How to Build an Ecommerce Website for Your Brick and Mortar Store: 2023 Guide

With ecommerce accounting for about a fifth of total global retail sales and constantly growing, when you don’t have an online store, it’s like your business doesn’t even exist. Alternatively, your consumer base can grow significantly outside of your physical location with an ecommerce website for your brick and mortar store.

An ecommerce website offers a 24/7 sales channel, allowing your customers to make purchases whenever it is convenient for them, including after conventional business hours.

And with an ecommerce website builder, you can easily launch your online store to reach customers from various locations, even globally. You expand your potential target market size and raise your chances of making sales.

Your ecommerce website can complement your physical business profitably if the appropriate techniques are put in place, giving your customers a convenient and seamless purchasing experience. This is commonly referred to as a phygital experience.

To help you boost your brick and mortar store, we’ll show you how to build an ecommerce website from scratch in 2023.

Table of Contents

• What Is an Ecommerce Website?
• Why Should You Build an Ecommerce Website for Your Brick and Mortar Store?
• How to Build an Ecommerce Website Step by Step
• How Much Does It Cost to Build an Ecommerce Website?
• Starting Your Ecommerce Website in 2023

What Is an Ecommerce Website?

Ecommerce websites let customers and companies exchange goods and services on a set platform, much like a conventional physical retail store. Yet, ecommerce transactions take place fully online as opposed to at a physical location.

So, from businesses’ point of view, ecommerce website development is an efficient way to expand their customer reach and customer base by selling their products or services online. Moreover, operating an online store is usually significantly cheaper and more profitable than having a traditional brick and mortar store.

Why Should You Build an Ecommerce Website for Your Brick and Mortar Store?

In 2023, everyone’s online - including the majority of your customers - and many prefer the convenience of ordering online. Your customer base will grow and your sales potential will rise if you build an ecommerce website for your brick and mortar business. Here are the top five benefits of establishing an online store for your company:

1. Expanded market reach and expansion

You can considerably increase your market reach and get access to a global consumer base with an ecommerce website for your physical business.

A traditional store is constrained by its physical location, but an online store gives you the ability to reach clients around the country and even the globe.

This increased market size creates new possibilities for retail growth and expansion.

With an ecommerce website, customers may access your online store from any location, which offers convenience and accessibility.

Shoppers can explore and make purchases from your online store whenever it's convenient for them, not just during store hours. In this way, you can serve consumers who choose to shop beyond business hours and increase your chances of making sales.

2. Customer convenience and accessibility

With this strategy, you let your customers shop on your ecommerce website at their own pace and convenience. An ecommerce store offers unparalleled customer convenience and accessibility. Shoppers can easily browse through your goods and services, make orders, and complete payments online, saving them time and effort. Not to mention that many customers prefer not to be bothered by sales assistants.

With an ecommerce website, customers can shop from anywhere (home, office, or on the go), at any time, and using their preferred device such as a computer, tablet, or smartphone.

Growing beyond your brick and mortar store, you cater to a wider customer base and reach customers who may not have the ability to visit your physical store due to geographical constraints or time limitations.

3. Additional revenue streams

Having an ecommerce website can create additional revenue streams for your business. You can reach a larger consumer base and draw in customers who prefer to purchase online by operating an online store in addition to your physical one.

Moreover, running an online store allows you to implement different strategies and tactics to boost revenue in an easy and efficient manner. For example, you can increase sales by implementing strategies like upselling, cross-selling, and promotions with an ecommerce website. Customers who are looking at a specific item, for instance, can be shown related goods or services to entice them to buy more.

In addition, you can encourage customers to make larger purchases by offering promotions, discounts, or loyalty programs, which will raise the average transaction value and push repeat purchases.

4. Improved consumer analytics and monitoring

Operating an ecommerce store allows you to collect insightful customer data using analytics and monitoring tools. This information helps you analyze and comprehend the preferences, actions, and purchasing patterns of your consumers.

In turn, you can adjust your marketing and sales tactics to be more effective at meeting their demands. You can also use this data to know what updates might be needed to your products and what new products are in most demand.

5. Cost-effective and flexible operations

Compared to a physical store, an online store requires lower overhead costs and provides greater flexibility in operations.

You can manage your inventory, process orders, and handle customer inquiries online, reducing the need for physical space and resources.

It also allows you to scale your business more easily and adapt to changing market conditions. As you free up resources from serving your physical store, you can invest more in the upgrade of existing products and the development of new products.

How to Build an Ecommerce Website Step by Step

Creating an ecommerce website for your brick and mortar store can completely transform your company.

Next, you will learn how to build an ecommerce website in 8 steps:

Step 1: Choose the most effective ecommerce platform

Finding the best platform for ecommerce websites is essential to the success of your online store. Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, and Magento are some of the most popular choices that offer many features and customization choices to meet your business demands.

When selecting the most appropriate ecommerce platform, think about your company's size, budget, technological knowhow, scalability needs, and desired features.

Do research on client opinions, contrast pricing structures, and assess available customer assistance choices. Building a strong and profitable online store for your company requires choosing the correct ecommerce platform.

Step 2: Plan and design your website

Second, you need to create a comprehensive plan and design for your ecommerce website, including the layout, color scheme, branding, and user experience. Branding should be in line with your existing brand and physical stores for a coherent, consistent user experience and immediate recognition.

Moreover, you need to take into consideration technical things like the ease of navigation, mobile responsiveness, and clear call to action buttons to optimize conversions.

Many ecommerce platforms and supporting apps provide great choices for readily available ecommerce website templates. Unless you have a full software development team, this might be a more feasible option for you where you just need to customize the template to fit your exact brand and needs.

Step 3: Add and organize your products

Once you have your website built, you need to take care of inventory. This includes putting your goods or services online, together with top-notch images, thorough product descriptions, and competitive prices.

