The complete guide for creating an eCommerce website.
You have been wanting to add “Available Online at www….” to your business advertisements.
In 2020, when the Corona pandemic set in, sitting at home, you promised yourself “to start my online store NOW”. At that time, you probably bought a domain name, spoke to a few web design agencies, got their quotes for building your online store. But the project never took off.
Now in 2021, you hear about the second wave of Corona Virus hitting some countries, and fear another lock-down. But the online store isn’t ready yet. If only the eCommerce website aka Online Store was up and running, it would be wonderful for your business.
Why should you build an Online Store?
The share of Online Sales as a percentage of Total retail sales (for U.S. merchants) has been steadily increasing over the years. (Source: Digital Commerce 360)
- 2018: 14.3%
- 2019: 15.8% (increased 15.1% over 2018)
- 2020: 21.3% (increased 44.1% over 2019)
Sales from online stores has been recording the highest growth in the last two decades. And the growth in 2020 (44.1%) is nearly triple the 15.1% jump in 2019.
You are well aware that the Corona Virus pandemic has had a negative impact on in-store sales worldwide. But sales from online stores increased by 44.1%.
Who will buy from my online store, when Amazon is there.
You might say that most people buy from Amazon, so how will my online store generate business. Well, here are the statistics.
Amazon accounts for nearly one-third, about 31.4% of all online sales in the U.S. And this figure was 43.8% in 2019. So, essentially, Amazon’s share of online sales has reduced. Or, in other words, while other online stores had just 56.2% share in total online sales in 2019; increased their share to 68.6%
Walmart, Target, Best Buy, all have made significant shifts in their rankings.
Coming to small businesses in the U.S., just over half of all small business owners are doing business online. This percentage is much lower in other countries. Considering these facts, now is the right time to set up your online store.
In this post, you will learn how to build your Online Store yourself, that too without spending any money. That is, other than the cost of your domain name and web space.
Here are the steps involved in building an Online Store.
I assume you have already decided on a domain name for your Online Store and already registered it. If not, you may want to read my post on how to register a domain name.
You will also need web space to host your Online Store. If you have not bought your web space, do it here, now.
These are the only two things you have to pay for. Now let’s move forward.
- Decide the platform to build your online store.
- Install the eCommerce platform on your web space.
- Alter the design of your online store.
- Organize your product catalog.
- Set up shipping methods.
- Set up payment methods.
- Activate your online store and start selling.
Decide the platform to build your online store
This is the biggest decision you will be making related to your online store.
Most platforms will give you all the basic features that you need to manage your online store. It is only when you need some features, specific to your need that you might be forced to look at other platforms.
The options are multifarious. If you start comparing the features, you will still be searching for the ideal platform even after one year. Here is a list of desired features and the advantages they have over others.
| Feature | Advantage over other platforms | |
| 1 | Open Source |
Open Source means the software is not owned by one individual or company. The software is developed and supported by a community of developers. So that you get a product developed by thousands of minds, each one contributing his best to a section of the all-embracing, comprehensive final product. |
| 2 | Self Hosted |
You host your eCommerce website or Online Store on your own web space. As a result, there are no limitations on the number of products hosted, or number of orders received or number of customers. If at any time in the future, you want to change the platform, you can do so easily, without losing any money. |
| 3 | Ease of Customization |
Each platform has the concept of “theme” for your online store. The theme is a pre-designed template that helps you personalize your eCommerce website. You can choose the colors, design, placement of logo, menu options and a host of other features from |
| 4 | Shipping Methods |
Depending on the goods you sell, and the competition, you may want to offer free shipping to your customers. Or you may want to keep shipping free beyond a certain minimum order value. If you are shipping to international destinations, you will need to integrate shipping through different carriers which offer convenience, shorter delivery times and competitive freight charges. To enable this, you should have ready made modules or plugins which integrate with your online store. |
| 5 | Payment Options | Offering different payment options to your customers is essential to make them feel comfortable. Keep in mind that customers want Security and ease of use. If customers are not comfortable with the payment options you are offering, they may abandon the cart. The chosen eCommerce platform should offer integration with most international payment gateways like PayPal, Stripe and your bank or swipe machine. |
| 6 | Multi Lingual |
If you plan to sell international, you will need to make your online store in the languages that your customers speak. |
| 7 | Support |
Like most other open source software, here too, you get access to a “forum” where thousands of brilliant minds share their resources and support each other. This means that all your problems are taken care of. |
A few eCommerce platforms that match the features mentioned above are:
- Magento
- Opencart
- Prestashop
- Woocommerce
- Zencart
To narrow down your selection to just one platform, you will need to do a lot of research. In order to save you time, we have done it for you and recommend Prestashop as the ideal eCommerce platform to build your online store.
Why is Prestashop the right eCommerce platform for your online store
- Prestashop is a robust and flexible open source eCommerce platform.
- Being an open source platform, Prestashop has more than 1,000 contributors who ensure that the platform is always offering the latest features.
