Finally, your business is growing and scaling higher. Existing customers enjoy your products, and there is a chance many other customers would love to get them. So, in such a situation, you will know that it is about time you enhanced your online visibility. You need to extend your services and products to the online community as well.

With an already existing website, you can add, set it up, and begin selling your products online as your business continues to grow. But then, you need to, first of all, add an ecommerce solution or online store to the existing website to facilitate these processes. This guide will give you all the insights you need to know when adding an online store to your business.

Why add an eCommerce solution to your website? Top reasons

As an entrepreneur, adding an online store to your business will help you in the following ways:

• Streamlined Operations

With an ecommerce solution to your website, you can easily automate all the processes, thus making all business processes such as order fulfillment, payment processing, and stock management seamless. Process automation in a business can help you cut operational expenses.

• Improved Brand Awareness

We are already living in a digital era. While physical clients are important, it is important to consider online clients, too. Therefore, creating an ecommerce solution for your website will create brand awareness and attract new customers, thus growing your business significantly.

• Enhanced Customer Experience

In business, nothing is as satisfying as giving customers the flexibility to purchase your products at their convenience. If a client can shop at any time from the comfort of their homes, it creates a sense of fulfillment and satisfaction, which is a key element in a business environment.

• Increased Sales

When you give online customers a chance to purchase your products and services, you enlarge your revenue streams and you reach more clients. More clients mean increased products and sales services.

How to add ecommerce to your website

There are different ways you can actualize this process depending on the dynamics of your business. Below are the different ways you can use to add ecommerce solutions to your website:

• Add a Shopify Button to Your Website

This method is the best when you are looking for a fast and reliable solution to activate your ecommerce functionality on your website with a few products. With the Shopify button, you can view user product pictures, processes, and descriptions, giving them a platform on your website while the users buy the products. The best part of this method is that you can personalize the Shopify button to align with your brand identity.

The key benefit of using a Shopify button is that it creates a user-friendly shopping experience. It also offers a secure shopping experience and mobile-friendly checkout carts, thus offering all you need under one platform.

Note: to have a Shopify button, you will need to spend $9 monthly and access the wide range of functionalities it has to offer.

Again, you might need some technical expertise to integrate the Shopify button into your website.

• Connect to Marketplaces

Marketplaces such as Rakuten, Amazon, Alibaba, and eBay have a significant impact on global ecommerce sales. Through these marketplaces, you can access a broader audience for your products. Still, you can rely on Instagram or Facebook marketplace and promote your products through social media ads and influencer impact.

This solution is ideal when you are just beginning your ecommerce journey or when you want to focus exclusively on social media sales.

Note: This isn’t a long-term solution if you want to transform your website into an ecommerce business.

• Integrate a Shopping Cart / a Payment Gateway

You can include a shopping cart to any website type using tools such as Snipcart. You can then integrate payment gateways like PayPal, Sage, or Google Checkout to any given platform. This method will give your website basic e-commerce features, enabling you to process payments seamlessly.

This method is ideal when you want a simple ecommerce solution for a few products without having to explore advanced features.

• Add a Separate Standalone eCommerce to the Existing Site

Another reliable approach you can use to add ecommerce to your website is by building a different e-commerce-based website and linking it to your existing site. You only need to maintain the same UX design to align with your brand, enabling users to be sure of navigating through the right platform.

Here, you can hire an eCommerce development company or use Selz website builder to ensure the branding of the two platforms is the same.

This method is ideal if you want a separate e-commerce platform with enough resources to source technical expertise and want the best for your business.

• Use Plugins to Integrate eCommerce Solutions into Your Site

Plugins add several functionalities to your website, such as shopping carts, payment gateways, SEO meta tags analytics, and web form builders, among many more. If your site is created with website builders such as Joomla or WordPress, then you will understand plugins better.

So, if you own Drupal, Joomla, and WordPress websites, this is the best method of adding an ecommerce solution to your website.

The process is simple and seamless, as it doesn’t require any custom coding or technical expertise. You simply navigate to the plugin section, select the best option for your website, and then press the install button.

• Make Your Website Look and Feel like an Ecommerce Solution

Finally, you can create and customize your website design to be compelling and captivate the user’s attention. You can, therefore, integrate tags & meta info, product descriptions, product pictures, and social sharing icons into your website, giving it a modern, appealing, and easy-to-use platform for all users. Plus, joining a design service subscription can provide ongoing support and updates to ensure your website design remains current and visually engaging.

Best tools or solutions to help you add ecommerce solutions to your website

With the advanced technology, you can save time and money when adding ecommerce solutions to your website. You only need to use the following tools:

• Selz

With Selz, you can add e-commerce to an already existing website or create a store with a seamless drag-and-drop interface for your preferred theme.

One more aspect you will love about Selz is that it offers an option to include MailChimp, which has extensive marketing functionality.

Other functionalities Selz will offer you include building your loyalty programs, analyzing your performance, shipping, inventory management, and adding shopping carts and buttons.

• SnipCart

You can sell digital products, physical ones, and subscriptions through SnipCart. You only need to use APIs to connect with other solutions to enjoy advanced ecommerce functionalities.

