Why Should you Use WordPress to Start your First eCommerce Store?
Last updated on November 29th, 2023 at 07:56 am
With mega eCommerce websites like Amazon booming, it is an excellent time for anyone looking to sell online and make big profits. However, it’s difficult for any business to flourish without a website. First, it’s crucial to establish a strong internet presence. Maintaining oneself approachable is crucial since the clients will want to get in touch with you.
Sure, social media could work, but why rely only on a venue over which you have limited control? A website is essential to be the best in your field. If you plan to start your online business, you might wonder which eCommerce platform to use.
WordPress: an ideal eCommerce Platform: Here’s why?
When building your eCommerce business, you have many choices regarding the eCommerce platform. If you ask any web developer, they will take a day to understand that each has its specific benefits and drawbacks. The same is true for WordPress too. However, in terms of eCommerce website design, you will find that it has some distinct advantages.
Let us check out the details of the benefits that can be derived from using WordPress for eCommerce:
1. WordPress is SEO friendly
For any web developer, SEO friendliness is one of the keys to an ideal eCommerce website design. Knowing that WordPress is particularly intriguing to search engines is beneficial since rankings matter. You may construct SEO-friendly title tags, meta descriptions, and URLs for every page of your website. WordPress themes are often entirely responsive, and we know the significance of mobile-first indexing. You may utilize some best SEO plugins for WordPress to further optimize your pages and secure even higher ranks if the basic SEO features aren’t sufficient.
2. WordPress is user-friendly
It is possible you are not very tech-savvy. If that is the case, you will seek a web development platform that is user-friendly and simple to use. The good news with WordPress as an eCommerce development platform is that it is user-friendly and straightforward.
Everything is relatively intuitive, so even if you lack significant technical knowledge, you should be able to use the site without difficulty. Explore the admin dashboard without hesitation, and look at every accessible option. When unsure, the little sentence describing each option’s operation is beneficial.
3. WordPress is a very safe web development platform
For an expert web developer, along with SEO friendliness, the safety of the eCommerce Platform is equally essential. So, when it comes to eCommerce website design, you must ensure that it also ensures complete safety. With WordPress as your development platform, that is precisely what you can have.
If not to remove vulnerabilities, a decent security plugin can at least significantly reduce their impact. So be careful to include them on your website to prevent hackers’ intrusion and keep your WordPress yard secure.
Therefore, if you are considering using an eCommerce web development platform that is safe and also SEO friendly at the same time there can hardly be a better choice than WordPress.
How you can go about developing your first eCommerce website without breaking the bank
Programming and web development an in-demand skill sets which means that the price and quotations that you get for eCommerce website design may be in the high thousands. There are essentially three ways that you can go about developing your eCommerce platform without breaking the bank.
The first is to learn web development yourself. This means going onto Codecademy and learning Javascript, HTML, and CSS. After that, you should be able to build a website on WordPress and be able to fix any bug that you come across.
The second is to use a less flexible alternative to WordPress. This refers to an eCommerce platform like Wix or Squarespace that ends up charging you a monthly subscription fee. On the bright side, it’s super easy to learn since it’s drag and drop but can be glitchy at times which means that you’ll end up spending countless hours on their eCommerce platform and trying to make a design that you like.
The third is to apply for a government grant. This varies depending on the country you live in. However, many countries like Singapore have some sort of technological government grant to promote the digitization of small businesses. For example, Singapore offers the eCommerce PSG Grant which subsidizes up to 70% of the cost of eCommerce website design. There are requirements like minimum local shareholding but this means that you’ll end up paying 30 cents on the dollar which is an amazing deal and a great chance to develop your company’s website.
How you can start on WordPress
Let’s say that you go with the second option. In that case, the first step would be to go onto YouTube and find a course that you’re interested in. This means finding a YouTuber that you’re able to learn from the best and watching all his beginner tutorials on WordPress. If you want a course with more structure, go onto a learning platform like Udemy. But do note that learning platforms often charge a few hundred dollars for a course and you’ll still have to put in the work to learn.
Next, you can register a domain on something like Namecheap and create a web hosting account. Both of these will cost you under $50 a year but you’ll need to use Softaculous to start developing your first website. After that, you may need to find a free WordPress theme or find a WordPress company that offers free themes and then later charge you a premium to upgrade.
Finally, you can upload the theme, activate it, and start reading that theme’s documentation to start building your website. Since you’re looking to build an eCommerce website, you’ll need to install WooCommerce, a WordPress plugin that has features like add-to-cart and product management. If you’re unfamiliar with WooCommerce, there are tons of free videos on YouTube and their documentation is pretty detailed. Again, this may sound complicated and require countless hours for a complete beginner to learn – which is exactly why you may want the help of an eCommerce web developer.
