If we talk about the year 2020, then almost all the businesses observed a significant drop in their market sales due to months of lockdown. But, amidst this, there is one sector that did survive this pandemic and we call this sector, the Retail Sector. So what made this sector see some growth, even when other sectors were struggling? Well, this sector responded to the situation in a very interesting way. Nearly, 7 out of 10 retail businesses started an eCommerce store and made the best use of the available eCommerce platforms. The eCommerce platforms allowed the sellers to find the buyers for their products very easily and accordingly make successful sales for their products and services. This blog post is a step-by-step guide to how to start an eCommerce Business from Scratch in 2021 and talks about some of the best eCommerce website development companies in USA.

Step-by-Step Guide to Start an eCommerce Business from Scratch

Before we start talking about how to start an eCommerce Business from Scratch in 2021, let’s talk about what is an eCommerce Website? What are the examples of Hosted eCommerce platforms? An eCommerce website is a marketplace where the buyers and sellers e-meet one another to finalize and close a deal together. Some of the examples of Hosted eCommerce platforms are Shopify, Site 123, BigCommerce, Volusion, and many others.

Define a Business Model

Instead of worrying about what you will selling online, you need to define an ideal business model. This eCommerce business model should talk about:-

Reachability-

Your primary focus should be on how you will be reaching your interest groups. Hereby, an eCommerce website development company can help you identify your interest groups. Thus, you will be able to get accurate information about where you should promote your business.
Targeting-

You should have a clear idea about how you will be targeting your identified groups. Here, you can reach out to digital marketing experts in the USA, who offer services like affiliate marketing, content marketing, and other digital marketing services in the USA
.
Visitor Conversion-

Since every visitor, who visits your eCommerce store may not necessarily make a purchase. There can be many, who just visit, just to check the price and other features. However, there is a great scope for turning such visitors into regular clients. For this, you can reach out to the best eCommerce website development company in the USA and get your online store a fresh and enticing look. As a result, you will find that more and more visitors who visit your website, make a purchase and turns out to be your customers on a more regular basis.

Identify an eCommerce Niche

It’s sad to hear that most of the people remain stuck with the product listing for their eCommerce website, and do not focus on the core aspects. One can become the next Amazon, provided that they know the niche. For finding your niche, you can:-

Reach out to an eCommerce development company in the USA, who would help you examine the big businesses that are already existing in this field.
Seek consultation from an eCommerce web design company in the USA, which would help you identify whether the chosen niche is competitive or not, based on the existing market trends and future aspects.

Choose your target groups

Now since you have defined your niche and business model, now before proceeding towards product listing, you need to define the people to whom you will be selling your products via your eCommerce website. Hereby, an eCommerce development company in the USA can help you:-

Identify who are the people who will be directly or indirectly affected by your business.
Identify the people who are actually interested in your business.

Apart from this, you can use the social media tools like Facebook Ads Manager, which would allow you to run social media advertisements across the selected region, interact with customers, grow your market presence and eventually identify the interested groups more accurately and easily.

Find a Brand Name and Register Your Business

You won’t like it if your business idea is stolen by someone and turns up into a reality, even before you have started! So, the next step in this step-by-step guide to how to start an eCommerce Business from Scratch in 2021 is to define a brand name and register your business online. Now many of you might be wondering where to get your business license; hereby, the eCommerce development company in USA suggests visiting Small Business Association (SBA), which offers plenty of resources to help fresh entrepreneurs start their eCommerce store from scratch.

Finalize the eCommerce Business Strategy

It’s always a good idea to define your business plan and examine it properly before proceeding further. Thus, the next step in this step-by-step guide to how to start an eCommerce Business from Scratch in 2021 is to evaluate the financial aspects of your business. Hereby, you can avail eCommerce website development services in USA, which offers complete guidance in all aspects and help you find, whether your business idea is economically viable and fits right into your budget. Once you are done with these checks, there is nothing that can stop you from starting an eCommerce store.

