How to build an online store in 6 steps

All right, your business decided to go online or transform the existing online shop, and it already sounds like a plan. To make it more effective, we recommend you devise a detailed business plan with actionable milestones, OKRs and KPIs.

KPIs examples

Website Visitor Conversion Rate
Monthly Sales Growth
FAST Checkout Purchase Rate

OKR example

Objective:
- Improve online sales.

Key results:
- Generate $50,000 monthly website visits
- Reach $100,000 online revenue by the end of 2022
- Generate $10,000 through FAST Checkout

To make a good business plan for an online store start by asking yourself these questions:

1. Where is our business now?
2. Where do we want it to be in 6 months, 1 year, 5 years?
3. What (additional) features should our store provide?
4. Are we planning to expand into more markets/stores?
5. How do customers find our store? How do we want them to find our store?
6. What are the pain points of our customers?

Next, try to evaluate how much money you need to invest in this initiative. A detailed example of how to estimate costs for building an online shop is described at the end of this article.

Download the Ultimate Guide: Ecommerce Platforms Comparison >

How to choose and hire an ecommerce developer?

Yep, sometimes that’s even more difficult than to find a soul mate...

But we’ll now share with you 5 simple, but not obvious tips on how to hire an ecommerce developer or agency.

1/ Explore their previous work and experience

‍Some people rely more on ratings and references from previous clients, and these are also important things. But what can get you a real picture of any digital agency is their portfolio of projects and case studies.

⚠️ Sometimes not all projects are listed on the website because of the confidentiality agreement (aka NDA), but you can send a request via email and get a more detailed presentation.

Try to find the ecommerce developer who already has relevant experience in your industry or worked with companies of your size and business model. In this case, the setup process should go smoother.

2/ Check culture compatibility

That’s a really crucial point even if your tech partner delivers services remotely. You must be confident that they will build a good relationship with your internal team.

Jump on a few entry calls, ask more questions about their internal culture and operations. Look into their work ethic and define if they’re a good fit for you.

3/ Don’t be afraid to share any sensitive information

To build a good online store, clearly describe what you expect from your potential ecommerce development partner. Sign the non-disclosure agreement (NDA) and feel free to discuss any sensitive information with no fear.

The better you describe the project plan, desired results, and budgets, the better your future vendor could understand the scope of work and what resources they should commit to maximize the return on your investment and deliver quality work.

4/ Full-cycle services vs highly specialized ecommerce agencies: what to choose

‍Usually, there are 2 types of ecommerce development agencies: those who specialize in one or a couple of directions, like design, development, or testing, and those who provide full-scale services from business analysis and consultancy to post-project maintenance and support.

It depends on the goals, but if you want to keep it simple, choose the second type, as it’s much easier to align the processes with one team rather than several. Besides, it will definitely cost you less in the long-term.

10 Questions to Ask When Hiring an Ecommerce Development Agency >

5/ Look beyond the ecommerce project scope

While considering your options, think about how those agencies can add value beyond the project scope.

Very often ecommerce development agencies are partnered with related-to-industry services and brands, and these relationships may become beneficial to your business.

For instance, Grinteq is an ecommerce development agency, and the list of our partners’ services includes payment integrations, fundraising, and digital marketing.

Just ask your potential partner what additional value or connections they can provide, so that you don’t waste your time in an endless search for qualified and trusted experts.

What is the process of building online store with an ecommerce agency?

Online store creation is quite a tough process. But there are some superheroes that can save your time and money - ecommerce agencies. Each agency may share some differences in their approach, but the process of setting up the team will look mainly in the following way.

1/ Prepare a clear specs sheet with project details and requirements

This is the document you create right after the planning stage (point 1 of this blog).

While your plan describes your goals at a high level, the specs sheet must be very detailed and clearly outline the list of all the functionality you’d like to see in your final solution:

How should it work?
What features should it have?
What options should your platform provide?
How should it look?
How is the end-user supposed to interact with it?

We recommend you hire an expert who can help with crafting the specs sheet.

Investing money in such services will allow for a smoother and quicker process as well as a more accurate estimate of the project’s total cost later on.

Be wiser from the start!

2/ Schedule a discovery call with your new ecommerce developer

Discovery call is the best way to get acquainted with your potential vendor face-to-face, get your business questions answered, address any concerns, and discuss the future steps.

The more clearly you talk about your expectations and requirements here, the better idea you will have about the vendor’s match.

