How to build an online store in less than 1 hour.
If you are thinking of starting an online business, you have doubts about whether you are an unknown person to do everything together for starting up. The definite answer is yes, you alone do all the steps to make an online website live. Therefore, you need to take your first steps to read this article carefully and follow all steps accordingly to create an e-commerce website.
You may wonder how you make all your business run and get your first client very soon. Here, I will tell all processes step-by-step so you can understand and do all steps effectively. In this blog, I breakdown whole process into small steps on how to build an online store in less than 1 hour.
What is the e-commerce business?
The e-commerce business is a popular concept through which you can sell anything that starts from digital goods to physical goods. Then, the customer places an order on the e-commerce platform to make a purchase.
You must ship the products through the courier partners or yourself as a website owner according to your planned business model. Then, the digital goods are delivered directly to the client's email.
E-commerce Market Size:
In 2022, the Indian e-commerce market is predicted to increase by 21.5%, reaching US$ 74.8 billion. The Indian E-commerce market is expected to grow to US$ 188 billion by 2025 from US$ 46.2 billion as of 2020.
By 2030, it is expected to reach US$ 350 billion. India's e-commerce market is expected to reach US$ 111 billion by 2024 and US$ 200 billion by 2026: According to India Brand Equity Foundation. You can read the full report here.
Open your eyes and understand the above report yourself and the concept of business.
Making an e-commerce website is now very easy with easy drag-and-drop tools available in the market. After post-COVID-19, purchases on the e-commerce site increased severalfold. Now, most of us rely on online stores.
If you wish to start an online business as a side hustle, solopreneur, or startup, this is the right time to create an e-commerce business. You may want to learn how to make an online store in woo-commerce.
In this blog, you can learn basic things about building an online store in less than 1 hour.
Why are you starting an online business?
Now it is the most prominent channel for everyone to buy goods they need. It is the first choice now for clients to check online whether the goods they want to buy are available online.
If they find the right products at the right price, they choose them as their first choice. If you are searching for a business model for your career, the online business is the first preference, as most clients are searching for goods online. But, like other businesses, your business needs a client first. So, it is your definite choice to start.
Once you start the online business, you will not be struggling to get your first 1000 clients if you make the right product choice. Here is the list of options that you can take from them to start selling your first products.
What is the best software to use for e-commerce business?
Shopify: The company reported more than 1,700,000 businesses in approximately 175 countries using its platform as of May 2021.
WooCommerce: The 2021 market share for WooCommerce is 29% of the top 1 million sites using eCommerce technologies.
You can build an online store in less than 1 hour using the above software. So here, the good thing is you can choose anyone for your online business. However, if you are focusing on blogging besides an online store, Wocommerce is an excellent way to choose.
How to build an online store in less than 1 hour.
Purchase a Domain and Hosting
Hosting is a place in which all the website files are saved. First, you need to purchase a domain name for your web address. You can buy an easy and memorable domain name from the domain name registrar GoDaddy, Bluehost, Domain.com, Hostinger, etc. Besides a Domain name, you need to purchase hosting for your WordPress website. Buying a Domain name and Hosting from the same company is better, which minimizes the business setup cost. Most hosting providers are giving a free one-year domain with the hosting plan. So, buying a domain name from GoDaddy and Hosting from Bluehost is better.
WordPress and WordPress theme
WordPress is an open-source content management software you can use for blogging. After the Hosting plan is purchased, the best WordPress theme you need to install on the server. I suggest you kindly go with the Astra theme, a flexible, fastest, and easily customizable premium WordPress theme. It can be integrated with Woocommerce easily.
With the Astra theme, you will get tons of easy ways to build a beautiful Woocommerce website matching your brand.
WooCommerce
Woo-commerce is an e-commerce plugin that makes your WordPress website a full-fledged e-commerce website. Mainly WordPress is used for blogging. WordPress with woo-commerce plugins, making your site a complete fledge e-commerce website, selling goods either it is digital or physical.
Installing WordPress
Without a hosting plan, you are unable to install WordPress. The auto or manual WordPress installation happened in most of the hosting plans. If you are a beginner, I recommend the Hosting plan have a Woocommerce auto-installer.
Install Astra WordPress theme.
After installing WordPress on the Hosting, you will get a WordPress website with default and a free WordPress theme. After that, you will need to install an Astra theme yourself manually.
That you can do by following the steps: Dashboard > Appearance > Themes > Add New > Type “Astra” in Search Box > Click Install > Activate.
After installing Astra Theme, you must delete the old one from the backend to maintain the website speed.
