How to build an ecommerce website: 5 simple steps

Want to open an online store, but feeling more lost than a sock in a dryer? We know how overwhelming it can be when you’re getting started. A quick Google search for ‘ecommerce website’ brings up over a billion results, with too many web hosting providers to choose from. 

There’s so much to do as a business owner, and when 99% of your time is spent developing products ready for launch, creating a website is probably the last thing on your mind.

But fear not! We’re here to walk you through every step of the process so you can get on with selling and massively increase your profits. Interested in a more in-depth explanation of how to build your ecommerce website from scratch? Check out our ‘how to build an online store’ mega guide after reading this article.

Why create an ecommerce website?

Still relying on your brick-and-mortar stores? If you’re not taking advantage of the ecommerce boom, you could be missing out on a huge number of sales and new customers. Here’s why you should start creating an ecommerce website for your business if you don’t already have one:

1. Reach global customers

One of the limitations of physical stores is that only customers within a certain area are likely to visit. If you ever want to target national or international customers, you’ll need an ecommerce site that anyone in the world can access. With your online store, you can massively expand your customer base and potentially become a global brand in the future.

2. Reduce running costs

Owning a physical store comes with a lot of hefty running costs, including rent, utilities, staffing costs, physical security measures, and more. While an online store won’t be completely free to run (you’ll need a budget for things like web hosting, domain registration and SSL certificates – more on this later), your running costs will be substantially lower, allowing you to make a greater profit. 

3. Stay open 24/7

Your brick-and-mortar store can only be staffed and open for a certain number of hours per day, but your ecommerce store can stay open all of the time. This allows your customers to shop at any time they feel like it – even if they live in a completely different time zone. This flexibility can help you appeal to a broader range of customers and increase your overall sales.

4. Gather insights

Want to know more about what your customers want? Running an ecommerce website can help you gather more data about what your customers are looking for and which products are the most popular, through metrics such as page views, bounce rates and engagement. Use services like Google Analytics and Google Search Console to monitor your online store and figure out what changes you need to make to improve.

5. Scale up

Scaling up your brick-and-mortar store can be pretty difficult, whether this involves moving to a bigger building or starting a franchise – both of which are very expensive. On the other hand, scaling up your online store as traffic grows is much easier, especially if you choose the right web hosting plan from the get-go. 

For example, if you choose a scalable VPS (virtual private server) or cloud server from Fasthosts, you’ll be able to add more resources to your plan via your control panel whenever you need, helping you handle higher traffic loads while maintaining excellent website performance. You could even start with a dedicated server if you plan to expand your business rapidly in the future, as these powerful servers are well equipped to handle very high volumes of traffic or multiple ecommerce sites (which is useful if you want to expand into multiple niches).

How to create an ecommerce site in 5 steps

As you can see, having an online store is crucial if you want your business to succeed in this day and age, particularly if you want to expand beyond your local area. So how do you get started? Whilst the thought of creating your own ecommerce website can be pretty daunting, it’s actually a lot easier than you might think. Just follow these five steps to get your new website set up in no time at all, even if you’re a total beginner!

1. Register a domain name

Before you start building your dream website, we recommend registering your domain name. Your domain name is how people find your business online, so it needs to reflect your brand, be instantly recognisable, and be easy for your customers to remember. Your domain name can be anything, from your business name to an SEO-focused idea, but we would always recommend keeping it short, avoiding special characters, and incorporating relevant keywords if possible.

While you’re at it, we would suggest registering domain name typos and variations too. This will help you capture typing error traffic and thwart ‘typosquatters’, who register brand domain name variations and try to sell them back to brands at an inflated price. To learn more about domain names, make sure you read our article on how to choose a domain name before registering and building your site.

Sure, you can create the website first. But what if someone else swoops in and takes the name you want while you’re busy mapping out the perfect landing page? Register your domain name before it’s snapped up!

2. Choose a hosting provider

The next step is choosing a hosting provider. Every website needs web hosting in order to be accessible on the internet, so this is one of the first things you’ll need to get sorted.

If you’re new to creating a website, this can be pretty daunting, but don’t let fancy acronyms put you off! There are a few different types of web hosting to choose from, like virtual private server (VPS) hosting, dedicated hosting and cloud hosting. It’s important to review the pros and cons before making a decision.

In general, options like shared hosting are less powerful but great for beginners who don’t anticipate getting a lot of traffic yet on their website, whereas dedicated hosting is much more expensive and powerful (and therefore excellent for hosting a large ecommerce website or multiple sites). A VPS is a great place to start for an ecommerce site, as they're more affordable and easier to maintain than dedicated servers but still more powerful than shared hosting, which can expose you to potential performance issues due to neighbour interference. Then, as you grow, you might want to move to dedicated or cloud hosting, which will give you the option for more resources.

3. Select a website builder

Now for the fun part – choosing a website builder or ecommerce platform to bring your vision to life. These dedicated platforms come with pre-installed templates, themes, plugins, and drag-and-drop tools to make the website building process super easy – no coding required. 

Wondering how to build an ecommerce website from scratch? It’s possible to forgo a website builder platform and just code your website yourself, but this will require some technical expertise and knowledge of programming languages like HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Alternatively, you could hire a web developer to do this for you and create a truly bespoke website, but this could cost hundreds or thousands of pounds depending on your project. Website builders are the easiest, quickest and most affordable option by far.

WordPress

WordPress is a popular option for building functional websites. In fact, around 43% of the web is built on WordPress – and it’s clear why. It’s incredibly easy to create an ecommerce site with WordPress. Plus, you’ll receive a range of handy features and integrations, like DDoS protection and built-in SEO tools to track traffic.