3/ Share your specs sheet and wait for the estimation

If you are happy with how the vendor presented themselves on the discovery call and feel confident that they can add value, send them the specs sheet (the one you created in step 1) and wait for their estimate.

You might go back and forth with the vendor to clarify some points, and that’s totally expected.

Eventually, you will receive a number of quotes from all the vendors - now is the time to compare them, weigh all the pros and cons (from both the quantitative and qualitative sides), and make a decision about which vendor suits your project best.

4/ Negotiate the terms of the agreement

Before starting the development process, discuss all the details of your agreement ONCE more.

It will minimize the chance of any mistake or misunderstanding.

Transparency is the key to mutually beneficial cooperation.

Take a chance at reducing the total cost of the project - most ecommerce agencies have some wiggle room in their rates or can offer additional services at no extra cost.

At this stage, you can also discuss the project steps, timeline, and regularity of communication with the team.

5/ Development process and Quality assurance

Usually, the process of custom ecommerce development consists of a few stages: requirements analysis and feasibility assessment, design, and coding.

During these stages, you’ll make regular calls with the team to discuss the project progress, vulnerabilities, and new changes.

Depending on the complexity of the project, the development process may last from 2 to 8 months on average.

But if there is a need to highly customize the chosen platform or integrate a third-party payment gateway that isn't supported by the platform, the terms of development may increase.

After that, it’s significant to check the quality of the software and discover any defects or bugs prior to deployment.

‍Testing (Quality Assurance or QA) helps to successfully complete these tasks. ‍

User Acceptance Testing - is the way when you check usability on your own and ask developers to fix some things that you don’t like.

Choose agencies that include testing in their package. That’s not even because of the cost reduction, but for clear communication and coherence between the development and testing teams.

6/ Post-project support and site maintenance

The availability of post-project support and further site maintenance depends on your agreements with your ecommerce developer. These terms must be agreed in the contract in advance.

It may be a fixed number of hours when your partner's team will be available for your needs or support on-demand with the agreed hourly rate even after project release.

How much does it cost to start an online store?

If you are to build a selling ecommerce website, this question often becomes a stumbling block during the planning process. Let’s try to divide it into parts.

1. Ecommerce platform pricing

The cost of an ecommerce platform may vary depending on a number of factors: business’ size, goods volume, ecommerce capabilities that solution provides.

For Instance, Shopify pricing may vary from $29/month to $299/month depending on the tariff and options included. The minimum fee you can expect from using Shopify Plus is $2000/month. Additionally you'll have to pay 0.25% of your monthly revenue (if the revenue is equal or more than $800K per month).

Magento Commerce Cloud will cost $40,000 - $125,000 yearly, while three-year licensing of Salesforce Commerce Cloud can cost up to $530,000.

The annual cost for an ecommerce platform may range from $0 to $20,000+

2. Design and development costs

You can choose whether to design an ecommerce website and develop it in-house, outsource this part to an agency, or combine the advantages of both models.

The most convenient way is to hire a full-cycle ecommerce development agency that provides consulting and designing store services as well as software development.

If you want to have more control over the project, consider extending your internal tech department with a dedicated team of ecommerce developers. This option could save a lot of time with finding top talents and could be more cost-efficient compared to keeping your own large team.

3. Ecommerce website maintenance costs

These usually include marketing, analytics, security management costs, SEO tools, and integrations. Try to think about it beforehand as it’s also a large part of expenses people often forget about during the planning stage.

4. Transaction fees

Payment processing costs depend on the ecommerce platform you choose and payment services. The average charge for the majority of solutions (like PayPal, Stripe, Shopify Payments) is about 3% + $0.30 per transaction.

Note: These costs do not include any fees that may be charged by your bank.

5. Hosting for ecommerce

There are 2 types: self-hosted and SaaS ecommerce platforms.

Each website must have its own web hosting (the place where your files are stored) and domain name, e.g. grinteq.com.

With a hosted solution (SaaS) your ecommerce developer handles server maintenance, updates, etc., so your hosting costs are already included in your software price. Shopify, BigCommerce, Salesforce Commerce Cloud are examples of SaaS solutions.

Alternatively, you could choose a self-hosted solution and handle the setup and management of your own servers or find a hosting partner. You’ll have to buy an SSL certificate (HTTPS) for securing data transfer between a user’s browser and the website if it isn't included by your provider by default.

For instance, Magento and WooCommerce are examples of self-hosted platforms, meaning you won’t be dependent on any centralized service and are free to choose your hosting service. This enables extreme mobility when your customers increase.

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