Installing WooCommerce and necessary plugins
Install WooCommerce
How to install the WooCommerce store to your WordPress?
Again, you can follow the path.
Plugins > Add New > Search “WooCommerce” > Click “Install Now” > Activate.
It is the first step that you can follow.
Second, if you purchased a WooCommerce Hosting plan from Bluehost or any other Hosting providers, the WordPress with WooCommerce Store by default is activated to the WordPress backend.
You can install a new plugin of Starter Templates in the following ways
Plugins > Add New > Type “Starter Templates” in the search box > Install > Activate.
Then it comes under the Appearance as “Started Templates” on the dashboard. The one question is how to build an online store in less than 1 hour. Yes, it is possible to make use of Started Templates.
You can see the following video on how quickly and efficiently to build an online store in less than 1 hour using the Starter Templates.
Install necessary plugins
Here, I recommended some plugins to maximize the performance of the Woo-commerce website.
WPForm is the best belling and lightweight contact form you can place on any post and page.
Sucuri is a security plugin you can integrate to protect your website from hackers. It protects your website from hackers and cannot steal your site data, including your clients' payment information.
OptinMonster is an opt-in form for getting clients' emails quickly, and you can grow your email list.
ExactMetrics is the best Google Analytics Plugin you can install it. Also, it is the most powerful and user-friendly WordPress analytics plugin.
WP Rocket is a plugin made to boost your loading time, improve your PageSpeed score.
RafflePress: It is a giveaway plugin. You can use it to grow your email list very fast. Also, you can create a campaign for “refer-to-a-friend.” You can place a viral giveaway on any page and post.
WP-Optimise is a plugin to reduce the image and other file sizes to boost the site speed.
Updraft Plus is a backup plugin that copies your website in a couple of clicks and imports the backup to create the original website. In case of a website crash, you can recover your website and data quickly as possible.
Squirrly SEO: It is an easy-to-use onsite SEO plugin to make your website stand on the top page of Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
Setting up WooCommerce online store
Shipping
Generally, physical products need to ship to the client's address. If your products digital need to deliver to the email or give access immediately after placing an order. For physical products, you can ship them through courier partners or yourself. Perishable products like fresh vegetables, fruits, and cooked foods need to send locally by self.
Otherwise, you can get the help of third-party shipping partners like Delhivery, Ecom Express, Amazon Ship, and DTDC. Before placing an order, you must arrange various shipping materials, like corrugated boxes and poly packs of different sizes.
Taxes
If you want to sell books in India, you don't need to register on GST. Otherwise, everyone wanting to sell online must take a GST number for their business. You can register your business in India as Proprietor, Partnership, or Private Limited. You can add the tax rate on a collection basis or individual products.
Payments
Most clients prefer Cash On Delivery (COD), except the old customers who knew you earlier and trusted you. Moreover, you can expect product returns in the case of COD orders compared to the pre-paid orders. So, if you want to take payment when you get an online order, you need to partner with Third-party payment gateways like Razorpay, PayTM, PayUmoney, and Amazon Pay.
Add products
You can add products as physical or downloadable products. Also, you can add products as simple or group products. Before adding, you must have the product name, description, two pictures, tax rate, meta tag, and video, if possible.
Testing your store
You can test your website before marketing and promoting whether your online store works in all aspects. For example, you can add products to your cart, add a shipping address, place a test order on your site, and check whether the order was placed successfully. Also, check whether the order confirmation email and all other related emails have been delivered to the client's email.
You can see the following video showing how quickly and efficiently to test your WooCommerce website and make sure that website is working correctly.
Promoting your online store
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
Do the onsite SEO by giving low, competitive keywords to the product's name and description. To do the keyword research of less competitive keywords, you can use the SEO tool Semrush.
The product's description must be at least 100 words to standout your product on Google. In addition, you can add the proper tags to the product's pictures.
Content marketing
Besides onsite SEO, you can run advertisements on Facebook and Google. Also, you can develop a system to link building backlinks to high authority sites.
PPC advertising
PPC stands for pay per click. That you can also do. But you need to pay for it. Even the sale that you would get is minimal. So I suggest you don't do much attention to it now.
Social media marketing
In addition, you can share your products on social media accounts to get more traffic to your newly formed online website.
Conclusion
You have learned how to build an online store in less than 1 hour. Starter Templated with Astra Theme is an exceptional tool for making a WooCommerce website. If you install plugins and WooCommerce, you will get a complete fledge online store for your growing business. I think this tutorial is helping you to build an online store in less than 1 hour.
