How to create an e-commerce site

Un site e-commerce is a website that lets you sell products/services online.

Why create an e-commerce site?

An e-commerce site is a portal that allows you to display and sell your products and welcome your customers. It has two advantages:

To be able to sell online

Today, you're almost obliged to sell your products/services online, 1 in 4 French people This trend has been growing steadily over the past 10 years. Selling online means reaching out to potential customers and expanding your customer base.

Here are the main advantages of selling online for a company:

• Good visibility . Developing an online presence boosts a company's visibility. It allows you to promote your brand and reach a wider customer base.

• Availability without geographical or time limits . One of the biggest advantages of selling online is that you can sell anywhere, anytime - in other words, if you only sell from your store in Paris, you'll only be able to sell to Parisian customers who come into your store. However, if you sell on the Internet, customers living in Marseille may well order from your online store.

Likewise, it's as if your store were open 24 hours a day. There's nothing to stop a customer placing an order at 2 a.m. or on a public holiday.

• An opportunity to boost sales . As your store reaches more customers, at any time and regardless of geography, it's obvious that this leads to increased sales.

What's more, the Internet gives you the opportunity to implement strategies designed to sell even more. With upselling and cross-selling, for example, you can increase your customers' average shopping basket.

• A way to encourage customers to visit your physical store . You can implement a web-to-store strategy. Your online store is just an extension of your physical store. You can use it as a virtual shop window. Customers will be able to find out more about your online offering and then make their way to the physical store.

• Get to know your customers better with tools like Google my Business . This will enable you to better adapt your communication and your offer.

• A customer loyalty tool . A website is a vehicle for conveying a company's brand image and mindset. It also serves as an interface with the customer through different types of content: photos, articles, videos, etc. with which customers can interact.

E-commerce market trends

E-commerce is booming in France. Here are some figures to prove it:

• Sales of 159.9 billion euros in 2023 an increase of 10.5% compared to 2022

• Growth of 20,2 % compared with 2022

• 69 % of companies have a website

All these figures attest to the importance of creating a website for a company.

7 steps to creating an e-commerce site

Here's a 7-step guide to help you create an e-commerce site:

Choose your niche

In marketing parlance, we speak of buyer persona. This is the typical profile of your target audience. It's a waste of time and money to target everyone. Defining a buyer persona allows you to refine your communication strategy.

To do this, draw up a list of all the information on your target profile :

• Age

• Profession

• Geographical data

• Buying habits

• Online behavior

• Etc.

All this information enables you to refine your buyer persona profile and adapt your approach.

Choosing an e-commerce platform

It's all about the company that will host your website . So we're also talking host because this company provides computer servers to host the website data.

You can choose between dedicated and shared hosting:

• In the case of a shared hosting server space can host several web sites. This choice offers the advantage of excellent value for money (5 to 25 euros per month). On the other hand, it's best suited to small and medium-sized websites, as it doesn't allow for limited traffic.

• If you opt for dedicated hosting The server is dedicated solely to your website. You can therefore welcome a large number of visitors every day. But you need to understand how server hardware and software work.

There are a plethora of web hosting providers on the market. To make the best choice, you need to carefully analyze what each one has to offer.

Create a domain name and hosting

Now we're getting to the heart of the matter. Technically speaking, this is the very first stage in the creation of a website. A domain name takes the form www.nomdevotresiteweb.fr .

A distinction must be made between a domain name and a trademark. Here, there is no question of industrial property title or INPI registration. It is, however, reserved for a single company. In practice, however, companies often use their own name as a domain name. In this case, be sure to check that a domain name similar to the one you're using doesn't already exist. Such confusion could mislead your customers.

That's another reason why he choose a short, easy-to-remember domain name . Three words should be enough: easy to remember and accessible.

On the other hand, domain names are generally valid for one year. Remember to opt for automatic renewal to prevent another company from buying your domain name after expiration.

Create and customize your website

Now you can go into more detail about creating your website. It must reflect the image of your company, both in appearance and content.

All the elements of your site must reflect this brand image:

• The logo

• The colors used

• Etc.

