Creating an Electronics eCommerce Store [Step-by-Step Guide]
It’s quite obvious that eCommerce market is growing rapidly providing more and more opportunities for merchants to gain profit. E-commerce has changed our lifestyles in many ways because now we don’t have to spend time and money traveling to the market. Everything is now easily available through some clicks instead.
Almost all people like shopping. It even works like antidepressant sometimes. Thousands of shops and stores are created every day to make our shopping experience better.
If you are a merchant selling electronics, you simply must have an online store, an interactive website intended for sale and advertising of goods, as well as booking, payment, and delivery of them.
Not sure where to start? This guide is aimed to help you out.
Your first issues
Actually, the development of an electronics online store with eCommerce website templates is similar to the scheme of other websites building. However, this type of website is very dynamic. It is necessary to regularly update, keep the information actual, as well as prices and add or delete definite goods.
You can adjust the principles оf online orders through website’s control system:
- Determine who your buyers are: their age, preferences, and gender.
- What is the purpose of online store creation? What are you going to sell?
- Make up the scheme. You need to take care of the shopping process if you don’t want to get into an uncomfortable situation when you sell out all the goods in a couple of days and should ask the clients to wait. Or on the contrary, when you order too many goods, which you are unable to sell.
- Create a product & services catalog on site as well as a search form. Navigation can vary depending on your assortment.
- Test and improve your online store all the time.
Electrolux PrestaShop Theme
Data center
Before hiring the company or industry experts, you should understand that your future website will deal with large amounts of information. Therefore, you need to think about strong servers and powerful equipment as the foundations, providing high performance. What you want to do is refer to the Data Center. What is data center? It’s a high-protected area where the servers of various companies are placed.
Its service will be useful for companies, whose activities directly depend on the uninterrupted maintenance of the fast and efficient processing of the huge flow of information. We mean the implementation of special disaster recovery solutions, an organization of backup data in the data center that will ensure the maximum data security against the risks of loss.
The purpose of the commercial data center is to provide customers with the services related to the provision of reliability and fault tolerance of the storage and processing of information. Furthermore, it ensures the efficiency of the major Internet portals and aids volume calculations. The data center provides specially protected channels for international communication. Guaranteed safety, reliability and the utmost speed are now in commercial demand on the world market.
The process of development
Site building for electronics store (as well as any other project) includes three basic elements:
- Hosting
- Domain name
- The site itself
Hosting and domain are the tools that define the place of residence of your site on the Internet. In plain English, hosting provides the necessary storage space for the website on the Internet, and the domain is responsible for its online address. What you need to do is find the company which provides both these services and agree on the terms of cooperation.
After you have ordered hosting services and domain name, time for site building is coming. If you are planning to build something grand like Aliexpress, for example, it will be a very complicated process, which is possible only from scratch. None of the CMS, even WordPress or Joomla, are able to build a site of such scale.
However, it’s just an electronics store, so you can choose from any popular engine solutions:
- Magento
- PrestaShop
- VirtueMart
- ZenCart
- OpenCart
- WooCommerce
- Shopify
- other
iPhone X – Apple Store Shopify Theme
Attractive design boosted by user-friendly interface
What is the first thing a user notices when they enter a website? It’s design, of course. Therefore, the goal of the graphic designer is to create the unique and catchy layout to impress the visitor. What’s more, the site should be simple and usable. The tips below will help you clarify how to create such usability and attractiveness in design.
First of all, the design must not interfere with the normal operation of the resource slow down its work. For example, try to avoid cluttered home pages as well as other pages with big variety of pictures or animation.
Secondly, the design should match the resource content. If your site is devoted to selling electronics, the photos of modern gadgets or respected brands are the irreplaceable attributes.
Thirdly, it is very important to pay attention to the color scheme. It is not advisable to use colors close to black and bright red as they negatively affect the visitor. It is better to make the page background of the lighter shade and highlight some parts, such as graphs, buttons, functional elements with the darker one. It is recommended to use not more than 3-4 colors that seamlessly blend with each other. Study the psychology of color in design for more understanding.
A good piece of advice is to never stop and constantly make changes and improve your site design.
As to the user-friendly interface development, the main objective here is the creation of well-ordered navigation. Users ought to be able to move through the site without any questions and difficulties. All the menus and transitions should be intuitive and simple. You can reach the effect with the help of the minimalism technique and by an understanding of the human nature.
Use the UI/UX design services in order to create the unique and practical design of your site.
Home Electronics Shopify Theme
Adaptability
Here is a bit of statistics: more than 30% of buyers make their purchases via smartphones, tablets, and other portable gadgets. What should this prompt you? That your website must be completely adaptive to these devices to give all the users the opportunity to do shopping on the go.
If you are using a ready-made website design, most of them are responsive nowadays (if you buy a template from a decent company, of course), so you don’t need to worry about that. Just check out template’s specifications.
But if you are a large organization going to create a large-scale website from scratch, you’d better discuss the point with the developer before the start of the project development.
