So, you’ve got a great product idea, or maybe you’re just tired of watching others build successful online stores and wondering how they did it. Either way, you're in the right place.
Learning how to create an ecommerce website might sound intimidating at first, especially if you’re not super tech-savvy. And here's why now is the perfect time to get started.
The global retail ecommerce market was worth $6.3 trillion by the end of 2024. It will easily cross $8 trillion in the next three years.
Image via Statista
If you want to make space for yourself in this highly lucrative market, you must learn how to create an ecommerce website that attracts shippers like a market.
Is it imperative to have an ecommerce website, you ask?
The answer is yes.
A well-designed ecommerce website will help you establish a strong brand presence, deliver a unique customer experience, and achieve sustainable growth for your business.
However, figuring out how to create an ecommerce website that also delivers a great customer experience can feel overwhelming—but it doesn’t have to be.
In this step-by-step guide, I’ll discuss how to create an ecommerce website. I’ll also share expert tips to optimize your online store to generate more revenue in 2025.
Let’s get started.
Follow these 8 simple steps to learn how to create an ecommerce website that impresses your customers and boost your ecommerce sales.
The first step in this guide on how to create an ecommerce website is to determine the business model you want to adopt. The major business models are:
These businesses operate online, but the target audience is the fundamental differentiator. Clarity on your business model will help you learn how to create an ecommerce website that resonates with specific target audiences.
For instance, a C2C website like eBay or OLX will be different from any B2B or B2C ecommerce website in its structure, navigation, or shipping options.
Similarly, the content and purpose of your website will vary significantly depending on whether you're targeting individual consumers or government institutions.
The first step when learning how to create an ecommerce website is to conduct thorough market research. This will help you understand your target audience's expectations and gain insights into the competition.
You can use advanced ecommerce tools powered by AI to conduct market research and gather valuable data.
Analyzing this data will help you identify what’s working for your competitors, which web pages are drawing website traffic, and how they are engaging their visitors.
Analyzing top-ranking websites in your industry can help you create refined aesthetics for your website. By incorporating these insights into your plan, you'll be better equipped to create an ecommerce website with a strong online presence.
When selling physical products, your customers can touch and feel them. Online, you need to create engaging graphics and content to replicate that experience.
Understanding your customers' preferences will help you create an ecommerce website they can truly connect with.
When learning how to create an ecommerce website, purchasing a solid business name and registering your domain should be your priority. Use a reliable tool like Hostinger to check domain availability and even leverage the AI domain generator for creative ideas.
Image via Hostinger
If you’ve already purchased one, you can transfer it to your online store builder or web hosting platform.
If you don’t have one, do a little research to find a suitable name for your online store. Namecheap, Dreamhost, GoDaddy, Bluehost, and Google Domains are some of the best domain registrars that you can use.
Image via GoDaddy
Here are a few tips to keep in mind while selecting your domain name:
What’s more?
You need to finalize the type of hosting and the service provider you want to go with. Different types of hosting services include:
Remember that your web hosting provider can impact ecommerce website performance. Here are a few key factors you should consider while choosing a good web hosting provider:
However, if you are opting to create an ecommerce website for your brick-and-mortar store using an ecommerce website builder, you need not worry about web hosting.
With the right ecommerce website builder or platform, you can create a fully functional online store without touching a single line of code. A headless ecommerce platform can help you develop an amazing website design, process payments, improve customers’ shopping experience, etc.
When choosing a platform or software to create an ecommerce website, you should consider its features, usability, and cost.
Most importantly, you should choose one that suits your business model and can help you scale.
Here are the top ecommerce platforms to consider when thinking of how to create an ecommerce website for your business:
The best thing about the most popular ecommerce website builders like Wix, Shopify, and others is that they come loaded with all the essential features you need to get your ecommerce website up and running.
Besides, they all have step-by-step tutorials to help you create an ecommerce website fast. Plus, they come with fully-customizable pre-made templates that you can tweak and create your website quickly.
The next important thing to keep in mind while creating your ecommerce website is to develop a structure for it. Typically, you’d have hundreds of products listed on your website, so it’s important to categorize them well to help your site visitors find what they’re looking for and deliver a smooth customer journey.
You need to understand how to create an ecommerce website with various categories and subcategories. Arranging your products and services in a hierarchy is important.
Take a look at the website below to see how it organizes its products into different categories.
Image via Bliss
Another good example is Chubbies. The website sells shorts that are segregated into different categories and pages.
Image via Chubbies
All these online stores are designed with user experience in mind.
Once you have designed the wireframe structure of your website, the next step is to create the main pages. Here are some of the pages and elements you should create for your site:
Other pages you need to create are the Privacy Policy page, Product pages, FAQ, Category page, User Registration page, Terms of Service, and Refund Policy page.
You can also use Progressive Web Applications (PWAs) to provide an app-like user interface to customers on your ecommerce website. Pages developed using PWA development are user-friendly, work offline, and send automated notifications to keep customers informed of any ongoing deals or product updates.
Investing in good website content has multiple benefits. Quality content marketing can help get your best pages indexed by Google while being SEO-friendly and user-friendly.
How can you create an ecommerce website without its product pages? It's time to populate your website with the products you plan to sell online. Align your ecommerce product listing with your store retail product planning strategy for proper inventory management. The solutions for retail planning streamline this process and ensure your inventory is organized efficiently.
