So, you’ve decided to expand your business from the old world of commerce to the new world of eCommerce. Everything is going well, you have your business plan all set up, you know what sort of products you’re going to sell, and you know who your target audience is. But you’ve hit a snag: you don’t have the first clue how to setup a WordPress website for eCommerce.
The good news is that this is a surprisingly common problem, so at least you’re not alone. Even big businesses have trouble moving from offline sales to online sales. Argos, for example, was slow to react to the changes happening around it. As a result, the company began a better-late-than-never lurch towards eCommerce in 2014.
The bad news is that, without a decent website, your online sales will be slim to non-existent. If you try to continue without a strong site, you might start to wonder what the point of your website is.
A good business learns from its mistakes, but a great business learns from the mistakes of other businesses. Argos never managed to match the online sales of its rivals, and that’s why its profits are slumping, but you can do better by creating a website through WordPress that is tailor-made for eCommerce success.
How to Setup a WordPress Website for your eCommerce in Five Easy Steps!
Know Your Goals
Not all websites are for eCommerce. In fact, some of the biggest websites in the world have nothing to do with eCommerce. There are websites for social media (Facebook, YouTube, Twitter), websites for news (the Guardian, the Telegraph, the Washington Post) and websites for business promotion, rather than for online sales (Coca-Cola, Pepsico, and the Mars company).
All of these websites make money and are successful in their own ways, but they are not eCommerce sites. Yours will be, though, and it’s vital to keep this aim in mind. Big companies can afford to have websites as a mere point of contact or to promote their brand, and that’s just fine. However, if you want to sell things on your site, you need to make sure every aspect of the site, every detail you add to the site, is done with this aim in mind.
Optimise the Layout for Your Goal
Colours, logos and text are all extremely important, but the very first thing you should focus on is the layout. Why?
Because your site needs to sell, sell, sell. Remember that goal. You can make your site pretty later, but for now, you need to design it with the following in mind:
- Give your site a clear and visible “call to action” on each page. In other words, make buying from your site a click away from every page.
- Put your buy button in the top right corner. Some eCommerce sites will bury the buy button below their product description. Amazon’s buy button is in the top right corner, though. Why? Because that immediately tells people what to do on the page. If you watch user testing videos of poorly-laid out eCommerce sites, visitors sometimes don’t even realise that the site is here to sell; they just think that they’re viewing a catalogue. Amazon tests layout more than you or I, so let’s not reinvent the wheel here.
- Use the fold. When you click on any website, the first thing you will be greeted with is a screen full of stuff that you can see without scrolling. This part of the site is the part which is “above the fold”. Some people might not scroll down, so the stuff “above the fold” is the only thing they’ll see. Therefore this is your all-important first impression. Make sure you tell them what they’re here for and, preferably, show them something that they’re likely to be interested in above the fold. This is particularly important on your homepage, where, rather than a big pretty generic banner, you should be looking to clearly describe your store, selection and target audience with a simple headline.
- Make your menu clear. Each product should be ridiculously easy to find. Look at how websites like John Lewis use a mega menu to take people to the right product category quickly, by categorising and sub-categorising. The goal of your menu is to never overwhelm the visitor or force them to hunt through disorderly items to find what they need. Remember, if it’s hard work, people won’t bother and will just leave.
The takeaway from all of this is simple: your layout needs to be grandma-proof. Imagine that every internet user is 80 years old, struggles to see and has very short patience. Imagine that every internet user doesn’t know how to scroll. Imagine that every internet user is May Ashworth, the 86 year-old who typed “please” and “thank you” into her Google searches because she thought that made them quicker.
Don’t make your customers work hard. Give them what they want instantly with a sales-orientated layout.
Don’t Be Afraid to Ask for Help
You wouldn’t build your own shop (unless you’re a builder), so why would you build your own website (unless you’re a coder)?
WordPress is pretty user-friendly, but don’t think for a moment that this means setting up a website for eCommerce is simple. Power tools are user-friendly and Ikea furniture is user-friendly, but that doesn’t mean that you should go about building a house all by yourself.
There are professionals out there who know how to setup a WordPress website and you shouldn’t be afraid to at least ask them for advice. You only get one chance to make a first impression, and a poorly-built site won’t convert traffic into customers nearly as well as one that has been optimised to do exactly that.
Promote Your New Site Like It’s a New Product
You’ve finished your site. It’s a great-looking thing, it’s super sale-optimised and you’re extremely proud of it. Now it’s time to play the waiting game. After all, your site is great and, if people want to buy your product, they’ll find it themselves, right? The old saying “build it and they will come”?
Unfortunately, that’s not how things work online. When was the last time you went to page two of Google? If the answer is “never”, you’re not alone. Less than 10 per cent of searchers make it to the second page of Google, hence the meme: the best place to hide a dead body is the second page of Google.
Your new eCommerce site will not magically appear on page one of Google just because it looks good. In fact, it’s worse than that; you’re at the back of the line. As far as Google is concerned, you practically don’t exist.
This sucks, but it’s completely normal. You’ll likely need to mix SEO (Search Engine Optimisation is the practice of improving a website’s search ranking), paid advertising (such as Google Adwords) and Social Media in order to start bringing visitors to your site to buy. Still, don’t forget good old-fashioned word of mouth. If you have physical customers at a physical location, promote your site there. Promote your site like it’s a new product.
And finally…
- Don’t Be Afraid to Make Changes to Your Site
You may not like change, but Google does. Google likes fresh content, Google likes up-to-date coding that helps your site run faster on mobile, and Google especially likes it when visitors like your site.
If your site isn’t climbing the rankings, if people are clicking on your site and then clicking away, or if people aren’t buying from your site, it’s time for an overhaul.
Changing your site might feel scary, but the best do it all the time. The Wayback Machine is a great tool for showing you how often other eCommerce sites change their layout. Trends change, technology advances and websites are expected to catch up. The ones that don’t wind up looking like relics of a bygone age.
Author Bio
Tim Cameron-Kitchen is an eCommerce, digital PR and SEO expert, the top-selling author of How to Get to the Top of Google, and the founder of Exposure Ninja. Through his company, Tim builds, promotes and rejuvenates websites with a team full of coding experts who know exactly how to setup a WordPress website for eCommerce.