Ismiler – Electronics Store WooCommerce Theme
Choose multilingual site for your business success all over the world
Your online store should be designed for the mixed audiences, even in terms of language. If the amount of the traffic to your website dramatically increases, your income will also grow. There are many ways of making a website available in multiple languages and it is the responsibility of your developer. For instance, the accessible solution is the installation of the special plug-in, which translates the text automatically. However, this method does not guarantee the high quality of the translation. The development from scratch is still the most reliable option, but it is the most expensive as well.
TechLoop – Electronics & Gadgets Store Responsive WooCommerce Theme
Payment systems of your electronics eCommerce store
As your future website is involved in the sphere of trade, so payment system integration is its integral part. There are numerous ways of payment for goods in the online store. Payment acceptance ways should be convenient for your customers. In order not to be mistaken with the choice, study the basic trends in e-commerce. How do users prefer to pay for their goods purchased online? What payment systems are the most popular?
The most widespread payment systems:
- Bank cards MasterCard and VISA
- QIWI
- Webmoney
- Yandex money
- Western Union
- International bank transfer
Please note that the money that is paid for the order comes to the account of the trading platform, not to the seller directly. Such payment system has several benefits and provides «Buyer Protection», which means that it is better to implement it on your site.
As you are selling on the Internet, the customer from any region of the world can make an order on your site, so do not forget to provide the cost conversion into the most common currencies (UAH, USD, RUB, EUR, INR, JPY, IDR). To make this feature work, it will be necessary to set the automatic connection to the NBU that allows to automatically update all the latest changes in currencies directly on the site.
Cords & Wires Shopify Theme
In order to receive payment for orders via VISA, MasterCard, Maestro, and other cards, you must contact the company that will handle such payments and transfer funds into your bank account.
Drone Shop Shopify Theme
Here are the steps included in the plan of establishing partnerships with such companies:
- Secure a contract with a payment system or aggregator.
- Get the props from the payment system to configure the online store.
- Use the obtained requisites to set up a new payment method in your online store. Install one of the payment plugins to add a payment method.
After the customer completes the checkout, the money is being withdrawn from their card and transferred to the bank account of the online store owner. The payment system also provides the documents necessary for tax registration and other reports.
Together with cooperation with companies specializing in payment systems, you will have to sign the cooperation agreement with the transportation companies/postal services.
Postal services
Online stores are dependent on the postal service as the goods must be delivered to the buyer somehow no matter where they live.
Delivery services are different. They depend on the size, weight, and cost of the product, but generally, there are paid and free services. Each customer chooses the option that suits them best.
Free shipping
It’s a good practice when the purchase of goods is carried out without extra charge for delivery.
If you want to deliver the goods for free, indicate that the shipping is free. This is obligatory.
You can also deliver products for free only when the order is of a certain amount, for example, $50.
Paid deliveries: types and benefits
Here is a brief list of delivery companies that render paid international courier services:
- TNT – European company of express goods delivery. It is listed among the five of the largest courier services in the world.
- EMS – Post of Russia that carries out the express delivery at affordable rates.
- UPS – the US courier service that performs fast transportation of goods and cargoes.
- FedEx – the American postal company that provides courier services around the world.
- DHL – international transport company.
- S.F. Express – transportation company, which core business is express shipping from China, Hong Kong, and Thailand.
The bulky goods delivery is carried out by means of special cargo companies.
If one of these companies makes the parcel delivery, it has an international tracking number and the buyer will receive it in their native post office in the country they live in.
You can select the most appropriate types of postal services for your business from the list above. Naturally, the best option will be to provide both free and paid shipping. You will have to discuss all the details and prices individually with each chosen transport company. Main financial operations will be performed by buyers and sellers, but your major task is to implement all the necessary services, make them compatible, and create the acceptable conditions.
Checking the sellers
You will have to deal with plenty people, who want to promote their products. You will have to cooperate with various companies and stores. Your site will rely on them. Its reputation will depend entirely on the choice of your partners. So, to make the image of your site positive, you should choose wisely.
You can meet absolutely different kinds of sellers on the market. Some of them are dishonest and try to profit at the expense of deception, low-quality goods or fraud. It is a common phenomenon in online shopping when a buyer receives the product of a different color or size. Also, the widespread unpleasant thing is the discrepancy between real product and description.
Fortunately, the majority of sellers follow the moral precepts and make concessions to the buyer. So, your goal is to increase the number of conscionable sellers.
Study the profile of the person (particularly, photos of their goods) when someone asks for the place on your site.
It is the time-consuming process, but you will be sure that your eCommerce platform offers the products of only proven sellers. This contributes to the establishment of trust attitudes to your site.
Hope our article explains the basics of online store development.
All in all, if you’re searching for a team of web developers who`ll be able to set up your project, TemplateMonster marketplace and their professional crew can help you to find the best custom solution. Order from them and they’ll be happy to turn your great idea into the real modern appealing online store.
About the Author
Sunit Nandi I'm the leader of Techno FAQ. Also an engineering college student with immense interest in science and technology. Other interests include literature, coin collecting, gardening and photography. Always wish to live life like there's no tomorrow.
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