The 10 Steps to Create Your E-Commerce Store in 2024

Online shopping is becoming increasingly important in the consumption habits of all French people. In France, the e-commerce sector represents 129.1 billion dollars in sales. And the good news is that you can totally take your cut. 🤑

27 000 e-commerce are created each year in France. But as you can imagine, only a part of them are profitable and allow their creator to live from them.

To help you become one of the online stores that generate sales, we will show you all the steps to follow. You will see how to create your e-commerce and make it profitable all with very little investment. 💪

Step 1: Find a niche

If you want to start an e-commerce business, it’s better to focus on one theme. In itself, it is possible to create a generalist e-commerce that sells everything and nothing like Amazon or Cdiscount. But as you can imagine, it requires a lot of investment. 😰

Creating an online store on a niche allows to get results much faster, but is also much more accessible. We will quickly show you how to find a theme to launch your e-commerce.

To begin with, we must determine what makes a good niche. In our opinion, there are several criteria for a theme to be interesting to exploit in e-commerce. 👀

First, a niche must have a low level of competition. For example, CBD is a niche, but it is also an extremely competitive area. In order to make your place easier, it is better to start on a niche with little competition.

In order to check if a niche is competitive or not, several tools can help you like Semrush or Ranxplorer. Overall, you will have to check on Google as well as social networks if many stores or not are working on the same niche as you. 🔎

Secondly, we believe that it is essential that a niche has great potential. As such, your niche and related products must be in demand. Again, to check the potential of a niche, there are several methods.

Specifically, you can check the search volume using the same tools we presented before. If the products you want to sell are not in demand, chances are the market is not developed enough. 📊

Before launching your store, you should check if there is a demand. With advertising and a lot of marketing, you can create demand in some cases. But if you’re just starting out and don’t have much of a budget, it’s better to start with a theme where there is already a market and therefore a demand.

In our opinion, there are two types of demands in e-commerce. On the one hand, there are requests that respond to a need or a problem(example: back pain). On the other hand, there is the demand of passionate consumers(pet owners, sportsmen or others). If you can meet any of these demands, you will be able to sell much more easily. 🤝

Third, a niche must be profitable. The goal is for you to make a profit on every sale. If you don’t have quality suppliers or your products are too expensive, you may get traffic and sales, but you won’t make money.

Step 2: Analyze the competition

If you have chosen your niche well, you normally have a low level of competition. But it is still necessary to analyze your main competitors to see how they work and especially, how you can overtake them. There are several techniques to analyze the competition, we will show you the most effective ones. 🔎

Having competitors is not a bad thing in itself. This shows that there is ademand and therefore a market to exploit. And if you’re just starting out, you’ll be able to draw on what’s already working so you don’t waste time. But the main goal is to determine if you can outperform your competitors or not.

To start, you can analyze how your competitors work. The important thing is to observe which communication channels they use, which products sell best and so on. As such, anything that works for your competitors, we invite you to do it again, but better. 🙄

You can also conduct a market study to determine your competitive advantages and especially the market share you can obtain. The interest is also to determine who the customers are and their consumption habits. Moreover, if you are interested, you can discover our article on e-commerce statistics .

Finally, you can estimate the level of difficulty to overtake your competitors, especially in terms of referencing. To do this, there are several tools that can help you. Semrush, a software specialized in search engine marketing, comes to mind. 🛠️

👉 We invite you to download our free ebook to learn how to assess the level of competition in a niche.

Step 3: Create an online store

Once you know what you are going to sell and you have verified the potential of your niche, it is time to create your online store. We won’t lie to you, this is the most complicated part. But today there are e-commerce platform software that allow you to design an e-commerce easily.

First of all, you will have to choose a domain name for your online store. A domain name is simply a “name” and an “extension“, i.e. .com, .fr or others. In plain English, it’s the address of your e-commerce site, which users will type into the search bar to access it. 🔎

⚠️ A domain name costs on average about ten euros. If you are offered much higher rates, it is probably a scam.

Then, you need a web host. He will connect your domain name to the Internet, in order to make it accessible. Without a web host, your e-commerce will not be accessible. We recommend you to read our comparison of the best web hosting companies in order to make your choice.

Once you have your domain name and a host, you can install a store. To do this, we recommend that youuse a CMS. A Content Managing System is a software that allows you to create a website without having to code. 👨🏻‍💻

For the creation of e-commerce, the two most famous CMS are Shopify and WordPress(via the WooCommerce plugin). And we recommend that you go with one of them, for several reasons. Mainly because it is very easy to use, but also because these CMS are optimized for SEO and mobile use.

Shopify is a CMS designed solely for the creation of online stores. It is in our opinion the most powerful and the one that allows to create the most design, responsive and other e-commerce. However, it is quite expensive. It costs about $99 per month for your online store. At this price, you should know that the company will take a percentage of each of your sales. 💯

If Shopify is a rather expensive CMS, it is also the easiest to use. It will allow you to create beautiful and responsive online stores even if you have no special skills. This CMS also integrates many plugins that allow you to add features easily.