WooCommerce

If you plan on setting up a WordPress website for your online store, then WooCommerce is a must. The fully customisable, open-source ecommerce platform is built on WordPress and comes with a bunch of free or paid features and extensions to choose from – like WooCommerce Payments and Shipping Countdown. It really takes your website to a whole new level.

Shopify

When it comes to choosing your ecommerce platform, some business owners prefer Shopify over WordPress. You can build a stunning online storefront without any coding expertise, let customers pay their way and fulfil orders with a single click. It’s also extremely affordable, with basic plans starting at just £25 per month. Don’t want to invest right away? No problem, there’s a free trial!

Fasthosts Ecommerce Website Builder

Last but certainly not least, we have the Fasthosts Ecommerce Website Builder – an absolute must for anyone looking for a super simple way to build a fully functional, stylish and professional online store. Our easy-to-use design tools mean no technical expertise is required – simply drag and drop the ecommerce features you want for your site, including stock control tools, product filters, real-time delivery tracking options and much more.

What’s more, you can get started with any of our Ecommerce Website Builder plans for just £1 per month for the first three months! After this period, it’s just £18 per month for our basic plan, which allows you to sell up to 500 products. 

Hoping to grow your business rapidly? It’s extremely easy to upgrade to our more advanced plans, which allow you to sell unlimited products and enable Amazon and eBay integration. 

4. Create content

Once you’ve got your web hosting and website builder, you can start actually building your ecommerce website! To do this, you’ll need to have product page content and designs ready to go.

At this stage, you might want to hire a copywriter to create this content for you, or you may have existing team members who can do this. However, if you’re a sole trader, you can save money by doing it yourself. Here are the main features you’ll need to think about including on each product page:

• Written product descriptions
• Pictures from various angles or even a video demo
• Details such as product weight, materials and dimensions 
• Ingredients lists if applicable
• File sizes (for digital products such as templates or eBooks)
• Product directions or instructions if needed
• Product variations (such as colours and sizes)
• Customer reviews and ratings

Plus, don’t forget to work on your home page, about us page, shipping information page, and contact us page too; all of these are necessary to create a professional-looking website and give customers all the information they need to feel comfortable making a purchase. If you’re not hiring a copywriter, it may be worthwhile to research SEO and copywriting online. The Fasthosts Business Hub has guides on both search engine optimisation and copywriting if you don’t know where to start.

5. Set up a payment method

Finally, to get your website ready for handling transactions, you’ll need to set up a payment method on your ecommerce site. Different regions may prefer different payment processors, so consider whether methods like PayPal, Apple Pay, Visa or Stripe (all supported by the Fasthosts Ecommerce Website Builder) would be the best fit for your business. 

Make sure you check the security features of your chosen payment gateway before proceeding – having secure payments on your site is crucial for gaining customers’ trust. You should also check fees you’ll need to pay, as third-party payment processors may charge a set-up fee, monthly subscription fees, and transaction fees (typically 1-5% of each transaction).

In addition to setting up your payment gateway, you need to clarify your shipping policy and ensure this is explained on your site. For example, will you offer international shipping? Will there be extra charges for shipping to certain countries? Will you offer free shipping? Will you offer returns within a certain timeframe? All of these details need to be ironed out before you start selling online.

SSL certificates

Before you can start accepting payments, you need an SSL certificate for your ecommerce site. SSL certificates encrypt data transferred between your website and a user’s browser to prevent it from being intercepted by cybercriminals. Not only is having these certificates essential for protecting user data and establishing customer trust, but they are also a key ranking factor for Google. Websites without SSL certificates are harshly penalised by Google, so if you want to secure higher rankings in search engine results, you need to prove your site is secure and trustworthy with an SSL certificate.

How to create an ecommerce website for free

It’s technically possible to create a website for free, but this may lead to more problems than you anticipated. For instance, you can find free web hosting plans to avoid paying monthly hosting fees, but this means you’ll be stuck with limited resources, which can lead to frustrating speed and performance issues for customers visiting your site. Plus, these free hosting plans often require you to host adverts on your website, which can make your site look less professional. 

You’ll also find it very difficult to register a domain name or ensure secure payment gateways without spending any money. You could create the website itself for free if you know how to code it from scratch, but this would be extremely time-consuming and technically complex.

However, this doesn’t mean creating an ecommerce website has to cost the earth. There are plenty of cheap web hosting plans that give you enough resources to get started, such as the cheap shared hosting and cheap VPS hosting plans here at Fasthosts (costing just £5 and £3 per month respectively). Plus, many of these plans include a free domain name and SSL certificate too. 

How much does it cost to build an ecommerce site?

Many factors can influence the overall cost of your ecommerce website, such as the type of web hosting you choose (with more powerful VPSs and dedicated servers costing more per month), the domain extension you choose, your website builder, and whether you do things yourself or hire copywriters and web developers to help you out. 

For a more detailed breakdown of how much you can expect to pay for each stage of the website-building process, check out our article on how much it costs to build a website. 

Start building!

Once you’ve decided on a domain name, chosen your platform and saved your account password somewhere you definitely won’t forget, it’s time to get creative! With the Fasthosts Ecommerce Website Builder, you can create a professional, stylish website with completely customisable templates, drag-and-drop tools, and a wide variety of free design elements and stock images. All you need to do is provide the content!

Having trouble getting started? At Fasthosts, we have a range of WordPress Hosting and Web Hosting plans to choose from – all with a free domain and lifetime SSL certificate. Just pick a use case (like an online store) and we’ll pre-install recommended plugins and themes for you!

Get in touch with us at 0808 503 3393 or drop us a message to get started.