This is what you should think about when setting up a retail website

If you’ve got a great idea for a retail or e-commerce website, you’ll probably want to get started as soon as possible - after all, you’ve got the idea, the products or services, and you can quickly buy a domain name and web hosting. What more do you need?

The answer is you need quite a bit more, and at the very least, you need to ensure your website is as good as possible - that’s your store, and you won’t want to turn people away at the door because it’s not well designed and welcoming.

With that in mind, here are some things to think about when you’re setting up a retail website.

Make it user-friendly

The first thing you’ll want to think about when you’re setting up a new online shop is that it must be user-friendly.

There’s no point in having the most wonderful products to sell if you can’t get people to stay on your website for very long. They might find it, but that’s only the first step - they need to stay there, and they need to want to choose your products and services.  

That’s why the website design is so important. Many business owners choose to outsource this work to a web design agency because, in that way, all the most up-to-date techniques, ideas, and technology can be used. Plus, if you’re keen to get started, this is the quickest way to do it.

Your website has to look good, but it also has to be easy to navigate with no broken links and a simple interface. Checkout should be easy too, with the fewest number of clicks to get to the final page.

Plus, there has to be plenty of information about each product, your shipping, and your business so people feel confident in making their purchasing decisions.

Get the pricing right

Pricing is something that’s going to make or break your business; get it right, and people will love buying from you, feeling as though they’ve got a great deal, but get it wrong, and people will feel as though they’ve been scammed or perhaps not buy from you at all because they know they can get the same (or similar) thing cheaper elsewhere.

Getting your pricing right isn’t just about ensuring you’re the cheapest - you can charge more than your competitors as long as you have a reason for it.

If you can work that reason out - perhaps you’re unique, maybe you offer a good guarantee, perhaps you deliver to a wider area, and so on - and play on it within your advertising, you can set your prices higher. However, understanding what your customers are willing to pay and what your competition is doing is also important to help you get to the right price.

Set up an online payment system

It might sound obvious, but you’ll need a good online payment system in place if you want people to actually buy from you.

Perhaps you remember in the far and distant past having to go to a website to find what you wanted and then calling the company to place the order. That’s long gone, and if that’s the only way to buy from you, not many people are going to take that option.

Having a complete payment system on your website is a much better idea, and you’ll need to research which one is best for you. Think about the types of payment you want to accept and how much you’re willing to pay in fees to help you narrow down your choice.