In contrast, WooCommerce is completely free. On the other hand, this CMS is more complicated to use and you will really need to know how to create a beautiful store. However, this tool allows you to create a professional e-commerce. You will have to spend more time training on this CMS, but in the end, it can save you a lot of money. 💸

Step 4: Optimize your store

We’ll see it later, but you can get free traffic by optimizing your store for SEO. There are several things to do to make your e-commerce “like” the search engines to gain visibility. Besides that, you also have to work on the technical side of your site so that it is fast and accessible for mobiles. 📱

To begin with, we recommend that youoptimize your onlinestore for natural referencingfrom the start. Many e-tailers start SEO too late and as a result, the work to be done will be much more consequential and therefore restrictive. If you get started right away, you won’t have any problems later on.

The SEO is a complex skill. Creating the structure of a site in order tooptimize itfor search engines can therefore seem complicated at first. However, many resources are available for free toteach youhow to create an optimized structure. 🤓

Soon, you will have to create categories and what we call “silos” grouping the main products by theme. The objective is to make search engines understand what your site is about, so that they will put you forward on your main products. As it is quite complex, we invite you to get information before creating the structure of your site.

If you want to go faster, we teach step by step in our training how to create the structure of your site. 👀

Before putting your site online, you should also check that it is optimized for mobile users. If you’re working with a CMS like WordPress or Shopify, most themes are responsive and will already be optimized for mobile. But we still invite you to check that your site is accessible and functional from a cell phone.

👉 As a reminder, nearly one out of two French people make their purchases via mobile .

Then, it is imperative that the pages of your website load quickly. If your e-commerce is too slow to load, you will lose a part of your users, and thus of your potential customers. Again, no need to go overboard. Just by choosing a good host and a light theme, your site will be fast. 💥

But of course, the bigger your site is in terms of products, content and so on, the harder it will be to have a fast loading time. In this case, you will probably have to work with a developer to optimize the performance of your store.

Last point, the customer journey. This concept is very well known in digital marketing and consists in optimizing a prospect ‘s buying journey from his arrival on your site to the finalization of his order. The objective is that the consumer hasthe least amount of travel to do to buy your products. 📦

Step 5: Import products

Once your store is ready, you can start adding products. With WordPress or Shopify, you’ll be able to import products easily. Overall, it’s very simple. For each product you import on your e-commerce, you will have to add a price, a picture and a description. 📸

If you do dropshipping, you can use some plugins to import products from your supplier site. This way, as soon as a customer places an order on your website, the plugin repeats this order to your supplier and sends the order directly.

In case you sell your own products, some extensions will allow you to manage your stock. 📦

We recommend that you take your time to create your product catalog. Because in case of errors, this can have an impact on sales, but also on the referencing of your store.

Step 6: Create product sheets

For each product that you put on sale on your e-commerce, you will have to create a description sheet. This form will have several functions. The main thing is to present the product in question and make prospects want to buy it. But the product sheets will also have an impact on the SEO of your e-commerce site. 👀

In order to write a good product sheet, there are many things to do. The first is to put yourself in the customer’s shoes. Normally, you know who your target customer is and how to address them. Therefore, you know what information to provide to your customers to convince them to buy a product.

Theobjective of a product sheet is toencourage the reader to make a purchase. Therefore, you must list all the benefits of your product. For example, you can add a complete description, tips for use, list of accessories, mandatory mentions(label, origins, etc.). 📝

You can also include customer reviews. Nowadays, many Internet users look at customer feedback before ordering on an e-commerce website.

As we said before, a product sheet is very important for SEO. Thus, you must take into account the SEO requirements to write your product sheet. If you want to learn how to write in a search engine optimized way , we invite you to download our free ebook where you will find many tips on SEO writing. 📖

We also invite you to add several photos and videos of your product. Knowing that online your customer can neither see nor touch your product, it is necessary that he can have a precise idea before ordering it. Having several photos and videos on your product page is clearly a plus.

Finally, you can add a FAQ at the bottom of your product pages. Here you will answer the main questions your visitors have, such as how to return the product, how to maintain it, etc.

Step 7: Choose payment methods

Once you have everything in place in terms of products, site structure and so on, you can add the payment methods. Again, if you use a CMS like Shopify or WooCommerce from WordPress, you can do this quite easily. 🤝

There is a big debate among e-tailers about how many payment methods to add. In our opinion, there is a middle ground to be found. You should not use only one payment method, at the risk of losing customers. But on the contrary, if you include too many payment methods, the consumer may feel lost and abandon the order.

We recommend you to add VISA and MasterCard payments (American Express if possible, but optional). 💳

Many internet users like PayPal, so we also recommend you toadd this payment method to your store.

As a bonus, you can add cryptocurrency payment methods. Some consumers like this payment method, but it is not mandatory to add it. In some cases, this can help you increase your sales, so it’s up to you to test!

Step 8: Attracting traffic through blogging

There are several strategies to attract visitors to your online store. The one we think is the most interesting is blogging. By writing blog posts, you will be able to attract regular visitors for a long time. The best thing about this technique is that it is completely free.

We’ll explain. 🤔

In itself, you will simply write articles related to the theme of your e-commerce. These articles will bring you visitors, and some of them can be converted into customers. By optimizing these articles for SEO, you will be able to get visitors every day for the long term.

