Websites are ambassadors of businesses, enterprises and organizations on the internet. They have the ability to attend millions without needing any salesman or cashier. In short, they are just amazing. But for a startup, how important it is to reach out to other people outside the physical domain? What are the costs involved and how difficult it is to create an online presence? I guess we will have to find out, but first, let’s see what a startup actually is.

What is a Startup?

A startup is a newly established business founded by one or more entrepreneurs who also finance the business while at the same time attracts outside investment. However, every business that comes out of its egg is not a startup. What makes startups unique are their unique prospects and goals. Initially, a startup commences as a weakly funded venture aimed at offering a product or a service that is absent in the mainstream market. A solution which people yearn for!

Now, the challenge appears when you have to convert your commerce into E-commerce. A startup of this era will easily wither and die if you fail to exhibit it in front of the online audience. It not only allows access to the global market, but helps you expand its capacity on multiple platforms. There are benefits you simply cannot count, so let’s start with how to make the ideal website for your very own startup.

Choosing a Domain

First off, what you need to do is come up with the perfect domain name. Although a custom domain name is not essential, it is highly desirable for a unique business identity and SEO purposes.

Deciding a domain name for your startup is not very different from naming your first born baby. You need to express your objectives in the name while keeping it simple and catchy. Adding your personal sentiments within the name is unto your discretion, but if the name has to meet its mark, it must be easy to type and pronounce. The domain name limit is set up to 67 characters, but filling them all up is not the wisest of ideas. Let it be short, yet appealing and meaningful.

Check if your chosen domain name is available.

Selecting a Reliable Hosting Server

Now comes the server, this is the second most important task while building a website for your startup. You will have to choose a strong and reliable server to trust your data with, one that does not crash or run scarce on bandwidth.

Some of the most popular hosting companies include:

• Bluehost
• HostGator
• GoDaddy Hosting
• Hostinger
• A2Hosting

For a startup it is recommended that you start off with shared hosting. It is a safe and budget friendly solution for your online presence where you can easily abandon if things go south. However, if your startup is getting into the swing of things, you can always shift to a dedicated server where there is no bandwidth or data sharing. This helps the website to remain in place without compromising its performance.

Choosing the Right E-commerce Platform

There are many E-commerce platforms and choosing the one for your ecommerce website is sometimes challenging.

Round and round, it comes down to your target audience and what products you are selling through your startup. We have narrowed down top 5 platforms that are the first choices of most entrepreneurs in 2020.

Shopify

From a small street vendor to multi-national corporations, Shopify offers the right mix of user friendly features and tools for any startup to start making some cash. It’s flexible, customer centric and does not resist you to expand your business further.

BigCommerce

BigCommerce is the best ecommerce platform for larger retail brands as well as for startups who want to start their online store. It’s powerful and comes with advance features that allow startups to create a comprehensive store that earns.

Magento

When it comes to customization and out of the box marketing, Magento is the best option as an open source E-commerce platform that any startup can go for. You can build your startup website from scratch and add third party Magento 2 plugins to serve your specific needs.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce is the most popular and widely used ecommerce platform. As of 2020,it powers over 28.19% of all online stores.  It is a WordPress plugin that turns a WordPress website into a fully functional ecommerce store. WooCommerce is best known for easy customization and SEO friendliness.

3dcart

Next up is 3dcart which has served over 22,000 online businesses including some well known brands. It’s known for its ease of use and managed back end with no required experience in coding and web programming. It’s as easy as selecting a template, uploading your brand logo, images, content and prices. There you have it, your very own online store.

Designing Store & Adding Products

After you have chosen an ecommerce platform that best suits your business, it's time to design your store. Start by selecting a theme that best represents your brand and gives an appealing look. You can then start adding pages, categories, products, text, images and videos.

Designing your store is the most crucial step. It's important that you design your store in such a way that gives the best shopping experience to customers. If you can't do it yourself, let a good ecommece website development firm take charge. While designing your store, remember the following guidelines.

1. Navigation

Once you are through with selecting or building new templates for your startup website, it’s time that you set your website navigation. A good navigation is imperative if your store has to succeed. It allows your customers to easily find content on your store and once your customers find what they are looking for, your store conversion rates will increase.

• Create simple and self explanatory navigation
• Include an adequate hierarchy of pages
• Add blog page for customer engagement
• Include a noticeable search bar

2. Text

With the navigation done its time you move to the content of the website. The content includes text, photos and videos etc. A good textual presence on your pages is necessary for your online store. Without mentioning the product description such as instruction and specifications, you cannot convince your customer in purchasing it. In order to get a well organized and crystal clear text content,

• Make sure you use the right text font with balanced color combination for the background
• Mention everything but short and concise. This will enhance the readability of the text
• Use subheadings to emphasize the importance of text where your USP (Unique Selling Point) lies

3. Images and Videos

The impact of visual detail in any online store cannot be refuted. Top selling websites use clever deployment of images and videos to increase their product appeal. If your startup has to do online business, you must integrate good images and videos for your products and services

• You can attach infographic, product images, screenshots and company events pictures on your online store.
• Make sure every product image has a name and description.
• You can optimize them through image galleries, image sliders, blocks and lightbox to preview images.
• The ecommerce platform you choose will be equipped with these tools but if not, you can add third party applications as well.
• Similarly, you can also add videos for product instructions and testimonials and even for recreative purposes. A good 10 second video has the potential to outdo several pages of text without compromising any details from the context.

Adding multimedia element helps you showcase your startup’s capacity and provide your customers with an insight into your business.

The Power of SEO

If you think you are done after developing an ecommerce website, you can't be more wrong. Now you have to bring traffic to your website and reach out to those who might be interested in your products. Now is the time to come up with a marketing plan.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the best way to get organic traffic. It is the set of techniques that help you boost traffic on your website by achieving top placement on popular search engines such as Google, Bing or Yahoo. Other marketing avenues include paid advertising on search engines (PPC), social media marketing, email marketing, offering webinars and free consultation etc. Making a good use of all these avenues is essential for brand awareness and conversions.

How it Works?

SEO is the art of convincing search engines that you are an authority in your niche and that people trust you. Your content and backlinks have the power to prove it to search engines.

Broadly, you need to have better content and more backlinks (both in number and quality) than your competitors in order to outrank them.  A better position on the search result page means more online users will click on your website and conversion rates will naturally increase. However, there are some precautions associated with SEO.

• Never design your website without keeping SEO in mind. Have your designers understand the requirements so you can perform organic SEO.
• Never use black hat techniques. They might work for the time being but can bring devastating consequences to your online store.
• Use fitting keywords and keyword phrases text. If you don’t use them appropriately it will defeat meaning of your content.
• Never focus on quantity, prefer quality. A good authoritative link has the potential to outperform a 100 poor quality links all combined.

Conclusion

Startups are risky maneuvers and adapting with them on an online store can be difficult. It will be the website that represents your ideals and business objectives towards the client so make sure you deliver them as effectively as possible. Add user perspective in your website’s interface and upload fresh content on a regular basis. Keep your customers updated about your products and use a healthy dose of promotions and campaigns for your upcoming products. This will not only allow you to engage better with the customers, but also help you expand your reach and achieve better exposure for your business.