Add your products and descriptions

As you can see, the main purpose of a website is to present your products. You must therefore create product sheets and make sure they make people want to buy your products .

To do this, you must :

• Add attractive visuals

• Provide complete descriptions

• Add all logistics-related information: availability, delivery terms, number of units in stock, etc.

Configure payment methods

Selling and attracting customers is all well and good, but it's even more important to offer the right payment method. secure payment on your website. To do this, you need to choose between 2 options:

• Take out a VAD (distance selling) contract with your bank. All your transactions will then be managed directly by the bank, for a fee that can be substantial.

• Choose a specialized payment solution such as Heropay, Stripe or Paypal, for example. In this case, sales are processed by these full-service payment solutions and then sent to your bank. They are remunerated via commissions on sales.

Once again, it is essential to analyze each offer carefully to find the best value for your money.

As far as payment methods themselves are concerned, there are now many to choose from:

• Bank or postal transfer

• Withdrawal

• Banking card

• check

• Virtual wallet

• Payment by SMS

• Etc.

For flexibility, it is preferable to add 3 different payment methods on your website.

Set up delivery options

Delivery is a key factor in a consumer's purchasing decision. As soon as you create your website, you need to define delivery methods adapted to your offer and your customers.

The following delivery options are available:

• Home delivery . This is the most popular delivery method, because it's convenient for the consumer. However, the cost of home delivery is high.

• Local delivery . This involves using a delivery company close to the delivery location to ensure delivery of your products. This option is only interesting if you only sell in a predefined area.

• Express delivery . This delivery method is particularly appreciated by Internet users for its speed. Delivery takes a maximum of 48 hours. It is generally available at a high price.

• Delivery by appointment . Here, the customer knows the exact date and time of delivery. The costs here are even higher, because the customer can anticipate the exact time of arrival.

• International delivery . It's important to specify on your website whether you also deliver to international customers. In this case, prices vary according to the destination country. You should also specify the delivery time.

• Relay point delivery . This is the most economical delivery method. It can even be offered free of charge. Customers collect their parcel at a time and date of their choice and convenience.

• Le click and collect. This delivery method is ideal if you have a physical store. Customers place their order online, then collect it from the store at their convenience. This also enables you to implement a web-to-store strategy.

Tips for attracting and retaining customers

Once you have created your website, you can apply these tips to attract customers:

Digital marketing strategies

Digital marketing is so vast that it encompasses a large number of areas and techniques needed to boost a company's visibility online.

Here are the most common digital marketing strategies used by e-commerce sites:

• Implement a relevant content marketing strategy . We can't stress this enough. The more value your content brings to your visitors, the more engagement and customer loyalty you can achieve.

• Create an online advertising strategy. To do this, you need to target your persona and adapt your messages.

• Optimize conversion rates . To do this, you can optimize the user experience, conduct A/B tests to choose the most impactful page versions, adjust your call to action, etc.

• Analyze the performance of your campaigns so you can adjust your actions and improve their impact.

Optimizing the website for SEO

Le SEO ou Search engine optimization est all the techniques used to optimize a website's positioning on search engines . While investing in paid advertising produces almost guaranteed results, you shouldn't neglect search engine optimization.

Creating blog posts that bring value to your prospects is a strategy that can deliver excellent results. To do this, you need to cover topics that may be of interest to your prospects, while highlighting your offer.

Use of social networks

Today's social networks are powerful marketing tools: creating a profile on a social network is an excellent way to interact directly with your potential customers and engage their commitment . Social networks are also excellent tools for selling.

However, despite the large number of platforms, it would be detrimental to spread yourself too thinly by trying to be present everywhere. You need to choose the platforms that are most relevant to your business and your target audience.

Here are our tips for adopting the right social networking strategy:

• Choosing the right platforms and adapting your communication to their specificities . Instagram remains the most widely used platform in France. So it's a must-have platform. All the more so as the platform offers interesting features for creating a community and therefore rapidly gaining notoriety.