Other functionalities of SnipCart on your website include the following:

• Multi-currency payments
• Generation of invoices
• Discounts
• Management of inventory
• Shipping

• Ecwid

As a startup business that wants to explore ecommerce solutions, Ecwid is the right tool for you. Being a free tool, you can use Ecwid to explore and connect with social media platforms to reach out to customers.

You can perform the following business functionalities with the Ecwid tool:

• Shipping
• Payment integrations
• Inventory management
• Adding SEO functionalities and advertising
• Adding an ecommerce solution to the already existing website while maintaining the brand identity.

• FoxyCart

You can easily create a cart and a payment page for a website using FoxyCart. It has extensive functionality, making it possible to add ecommerce features for any product, be it subscription plans, donations, custom products, digital products, or physical products.

You can enjoy the following functionalities with FoxyCart:

• Managing shipping and inventory
• Multi-language shop
• Transaction emails
• Custom checkout fields
• Maintaining the brand identity of your existing website
• Payments and shopping cart – multi-currency option available.

• RomanCart

Available for free, you can add ecommerce buttons to an already existing site using RomanCart since it has a pre-written code. One thing you will love about this tool is the fact that it is easy to use and available for free. In fact, a beginner won’t struggle with RomanCart.

Among the top functionalities RomanCart has to offer include the following:

• Email and affiliate marketing
• Management of inventory
• Payments
• Shopping cart

• Shoprocket

This code-free tool will enable you to integrate ecommerce features into your website within minutes. With more than 120 payment gateways, Shoprocket is a reliable solution for a business serving different customers. The key advantage of this solution is how fast it is to add an ecommerce solution to your website.

The shoprocket functionalities include the following:

• Offers marketing features
• Payment gateways and shopping carts
• Order, custom, and stock management
• Website customizations
• Seamless browsing and product filtering

Tips to help you succeed with your ecommerce solution

Finally, you now know how to add an e-commerce solution to your website, and this is one step towards succeeding in your entrepreneurship journey. So, after adding the ecommerce solution to your website, what next? What are you supposed to do to ensure you achieve your business objectives? Consider the tips below:

• Online store promotion

Adding an ecommerce solution to your website is just a step ahead of another. How will users get to know about your store? How about purchasing your products? It can only be done through promoting your e-commerce website. You can use different approaches when promoting your ecommerce store, including the following:

• Video Marketing
• Marketing through relevant content
• Marketing through social media
• PPC – ecommerce pay-per-click advertising
• Ecommerce SEO

• Create a plan to fulfill orders

Of course, you will have orders to fulfill as a way of running a business. Therefore, ensure you have a better plan for managing all these orders before you think of adding an e-commerce solution to your website. This will give you an easy time processing orders and focusing on other crucial elements that can boost your business.

So, as you plan for order fulfillment, keep in mind stock management, shipping options & rates, return processes, and packaging materials.

• User experience is key

User experience has a significant impact on your ecommerce business. After all, you want people to visit, interact, and engage with your website as a whole. Therefore, the only way to make sure visitors stay and buy your products is by creating an engaging user experience. You don’t want abandoned carts and a higher bounce rate.

You can create a user-friendly experience by:

• Building an appealing design – Blend the colors well, use the best fonts, and use white space to avoid overcrowding your ecommerce website.
• Create a seamless navigation – navigation, too, plays a big role in your ecommerce website. Users should easily and quickly locate the products they are searching for. Therefore, avoid too many sections on the navigation bar. Instead, use subcategories to organize your navigation bar.
• Fast-loading, mobile-friendly site – again, you will need a website that is compatible with different devices. This will give room for many users to interact with your website smoothly. Again, the loading time should be super-fast. No user will stay on your website waiting for a page to load.
• Don’t forget about the responsive design, which allows the website to match with different devices, be it a smartphone or a tablet. If you aren’t sure of how you can create a fast-loading and highly responsive website, you can contact Aalpha Information Systems, India, for expert advice.

• Consider the SEO-friendliness of the ecommerce website

It doesn’t matter whether you are creating a different ecommerce site or adding an ecommerce solution to an already existing website. SEO-friendliness is a key element that you should always remember. SEO makes it possible for users to search and find your page faster on Google. Therefore, consider practices such as creating beautiful navigation, an easy-to-navigate interface, a mobile-friendly website, and a faster loading speed for a friendly ecommerce website.

• Don’t forget to perform testing

Finally, testing is important in all aspects as it gives room to make adjustments to improve the overall performance of the website. Therefore, perform continuous testing until you get the best experience for your audience.

You can consider A/B tests to determine the best strategies to use on your website. Again, test one element at a time to get accurate results and evaluate the impact of the simple changes on a website.

Ideally, you can perform testing on anything, including product placement of the web page, images, words & phrases – titles, headings, & subheadings, fonts – styles & size, CTA buttons– style & colors, and forms & submission boxes, among many other elements that make up your website.

Note: these tests will help you create the best overall user experience on your ecommerce website.

Conclusion

Finally, you can now add an ecommerce solution to your website and scale your business to the next level. You only need to evaluate and define the dynamics of your business and the goals you want to achieve, then select the best method that works for you.

If you have bigger and long-term goals, then consider building a standalone e-commerce website, keeping customization elements in mind. Again, don’t forget to explore the big store builders like BigCommerce, Shopify, and Magento for your big business setup.

Want to add eCommerce to your website? Get in touch with our web development company : Aalpha information systems!