If they are well written, your articles will rank in the search results of Google, Yahoo and others. And once positioned, they will stay on those search results for years. Thus, once written, a blog post can bring you visitors and therefore potential customers over a long period of time. ⏳

Let’s see how it works by taking a concrete example.

The site tilyo.co is an online store focused on CBD. You can buy CBD oils, but also capsules, infusions and others. The site also has a blog where they publish many informative articles related to CBD. 🌿

In their articles, they will include banners to promote the store’ s products . Knowing that SEO traffic is qualified traffic, it is possible toget a good conversion rate with blog posts.

Blogging is really an underrated method that will allow you toattract traffic in the long run. It is an investment to make, which is certainly costly in terms of time or money at the beginning, but which ultimately allows you toget free traffic later on. It is therefore clearly a strategy that will allow you to be much more profitable, because you greatly reduce your advertising expenses. 💰

Step 9: Promote your store

To attract visitors, you can also use paid communication channels. You know the drill. You pay an advertising agency to display a link to your e-commerce. There are many communication channels that allow you to attract visitors to your store. We are going to present you the main ones. 👀

To begin with, let’s talk about ATS. Search Engine Advertising consists of putting your site in front of search engines thanks to a paying strategy. In itself, you will pay Google or another search engine to appear at the top of the results.

SEA is mainly practiced via Google Ads, the advertising network of the most used search engine in the world. In concrete terms, you can appear on certain keywords. Then you’ll pay per click. That is, every time a user clicks on your site, you will pay a certain price. Cost per click varies depending on competition and search volume. 📊

If you type the keyword “insurance” for example on Google, the first results show the acronym “sponsored“. These sites paid Google to appear first on this query.

SEA allows you toget qualified traffic and a much better conversion rate in general. The advantage is that you only pay if a visitor comes to your site. Whereas with advertising, you have to pay to display your site, even if no clicks are made. 🤝

But advertising can also be a very good communication channel. The big plus is that you can target a much wider audience. This way, you can attract many more visitors to your site in order to collect leads. However, you can also be profitable with your advertising campaigns.

Here are the best advertising agencies for e-commerce according to us:

• Facebook Ads
• TikTok Ads
• Instagram Ads
• Snapchat Ads
• Pinterest Ads

Finally, we also think about influencer marketing. It is clearly the most popular communication channel in recent years and the one that provides the best return on investment. In itself, you’re simply paying influencers to talk about your products on social media. 🗣️

This way, you benefit from the influence of a designer and it will naturally be easier to convince your future buyers.

Step 10: Build customer loyalty

This is the most important step and the one that will allow you to perpetuate your e-commerce and therefore your business. By building customer loyalty, you’ll be able to generate revenue in the long run. 📈

There are several strategies for building customer loyalty. The best one in our opinion is simplyemail marketing. In itself, you will simply collect your customers’ email when they make a purchase, and then you can send them emails afterwards to sell more.

There is a simple reason why it is so important to keep your customers coming back. In fact, it is much more difficult to convince a new customer to buy your products than to convince someone who has already bought from your store. Therefore, emailing is the best strategy to build customer loyalty easily. 🤝

By sending a few emails from time to time, you keep your store attractive and inform your existing customers. Then you can send promotional emails or simply product recommendations. The advantage is that you address an audience already interested in your products, without having to spend money on advertising.

Communicating and staying in touch with your customers is a simple way to build loyalty. But there are other things to do as well. 👀

In order for a user to come back to your store, the customer experience must be optimal. If your products are of poor quality, delivery is slow and your customer support is unresponsive, it will be difficult to retain your customers. You need to provide the right experience to make customers want to order from you again.

Another simple strategy to implement is loyalty programs. With a loyalty program that gives a promotion after a certain number of orders, you can drastically increase the number of customers who reorder after their first purchase. 💳

Bonus : Selling your e-commerce

If your online store has been generating sales for a while, some people may be interested in buying it. Indeed, it is quite common to resell an e-commerce site and it is also possible to buy. 💰

There are several platforms where you can sell your e-commerce site. In France, we think of Dotmarket a marketplace for selling affiliations, blogs and e-commerce sites .

Before selling your site, you will need to have it appraised. The DotMarket team offers you a completely free estimate in a few minutes.

Depending on the age of your site, traffic, niche and other criteria, the Dotmarket team will evaluate your site. Then, they will be in charge of putting your site for sale, checking the solvency of the buyers and paying you the money of the sale. 💸

In conclusion

By following all the steps we have presented you, you will be able to create an e-commerce and make it profitable. However, there are many areas where you will need to learn to improve your skills. If you want to learn more quickly, we invite you to read our comparison of the 3 best e-commerce courses . 📚

If you train with a premium course, you will learn how to create a professional online store while avoiding the mistakes of a beginner. This is clearly a shortcut, as all the elements will be shown to you. You won’t have to train on every necessary skill and search for information for hours.

As you have seen, e-commerce represents a huge opportunity. And nowadays it is very easy to start your own online store, all for a small fee. If you don’t want to miss this opportunity, you know what you have to do 😉