For optimal search engine and user experience, you should create categories, tags, and filters to help users quickly locate the items they're looking for.

Step 4: Set up payment gateways and shipping options

Another crucial step in the process of building an ecommerce store is providing the best payment and shipping options. One of the factors that affect consumer decisions to purchase products from your ecommerce website is the presence of secure payment mechanisms.

To speed up the order fulfillment process, you also need to set up shipping choices with costs, delivery schedules, and tracking. Keep in mind that most online shoppers expect same-day or two-day delivery options.

Step 5: Optimize your online store for SEO

One of the most important components of creating a successful ecommerce website is search engine optimization (SEO). You increase your website's exposure on search engines (like Google) and generate organic traffic by putting SEO tactics into practice.

Higher rankings in SERPs and more exposure to potential clients comes out of this tactic.

There are numerous things you can do to optimize your ecommerce website for SEO and organic traffic. Your ecommerce marketing efforts should focus on helping search engines better comprehend the content of your site and rank it appropriately by creating distinctive, evocative, and keyword-rich product descriptions as well as home page, category pages, tag pages, and others.

For instance, you can enhance your website’s SEO performance by including relevant keywords in your meta tags, URLs, and other on-page components.

Step 6: Implement security measures

With the exponential growth in the use of the internet and online shopping, data protection and customer safety are becoming a priority.

To be in line with the latest best practices, you need to protect your ecommerce website and customer data by implementing robust security measures. This includes SSL encryption, two-factor authentication, and regular backups to safeguard against potential security breaches.

Step 7: Test and launch your website

The process of testing and launching an ecommerce website plays a big part in ensuring that the website is functional, user-friendly, and compatible across different devices and browsers.

Before building a buzz around your new online store, make sure to test your website for functionality, usability, and compatibility, fix any issues, and ensure a smooth customer experience.

Thorough testing and issue fixing before launching the website can enhance the online presence and success of the ecommerce business.

Step 8: Get the best ecommerce website app

Just building and launching an online store is not enough to outperform the competition and get a higher share of wallet. In 2023, you have to focus on providing a personalized customer experience, smart recommendations to shoppers, and rewards for loyalty in order to sustain your business and grow.

Moreover, when adding an ecommerce website to your brick and mortar store, it’s a must to streamline the customer journey and experience through omnichannel features, for the best phygital experience.

Coretava is a complete 360 retail growth platform which hosts all the tools and products that you need to boost the performance of your ecommerce store.

Here are the ways in which we can help you grow your online store:

• Core Loyalty: Launch a points-based, cashback, tiered, and referral loyalty program to increase sales by an average of 2.7X. Build customer loyalty for repeat purchases at higher values.
• Core Personalization: Enable intelligent search, instant predictions, and smart recommendations to benefit from upselling and cross-selling. Offer the ultimate personalized customer experience.
• Core Marketing: Launch customized on-site pop ups and gamification as well as personalized emails and SMSs to bring back and retain customers. Implement a strong growth marketing strategy.
• Core Omnichannel: Combine online and offline customer experience into a seamless process to boost loyalty. Launch a phygital experience across all points of contact.

Click here to schedule a free demo to see how Coretava can help you grow your ecommerce website.

How Much Does It Cost to Build an Ecommerce Website?

The cost of building an ecommerce website design can vary greatly depending on numerous factors such as the complexity of the website, the features and functionalities required, the design and branding, the platform or CMS (Content Management System) used, and the development approach (custom development vs using templates or themes).

Here is a general overview of the main costs:

Item	Price Range ($)	Description
Domain Name	$10-$50 per year	The web address (URL) for your ecommerce website
Web Hosting	$5-$500+ per month	The server space where your website files are stored and accessed online
Design & Branding	$500-$10,000+	Custom ecommerce website template, logo creation, and branding elements
Ecommerce Platform/CMS	$0-$5,000+ per month	Popular platforms like WooCommerce (WordPress), Shopify, Magento, or custom CMS development
Website Development	$1,000-$20,00+ per month	Creation of both the frontend and the backend, including coding, database setup, and integration of ecommerce functionalities
Payment Gateway	$0-$500+ per year	Enabling online payments and transactions such as PayPal, Stripe, or custom payment gateway integration
SSL Certificate	$0-$150+ per year	Providing secure data transmission between the website and users
Content Creation	$100-$1,000+ per page	Creating original content for product pages, blog posts, and other website sections
Testing & QA	$500-$5,000+ per month	Verifying the website's functionality and bug-freeness through testing and quality assurance
Maintenance	$0-$500+ per month	Ongoing updates, backups, and technical support for the website
Additional Features/Plugins	$0-$1,000+ per plugin	Additional functionalities like social media integration, SEO tools, email marketing, etc.

The cost ranges provided are approximate and can vary significantly based on various factors. Before getting started, you should obtain detailed quotes from web development agencies or freelancers for accurate cost estimates based on your specific requirements.

In addition, you need to take into account ongoing costs for website maintenance, marketing, and SEO when budgeting for an ecommerce website.

Starting Your Ecommerce Website in 2023

Launching an ecommerce website can be a A game-changing move for your brick and mortar store. You can build a profitable online store with the correct ecommerce platform, careful planning and design, optimized product listings, secure payment gateways, SEO techniques, strong security measures, and comprehensive testing.

Meanwhile, Coretava offers powerful tools like Core Loyalty, Core Personalization, Core Marketing, and Core Omnichannel that can optimize the performance of your ecommerce website, providing analytical insights and solutions to enhance your operations and boost your sales. Don't miss out on the opportunity to take your ecommerce business to the next level with Coretava in 2023!

Get started on building your high-performing ecommerce website and achieving online success.