Start Your eCommerce Store

Once done with the above steps, you may proceed to register your domain name, create your eCommerce website, make your eCommerce website SEO friendly and optimize your eCommerce website. Hereby, it is always a great idea to seek eCommerce website development services in USA, which would help you go through the domain registration process smoothly. Also, it should always be noted that this step is one of the crucial steps in the step-by-step guide to how to start an eCommerce Business from Scratch in 2021. It is because this step assigns you a digital identity, creates a business value for you, and improves your online visibility in the marketplace

Promote Your eCommerce Store

You cannot find a buyer for your business product or services, until, you tell them about your offerings. Hereby, it becomes important to promote your eCommerce store by seeking digital marketing services for your eCommerce website. By taking assistance from some of the best digital marketing experts in USA, you can make your eCommerce store easily recognizable, accessible, and easy to navigate for the customers. Digital marketing experts in USA can further help you:-

Gain a strong market presence
Revive your marketing efforts
Achieve your business goals
Promote your eCommerce store in a very effective manner.
Implement a completely reliable, effective, and result-oriented digital marketing strategy.

Monitor your eCommerce Store Performance

Do you know why are examinations conducted? Well, examinations are conducted to evaluate the learning progress of the learners and this gives an estimate of improvement areas. Similarly, when you are running an eCommerce store, then, you will definitely not like it, when in spite of making significant efforts, your eCommerce store does not perform well. Thus, you should monitor your eCommerce performance from time to time and take the necessary steps to make your eCommerce website better and eventually make your eCommerce business better. In this stage, there are many who finds it very difficult to identify the bugs, until, it is highlighted from the users’ end. Thereby, it is recommended to reach out to an eCommerce website developer in USA, who not only possesses significant knowledge in this area but also, conducts intensive testing of the platform from time to time and accordingly recommends the best solution to resolve the issue, before it becomes untrackable.

What are the best eCommerce Website Development tools to consider in 2021?

Amidst all the above-stated steps, you all might be wondering, which of the eCommerce website development tools you should consider in 2021? Well, there are some of the best eCommerce website development tools available in the market. However, if we talk about the best five eCommerce website development tools, then, they are hereby stated:-

Shopify

To begin with, Shopify is so far one of the best eCommerce Website Development tools. Its easy-to-use interface, multiple Shopify development theme options, and reasonable Shopify development plans make it an ideal choice for e-commerce website developers. Other than this, it comes loaded with plenty of features and upgrades, which includes:-

Hassle-free eCommerce Website Builder
Great provisions for data back-ups and timely updates.
In-built marketing tools for successful advertising campaigns over platforms like Google and Facebook.
Consolidated interface for managing orders, payments, and shipments

However, to leverage the complete benefits of Shopify development in USA, it is highly recommended to take assistance from Shopify experts. These Shopify experts in USA can help with the eCommerce website development, integration with the marketing tools, and further help one to promote their business among many much more easily. However, to use the Shopify platform, one needs to choose one of the monthly plans, which starts from $9 a month.

Magento

Magento is another important eCommerce website development tool. Magento eCommerce Development in USA can allow you to offer a great eCommerce experience to your customers. With Magento eCommerce Development in the USA, you can manage, track and process all your customer’s orders and further:-

Access the data analytics report for your eCommerce website
Optimise your eCommerce website
Customise your eCommerce store with the Magento e-commerce development services in USA

Even though Magento is a freely available open-source eCommerce website development platform, but to access all its features, the annual fee is 15, 550 $.

BigCommerce

When it’s about listing down the top eCommerce website development tools, then, the list would be incomplete without listing down, “BigCommerce”. This tool offers a great level of flexibility and easiness to develop an eCommerce website. Some of the core benefits of choosing this tool are hereby listed:-

Hassle-free integration with third-party apps.
Quick drag and drop of design elements.
Easy to integrate coupons, storefront conversions, and more.
Better customer-oriented insights with efficient customer analytics.