Depending on the age range of your target audience and the nature of your activities, you can also create a Tik Tok, Youtube, LinkedIn, Snapchat or Pinterest account.

• Invest in sponsored publications . It's possible to get known for free on social networks. But it's a time-consuming strategy, and you need to create quality content.

For maximum effectiveness, however, many companies resort to sponsored publications. The advantage? You can precisely select your target audience and thus increase the effectiveness of your communication.

• Interact with your audience . Reply to messages and comments. Ask questions of your community. Followers need to feel that you're paying attention to them. This strengthens their commitment.

• Create content for quality . Your content must bring value to your community. Infographics, blog posts, images, memes and videos are the most popular types of content.

Loyalty program and promotions

Customers love promotions and free offers. The goal? Retain existing customers and encourage potential customers to try your products/services . In advertising jargon, "to try is to adopt".

A customer who is attracted by a promotion is more likely to come back to buy.

Pitfalls to avoid when creating your e-commerce site

Here are the pitfalls you need to avoid if you want to optimize the efficiency of your website.

Neglecting the user experience

To sum up, user experience means the experience visitors have when browsing your website . Optimizing the user experience is at the heart of many companies' marketing strategies. Neglecting this aspect of your website would be a serious mistake.

To fully satisfy your visitors, your website must meet the following requirements:

• Clear, pleasant design . The visual aspect of your site must be attractive and make visitors want to come back.

• An ergonomic, intuitive interface . Users must be able to navigate the site easily. Pages must load quickly. The user experience must be optimized both practically and aesthetically.

• Un design responsive . According to the figures, 92.1% of Internet users surf via their mobile devices. So you need to make sure your website is adapted to these devices.

• Quality content . The quality of the content offered also plays a part in the user experience.

Underestimating the importance of SEO

SEO and paid advertising should always be carried out in parallel. SEO is a long-term strategy, but one that produces definite results. It would be a mistake to neglect this part of your strategy in favor of SEA.

To implement an effective SEO strategy, you need to start by by researching keywords likely to be of interest to your target audience . Next, you need to strategically add these keywords to your site to appeal to search engines and improve your website's ranking.

Forgetting to secure transactions

The issue of security is omnipresent when it comes to financial transactions on the Internet.A customer will refrain from shopping on your website if he or she feels the slightest risk to its security.To make your website reliable, you need to reassure your customers on this issue. In particular, we need to secure credit card numbers, identity and other sensitive information.

To do this, websites use the SSL encryption because this is the encryption system required by banks. You also need to make it clear to your users that your store is secure, including your postal address.

Payment processors like Hero are also secure.

Ignoring the importance of customer service

Customer service responsiveness a key component in user satisfaction . Users must be able to find help quickly when they need it.

Some sites offer a chatbot which is automatically activated without the user having to ask any questions. In fact, chat is a fast way to get help, and one that users particularly appreciate compared to email, for example.

No return and refund strategy

Returns have a real negative impact on an e-commerce business. They entail costs, but also organizational constraints. That's why you need to implement effective strategies for dealing with them.

Here's our advice:

• Draw up a clear returns policy . You need to create a dedicated page in which you specify the deadlines, conditions and costs of returns.

• Implement strategies to turning returns into opportunities . You can do this, for example, by turning returns into exchanges, or by using reusable packaging.

Hero's tools for optimizing your e-commerce site

Founded in 2021, Hero is a neobank offering tools adapted for ecommerce :

Integrated payment solutions

Originally, Hero was a payment solution. This tool allows you to accept online payments . This will enable you to offer your customers the option of paying for their purchases via Hero.

Cash advances for inventory and advertising

In the event of cash flow problems, Hero can anticipate the payment of your purchases or to pay your advertising costs . You can then repay the platform later (between 60 and 90 days) or in 3 or 4 instalments.

In a nutshell create a website More and more French people are making their purchases on the Internet. Not being present on the Internet would be tantamount to missing out on an important market share to the benefit of your competitors. Hero is an ideal tool for integrating into your website, not only for accepting online payments, but also for paying your suppliers.