When adding products to their respective listings, ensure you create optimized product descriptions, add beautiful images of the products, and group them into their respective categories.
Image via WordPress
Let’s take a look at the three must-have elements when adding products to your website:
Take a look at this product page by Molton Brown. The clean layout focuses on the product images, delivers relevant content under subheadings, and highlights reviews for a seamless online shopping experience.
Image via Molton Brown
Learning how to create an ecommerce website is not just about its aesthetics. You can’t run an ecommerce store without a method in place for payments and shipping.
If you’ve decided to use a website builder, integrating payment and shipping methods is as easy as following the instructions provided.
What if that’s not the case?
You need to integrate a reputable ecommerce payment gateway to prevent customers from abandoning their carts.
Make sure you give them multiple payment options so that they can choose their method of choice to complete the transaction. Note that even though credit cards are the most preferred payment method, digital wallets are becoming popular too.
Image via WordPress
As a rule, you should set up a wide selection of payment options such as PayPal, Stripe, Apple Pay, Amazon Pay, Square, and Authorize.net.
Be sure to choose a payment method that’s easy to integrate with your store, and keep transaction fees in mind. You should also look at customer reviews to know whether you’re integrating a trustworthy payment gateway that’s also PCI-compliant and secure.
Lastly, set up a shipping solution so that customers can track their orders, shipping fees, and other shipping nitty-gritty.
At this point, your ecommerce store is ready to go live.
But hold your horses.
Before you hit the launch button, ensure every component of your ecommerce website is working as it should.
Test your site to ensure there are no broken links, payment processing is working fine, the site loads well on mobile devices and different browsers, and configure settings for time zone, language, etc.
Once you’re happy with how your website looks, feels, and works, publish it and start selling.
Learning how to create an ecommerce website is just the first step. However, you need to optimize your online store to engage new customers and increase ecommerce sales.
Here are 5 proven ways to boost your website’s performance.
If you want your ecommerce website to have high search engine ranking results, optimizing its Core Web Vitals (CWVs) is essential. Your focus should be on:
Image via web.dev
As you plan how to create an ecommerce website that ranks high, optimizing images and videos on your website is a must. Browser caching and minifying your source file can reduce load time and boost your site’s performance.
A Content Delivery Network(CDN) stores cached copies of your site on servers located in multiple regions, allowing users to access content from the one closest to them. This reduces the load on your original server and significantly improves website speed.
Image via ImageKit
Well-optimized website content plays a major role in delivering a solid customer experience. Get started by conducting extensive keyword research.
Based on the trends and insights you gather, write quality content for your landing page as well as product descriptions.
Tactics like incorporating relevant keywords into your web content and optimizing meta tags, and title tags will make your website SEO-friendly. It also helps drive more organic traffic to generate leads for your business.
If you want to boost online sales, you need to invest in high-quality images. Here are some tips for you to get started:
Go a step further and create descriptive alt text for every image to make them more search-friendly.
Do you know that over 77% of retail website traffic and 68% of total orders were generated from smartphones in the third quarter of 2024? In other words, a majority of your new customers will access your website from their phones.
Image via Statista
Adopting a ‘mobile first’ approach will help you engage more customers and build an ecommerce website for the future. Mobile optimization can also help improve your core web vitals.
Implementing accelerated mobile pages (AMPs) for your most visited pages will enhance customer experience on mobile devices and aid ecommerce lead generation. Work on website design and structure to ensure easy navigation and a smooth checkout process.
Customers look for social proof before buying your products. Using user-generated images and product videos is one of the best ways to build customer trust and convince them of your quality.
You can incorporate UGC on specific product pages and social media channels to engage customers. Encourage happy customers to post pictures and videos on your website to help their fellow shoppers.
Similarly, product reviews and ratings by happy customers positively impact your ecommerce website’s conversion rate. What's more, you can use a good review tool to consolidate reviews and display them on your Google profile to boost your SEO efforts.
Q1. What is needed to build an ecommerce shop?
A. To create an ecommerce website, you need to:
Q2. Can I create an ecommerce website for free?
A. Yes. It’s possible to build your own ecommerce site for free thanks to the plenty of ecommerce website builders like Square. You can even use WooCommerce but you’ll have to pay for your hosting and domain name.
Q3. Where can I create an ecommerce site?
A. You can create an ecommerce website for selling your products using a website builder service like Wix, Squarespace, Shopify, or WooCommerce.
Q4. What are the different types of ecommerce business models?
A. The main types of ecommerce business models are:
Q5. How much does it cost to design an online store?
A. The cost for creating an ecommerce site can range anywhere from $500 to $30,000, depending on the size of your business. This cost includes web hosting, website builder software, search engine optimization, content creation, etc.
Q6. How to start an ecommerce business?
A. Ecommerce is a lucrative marketplace where you can build a thriving business. Here are some tips to start your journey:
Even though creating a well-designed ecommerce store takes time and resources, when done right, it can be rewarding. Besides, with the right ecommerce tools and guidance, you can have a polished and professional website in no time.
From choosing a domain name to testing your website for any flaws, it’s important to follow the process well to get your ecommerce website right. Finally, remember to keep your audience in mind at all stages, as they’re the ones who’ll be using your website.
You can follow this step-by-step guide to create an ecommerce website for your business. Get in touch with Attrock for expert search engine optimization services to drive more web traffic and generate more leads for your online store.
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