If you want to sell products online, you don’t necessarily need a complicated e-commerce platform or a website pieced together from a collection of add-ons.
You can build your own website, add your products, accept payments, manage orders, and create the rest of your site around your store.
The basic process is straightforward: choose your domain and hosting, build your website, add your products, set up payments and shipping, test everything, and launch.
Here’s how to do it.
1. Decide What You’re Selling
Before you build the website, determine what you’re actually going to sell.
You might be selling:
- Physical products
- Digital products or downloads
- Services
- Subscriptions or memberships
- Products you make yourself
- Products you source from other suppliers
The type and number of products you sell will affect how you organize your website and which e-commerce features you need.
For example, a website selling five handmade products can be relatively simple. A store with hundreds or thousands of products may need categories, advanced search, filtering, customer accounts, and other tools to help visitors find what they’re looking for.
2. Choose a Domain Name
Your domain is the web address people will use to find your store, such as yourbusiness.com.
Ideally, choose something that’s:
- Easy to remember
- Easy to spell
- Relevant to your business
- Not unnecessarily long
If you already have a domain, you can use it rather than registering a new one.
Need tips on choosing a domain name? Read: How to choose a domain name for your website?
3. Choose How You’ll Build and Host the Website
This is one of the biggest decisions you’ll make.
There are many ways to create an online store. You can use a hosted e-commerce service, install software on your own hosting, hire someone to build the site, or use a website builder with built-in e-commerce functionality.
If you want to build the website yourself while still having control over its design and functionality, UltimateWB is the option I would use.
UltimateWB includes built-in e-commerce functionality, so you don’t have to add a separate e-commerce platform to your website. You can use the website builder’s design tools to build the rest of your site and configure the store within the same system.
You can buy UltimateWB with a one-time payment and use it with UltimateWB hosting or any compatible web hosting, or use UltimateWB Cloud if you’d prefer a website builder and hosting together.
4. Build Your Website
Your online store is more than just a product catalog.
You’ll probably want pages such as:
- Home
- Shop or Products
- About
- Contact
- Shipping information
- Returns and refunds
- Privacy policy
- Terms and conditions
You can then organize your products into categories that make sense for your customers.
With UltimateWB, you can build your website from scratch or use the Templates Generator to quickly create sections and then customize them. The CMS can also be used for elements such as your header and footer.
The important thing is to make the site easy to navigate. A visitor shouldn’t have to search around to figure out what you sell or how to buy it.
5. Add Your Products
Now add the products you want to sell.
Depending on your store, product information may include:
- Product name
- Description
- Price
- Product images
- Categories
- Product options or attributes
- Inventory information
- Shipping information
Good product pages matter. Use clear photos and descriptions that tell potential customers what they’re actually getting.
If you have a large catalog, categories, search, and filters become increasingly important. Customers should be able to narrow down the products they’re interested in instead of scrolling through everything.
UltimateWB’s built-in e-commerce features include product search and filtering, product reviews, customer accounts, related-product sections, and other tools that can help you build a more complete online store.
6. Set Up Payments
Your customers need a way to pay for their orders.
Set up the payment gateway or gateways supported by your store and configure them according to the payment provider’s requirements.
It’s also important to remember that your website and your payment processor have different roles. Your e-commerce system handles the shopping experience and order information, while the payment provider processes the payment.
Before launching, make sure your payment setup is working correctly and that you understand the fees and requirements of your chosen payment provider.
7. Configure Shipping and Taxes
If you’re selling physical products, you’ll also need to decide how you’re going to handle shipping.
You may offer:
- A flat shipping rate
- Free shipping
- Different rates based on location
- Rates based on order weight or other factors
- Local pickup
You’ll also need to configure applicable taxes based on where you do business and where your customers are located. Tax requirements can vary, so make sure your setup complies with the rules that apply to your business.
If you’re selling digital products, your setup may be different because there’s no physical shipping involved.
8. Make Sure Your Website Works on Phones
A large portion of online shopping happens on mobile devices, so your store needs to work well on phones and tablets as well as desktop computers.
Check things such as:
- Product images
- Navigation
- Product descriptions
- Add-to-cart buttons
- Forms
- Checkout
- Menus
- Text size
Don’t just check whether the page technically fits on a small screen. Try actually using the store on a phone.
Can you find a product easily? Can you add it to your cart? Can you complete the checkout process without frustration?
Those details matter.
UltimateWB includes a built-in Responsive app for making your website responsive across different screen sizes.
9. Test Everything Before You Launch
Before sending customers to your new store, go through the entire buying process yourself.
Test:
- Product pages
- Search and filters
- Add to cart
- Customer registration, if enabled
- Checkout
- Payment processing
- Shipping calculations
- Order notifications
- Contact forms
- Mobile navigation
If possible, have someone else test the site too. A fresh set of eyes can catch problems you may have overlooked.
It’s much better to discover a broken checkout button yourself than to discover it because a customer tried to buy something and couldn’t.
10. Launch and Start Getting Visitors
Once everything is working, launch your website.
But launching the website is only the beginning.
People won’t automatically find your store just because it’s online. You’ll need to give them a reason to visit.
Depending on your business, you might use:
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
- Social media
- Email marketing
- Content marketing
- Advertising
- Existing customers
- Partnerships and referrals
Make sure your important pages and products can be found by search engines. An XML sitemap, useful page titles and descriptions, well-written product content, and a logical site structure can all help.
Read: Boost Website Traffic! How to Write Title Tags & Meta Descriptions
UltimateWB includes built-in SEO tools and a Sitemap Generator, as well as a Mailing List app for building an email list and sending out HTML mailers.
Why Use UltimateWB to Build an Online Store?
If you want to build the website yourself, UltimateWB gives you both the website-building tools and built-in e-commerce functionality in one system.
That means you can create the rest of your website – not just the store – while keeping your store integrated with it.
You also have control over the design. Use the Styles Manager and other built-in tools to customize the appearance of your website rather than being limited to a pre-designed storefront.
And because the e-commerce functionality is built into UltimateWB, you don’t have to rely on a chain of separate plugins just to add basic store functionality.
You can also choose how you want to use UltimateWB. Buy the software with a one-time payment, host with UltimateWB or use your own compatible hosting, or use UltimateWB Cloud that combines the website builder with hosting. If you start on the Cloud, you can always upgrade and buy the software to have the option to download your website and host your website where you want.
Ready to Sell Online?
Making a website to sell stuff can be much simpler when your website-building and e-commerce tools are part of the same system.
Choose your domain, set up your website, add your products, configure payments and shipping, test the buying process, and launch. Then focus on getting the right people to your website and making it easy for them to become customers.
UltimateWB gives you the tools to build your website and its e-commerce functionality together, with the flexibility to customize the site as your business grows.
If you’d rather have someone build the site for you, UltimateWB also offers web design packages.
Got a techy/website question? Whether it’s about UltimateWB or another website builder, web hosting, or other aspects of websites, just send in your question in the “Ask David!” form. We will email you when the answer is posted on the UltimateWB “Ask David!” section.