- You can customize your Prestashop based online store with more than 5,000 ready themes.
- The PrestaShop eCommerce software includes over 600 features to help you manage your online store – products, orders, customers etc. Other than these features you can use 3,900 modules (many of them free) to enhance the features of your store.
- When you want support, you can look forward to a community of 1,000,000+ members who are there to help you.
This decision being made, let’s proceed to the next step.
Install the eCommerce platform on your web space.
You have two ways to install the eCommerce platform software.
Download it from the Prestashop site.
You can browse to the Prestashop website and download the software for free. It is a zip file which you then need to unzip (uncompress) and then upload the unzipped files to your web space using a FTP (File Transfer Protocol) client. If you do not have a separate FTP login and password, you may login to the cPanel and look for File Manager. Do not upload the zip file directly to your web server.
- Create a database for PrestaShop shop on your web server if it is possible. In case there is no MySQL user who has all privileges for accessing and modifying this database, create it as well.
- Upload the three PrestaShop files to the chosen location on your web server, including the .zip file (it will unzip itself afterwards).
- Run the PrestaShop installation script by accessing the public URL for the chosen location in a web browser. This should be the URL where you uploaded the PrestaShop files.
- Follow the instructions on each screen of the installer.
- Once the installation is done, delete the /install folder and write down the name of the /admin folder, which has been generated in order to be unique to you, for security reasons.
Many web hosts offer a quick installation of Prestashop.
Login to your cPanel and scroll down to Software –> Quickinstall as in the screenshot below.
Once you click on the Quickinstall, you can either select Prestashop from the horizontal menu
or search for it by typing in the search bar.
The installation process is fairly simple with the installer taking care of everything.
Follow the on screen instructions. However, it would be good if you read the online instructions and then click as required by the installer.
Alter the design of your online store.
Your online store is now ready with a Classic theme. Though this classic theme is fully functional on its own, you may want to make your eCommerce website more aesthetically pleasing using one of the many themes available at the Prestashop site.
Based on my personal experience I must share that your eCommerce website will load fastest with the inbuilt Classic theme. So, if you want a Google friendly site, stick with the Classic theme.
However, if you find the Classic theme too simple or bland, and want your eCommerce website to have some sliders and floating text and special effects, select a template or theme here. Most of these special effects use Java script and CSS, which tend to make your website heavy on resources, and loading slow.
It is worthwhile to give a thought that if you are offering a good product at a competitive price, your customers will not really bother about the special effects on your website. They will come to the right landing page, see the image, read the instructions and click “BUY”. On the other hand, if your website is slow to load and respond to the customer clicks, he is bound to abandon your online store and make the purchase elsewhere.
Organize your product catalog.
You now need to organize your products in the online store. Products are best organized category wise. So, divide your products into categories.
Let’s say you want to sell gifts in your online store. You could devise categories like Anniversary gifts, Birthday gifts, Teacher’s day gifts, Mother’s day gifts etc.
Once you have made categories, you can add products to your online store using the menu option Catalog–> Products
The process to add a new product is fairly simple, and it offers you a lot of data fields. You may not have data for all the fields, but try to populate as many fields as you can. This will help the customers in their search.
Prestashop also offers a filter which your customers can use to narrow down their choices. Which means your customers will be able to filter the products by price, or type – flowers, cakes, dress, brand, size etc.
So, effectively, this would mean, if a customer browsed to category Birthday gifts; he could use the filter to select a Red Velvet cake which weighs 1 pound and costs between $25-50. This way you can actually help them save time and make a purchase.
Set up shipping methods.
A product is not fully sold until you have offered arrangements to ship the product to the customer’s location.
Use the menu on the left to go to Improve –> Shipping –> Carriers to add more carriers of your choice. There are ready to use modules for Postal services of most countries and also for the major shipping carriers like DHL, FedEx, UPS etc.
Use the Shipping –> Preferences menu to configure the cost of shipping and taxes if applicable.
If you require any special configuration of shipping costs, you can always add more modules from Prestashop add-ons site.
Set up payment methods.
The sale isn’t complete unless you have received the price for the goods (or service) sold. Add payment modules to your online store now. Here again, lots of modules are available, ready to use in your Prestashop eCommerce website.
Try to add as many payment options that you can handle. Include the options like PayPal, Stripe etc that are popular worldwide. You never know where your customer is coming from.
That reminds me, you can also display prices in different currencies in your online store. You simply need to add one price in your preferred or default currency. And then add the currency exchange rate. Prestashop will handle the rest.
Your customer will be able to choose the display currency of his choice from a drop down menu in the top menu.
It is also a good idea to have your online store in more than one language.
Prestashop has packs for many international languages. So, you just need to translate your product information to the language you want; and the eCommerce platform will handle the rest.
Activate your online store and start selling
You can now do a test transaction, and if everything is working well, you are now ready to launch your online store.
Happy Selling!