Key Elements to Adding Ecommerce to Your Website

Ecommerce is the booming new trend your business cannot afford to ignore.

Ecommerce is the purchasing and selling of products or services over the internet. Formerly the domain of major established businesses. New tools make it easier than ever to add an ecommerce site to your existing business web pages or build a business from the ground up that is focused on onsite ecommerce.

How you add an online store to your existing website depends on several factors, including who hosts your webpage. This blog explains how to add an online store to your existing website and why doing so is no longer something you can put off. This task is where a capable ecommerce SEO agency like Digital Authority Partners can help out, stepping in to set up an ecommerce page for your business while you focus on core operations.

Want to learn more about the Digital Authority Partners approach to SEO? Watch this video!

What Is Ecommerce?

Ecommerce, short for electronic commerce, is buying and selling products or services online. Ecommerce is made possible by combining many established and burgeoning technologies, including internet marketing, online transaction processing, supply chain management, electronic funds transfer, and mobile commerce.

Ecommerce does not simply mean having a shopping page on your website, though it can. Ecommerce has many components, including:

• Online shopping using a direct to consumer website
• Facilitated shopping by chatbots, live chat, and voice assistants
• Online marketplaces
• Email marketing tied to website sales platforms

While ecommerce has been growing steadily for the past decade, it indeed took off during the pandemic, when COVID-19 lockdowns kept people from conducting their regular in-person shopping. Combined with that, the growth in social selling and an explosion of third-party plug-ins meant that almost any business could launch an ecommerce platform with just a few clicks.

Ecommerce Websites: A Growing Trend Businesses Cannot Ignore

Just how big is ecommerce in 2022? Well, it’s big. In the U.S., ecommerce sales are forecast to cross the $1 trillion thresholds in 2022, with sales expected to grow by more than 16 percent over 2021. B2B trends are also rosy, with B2B ecommerce site sales expected to reach $1.77 trillion in 2022, a 12 percent increase from 2021.

Growth will be prominent across nearly all sectors, with computers and consumer electronics leading the way, followed by apparel and accessories, music and video, books, furniture, and home furnishings.

5 Ways to Add an Online Store to Your Website

Tech has made it easy to add ecommerce functionality to your website. Many tools are easy to integrate, and many SEO agencies are willing to make it happen.

Here are five ways to add ecommerce to your website:

     1. Create a Custom but Separate Store to Direct Traffic

This solution is what most people think of ecommerce: A site with the same look and feels like your existing website but is optimized to enhance the user experience and encourage buying. Several third-party vendors offer to create online stores tied to an existing website. 

Which one you choose and how you move forward will depend in part on your strategy and platform. The store design is critical in this step and what products you offer, imagery, logos for branding and recognition, trustmarks, and payment logos that help people feel comfortable shopping with you.

A great shopping and checkout experience is a must for any online store. Retailers will want to avoid cart abandonment by being clear about shipping costs (or offering free shipping). Additionally, optimize your checkout experience for mobile devices and enable customers to buy multiple items at once.

     2. Link to a Social Media Shop

Social media marketplaces have exploded in popularity in just the past two years, with Facebook leading the way. Many of the same parties that offer the ability to create an online store can also help set up a Facebook sales platform integration. Syncing features streamline updates between your ecommerce page and Facebook’s ecommerce platform.

     3. Add an Ecommerce Plugin to Your Existing Site

If your website uses WordPress, Wix, or any other popular site-building tools, there are a variety of plug-ins that you can easily add through the site. On WordPress, for example, leading ecommerce plugins include WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, MemberPress, BigCommerce, and Shopify.

Many ecommerce plugins are on the market, including WordPress ecommerce plugins. However, not all of them are the same and may not have the right set of features for you. For example, some are best suited for digital goods like music and photos. 

In contrast, others are better suited for selling physical products that must be shipped. Factors to look for include payment solutions, design and customization options, apps and integration, and support options.

     4. Add Buy Buttons to Your Website

Probably the easiest way to add ecommerce to your website is to embed a button or widget that says “buy.”  These tools will send website visitors directly to your product page. As a result, you can paste them in almost anywhere, from emails you are about to send to writing blogs.

     5. Embed Your Online Store into Your Existing Website

Nothing beats embedding your online store into your existing website for smooth functionality. You can build your store offsite with the right host and push the live button to start selling. Plenty of website hosts, like GoDaddy, make it easy to build your website, set up an online store, and integrate a shopping cart into the website in just a few clicks.

Ensure a Smooth Ecommerce Site Launch With Help from Pros

It’s true – many sites seem to make it super easy to launch an ecommerce page. But they will not ensure a successful page or campaign with a high conversion rate, many qualified leads, and limited cart abandonment. That is where pros like those at Digital Authority Partners come in. They can create custom ecommerce pages to grow your customer engagement and boost sales.