code, it will be much easier for you if you use a website builder. Wix, Squarespace, and WordPress are some of the most famous site builders that provide simple instruments, presets, and addons. Select one that suits your ability and the level of your website or the website of your client.
• Keep It Simple: It is also easier to design and to use: a clean, simple design is the easiest to design and to use. Do not clutter the site with numerous elements; the more elements are present on the site, the more difficult it will be to navigate.
• Use Good Images: Choose images that are of good quality and are related to the content of the website and attractive to the viewers. There are many professional photos on free sites like Unsplash and Pexels. Just ensure that the images used are well optimized so that the website’s loading speed is not affected.
• Make It Mobile-Friendly: A lot of people visit websites using their phones, ensuring that your site is compatible with phones. Some website builders have the ability to design a mobile version of your site at the same time but it’s always a good idea to double check to make sure everything looks good on a mobile device.

FAQs

How much does it cost to create an e-commerce website?

The cost is rather flexible depending on features and whether it is created from scratch or by a professional. Simplest websites that can be built using site builders, such as Wix or Shopify, cost nothing to $500. Websites built for you usually cost anywhere between 1 thousand dollars and 10 thousand dollars. You also have monthly hosting costs.

Do I need coding skills to create an e-commerce website?

Not really. Tools like website builders and ecommerce platforms such as Shopify allows one to build an online store without any coding skills. They have templates and tools that allow them to set everything up. A little HTML or CSS may come in handy for tweaking but it is not necessary.

Which payment gateways are best for online stores?

Some of the most used payment gateways are PayPal, Stripe and Square.

• PayPal is very popular but it charges on a per transaction basis.
• Stripe has reasonable prices and products for developers.
• Square is good if you also need in-person card processing as well.
• If you use Shopify, then Shopify Payments are quite compatible with the platform.

How to Make a Website to Sell Products: Summary

While going through the steps on how to make a website to sell products, it might appear to be quite complex, but with the right approach and tools, it is possible to come up with a good online store. When you follow these steps, you will be on the right track of developing a site that can capture the customer’s attention, compel them to make a purchase and in the process, help your business expand. Do not forget about the main idea, do not overload your design, and always work on your website’s performance. Happy selling!