Unlike the other eCommerce website development tools, BigCommerce is quite expensive and it all depends on the business requirements, which may vary from person to person.

WooCommerce

Sometimes, it becomes important to add eCommerce features across the WordPress website. Hereby, WooCommerce offers grid functionality and it makes it easier for the developers to integrate the E-Commerce feature over the site. There are some of the interesting features of WooCommerce which makes it highly competitive against the Shopify Development platform, which is hereby stated:-

Unlike the Shopify development platform, where you need to buy its monthly plan, WooCommerce is free of cost and can be used by anyone for integrating the E-Commerce functionality over the WordPress site
It is designed as per the WordPress site requirements and therefore makes the site appear very attractive.
Even though this platform is very powerful over the others, but in comparison to the Shopify development platform there is no such option as drag and drop the elements over the E-Commerce Store.

UltraCart

At times, many of you would have felt that the products and services that you wish to sell online are quite less in numbers. Hereby, you might be wondering how you could start a small online store and market your products to a limited number of people. For example, you may wish to sell less than 10 categories of products to the people of your own locality, and thereby, you might need a small online store. In this scenario, UltraCart offers a great set of eCommerce solutions. It allows you to list small categories of products that were in the online store and market them among the selected groups in a more organised manner.

Unlike the Shopify development platform, where the monthly plans start from as low as $9 per month, it is quite expensive as the plan starts from 49.95 $ per month for small enterprises and extends upto $ 499.95 a month.
In the same way, as the Shopify web designer is able to customise storefronts, this tool allows the users to choose from multiple storefronts.
It also offers multilingual support across the platform that allows the users to integrate the language which is convenient to their customers. This feature is quite similar to the Shopify development platform and thereby makes it a very competitive platform.
One of the key limitations with the Shopify development platform is that one has a limited number of options for the eCommerce store themes. However, with UltraCart, all the available themes are customisable and therefore the users can customise it to give it a fresh new look every time.
In regards to the payment integrations, the UltraCart interface is very similar to the Shopify development platform, where the users can easily add payment integrations without the need for any expensive add ons or plugins.
Since it is a highly feature-loaded eCommerce website development platform; thereby all the operation should be performed by an experienced e-commerce website developer.

Where to find the best eCommerce website developer in USA?

Finding your ideal eCommerce website developer in USA can be a daunting task. As you need to align your business requirements with the skills of an e-commerce website developer in USA to make it a perfect match. Hereby, it is highly recommended to hire an eCommerce website developer, who have the following expertise:-

Sound knowledge of leading e-commerce website development platforms such as Shopify development, Magento eCommerce development, WooCommerce development, and more.
Should be working with a leading Shopify development company in USA or an eCommerce website development company in USA.
Should be a highly skilled Shopify web designer in USA and an e-commerce website developer.
Must have a proven track of offering eCommerce web development services in USA from the past several years

Undoubtedly all these qualities are quite difficult to find in an individual. However, if you search for “Shopify expert near me“, which has landed you over this page, then you are quite fortunate. Clover IT, who is the best Shopify development company in USA. It has been offering Shopify app development services, Shopify custom development services, Shopify development services, and all sets of e-commerce development services in USA for the past 10 years.

Conclusion

Considering the future aspects, eCommerce will be the next big thing to consider in 2021. It besides offering a great opportunity for businesses to reach more customers and make great market sales, allows the people to make a purchase for their favourite products and services from an eCommerce website. However, an eCommerce website can only perform well, if it has been framed as per the market trends, customer requirements, and business niche. Some of the successful eCommerce websites are Amazon, Best Buy, and Flipkart, which made their way to success after closely examining the market trends and customer preferences. However, these eCommerce website examples are not limited to these big names, today, anyone can be the next big player in the eCommerce industry, if it follows the right technique, uses powerful eCommerce website development tools like Shopify Development, takes assistance from some of the best eCommerce website development companies in USA, and follows the right steps of starting an eCommerce business from scratch.

How To Start an eCommerce Business From Scratch in 2021?