How To Create a Website for Your Ecommerce Business

With e-commerce being on the rise in Pakistan, bringing your business online is more important than ever. Luckily, it’s also easier than ever – even if you can’t code or make a professional design.

But whether you’re casually selling online services or a big-scale e-commerce online store, there are good and bad approaches to building your e-commerce website that will likely determine your success. 

In this detailed guide, you’ll learn the answer to the question “How to create a website for my business?” and you will be able to create a stunning website from scratch – entirely on your own.

Determine the Purpose and Goals of Your Website.

Before making any decisions with a lasting impact, you should assess your goals. Depending on your plans, your structural and creative decisions will vary. 

This is important for budgeting, and it’s healthy to plan so you choose the right infrastructural elements. These include the site builder, custom domain, web hosting plan, and more. 

7 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Building a Website

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دیکھیں کیسے

Here are some fundamental questions you should answer before you build an online store in Pakistan.

1. Do you sell products or services?

Depending on what you offer, your website will look very different. 

Not only will the website’s features and functionalities differ from others, but you might want to take a different route with your choice of content management systems (CMS).

2. Is the website an extension of your existing business, or are you fully online?

If you already have a physical store or office, you will need to think about the unison between it and your website. 

For example, you will have to set up an inventory synchronization system or approach it manually.

3. Do you operate in a single country or globally?

It’s important to assess your scale and geographical reach even if you offer digital services. This is because not all website platforms offer localization options.

4. Do you expect a high influx of visitors right off the bat?

Having the right expectations regarding website traffic is key to choosing the right hosting provider. Besides this, it also helps determine the right technical elements related to your website. 

Too much web traffic on an unprepared website can cause site speed issues, which are detrimental to your site’s performance overall.

5. What’s your budget?

Your budget is a core aspect of your approach. It will affect your choice of website-building platform, and plugins. Alongside this, it could determine whether to hire experts to optimize your site’s design, copy, or on-page SEO.

6. What’s your target audience?

In other words, it’s who you’re trying to reach. It’s always better to have a specific persona in mind than to make your website universally attractive. 

If your primary audience is in Pakistan, they would determine the design and rhetoric decisions you make for your site pages. 

7. What’s the purpose of your website?

Is it to sell more, or does it exist to boost brand awareness? A website can be many things, depending on its role within an organization. 

Make sure that you understand exactly what its function is so that you can develop it using the fitting tools and techniques.

Set Your Goals and Expectations

Now that you understand the purpose of your business website, it’s important to set the right KPIs and goals. You don’t have to be precise or spend weeks setting quarterly objectives. But it’s healthy for a business to plan and think about potential roadblocks.

On one hand, you might have less traffic than expected, meaning you should invest in better discoverability or user interface. On the other hand, your website could experience an overabundance of visitors. This is a sign that you should focus on expanding your infrastructure, revisiting your processes, and adjusting for performance.

In any case, expectations don’t always level up reality. Stay flexible and prepare for most scenarios to avoid downtime or website crashes.

Choose a Domain Name And Web Hosting Provider.

So, how do you make a website for your business? It all starts with choosing a hosting provider and your domain name. These two services are essential for building and maintaining traditional websites and are offered by third-party companies. 

Let’s look at both, as well as how to choose the right web host and domain provider.

What’s Hosting, and How to Choose a Hosting Company?

Web hosting companies offer a service that allows you to use a company’s computer servers to store your website data. This includes code (like CSS and HTML files) and design elements like images and videos. Essentially, web hosts allow your website to operate online.

Choosing the right hosting company relies on a few priorities:

• Pricing: Your choice of plan or company will alter depending on your budget. Some hosting providers offer domains within their service packages. This is a great way to start an ecommerce website for small businesses in Pakistan.

• Scale: If you plan to have hundreds of pages on your website, you will need more storage space. On top of that, your choice of hosting plan should accommodate a high amount of traffic.
  
• User reviews: Visit Reddit or Quora (or any open community forum) to see real, uncensored, non-sponsored feedback from other users. You can find what solution your peers have chosen and put together a list of pros and cons.
  
• Dedicated support: Being able to easily find a solution to any potential issues is a massive quality-of-life benefit, especially in dynamic and stressful scenarios. Look for good client care and support.
  
• Ease of use & easy integration: If you’re making a website on your own, you will most likely use a site builder or content management system (CMS). Implementing your hosting service into your website system of choice is a considerable advantage. 

Therefore, look for web hosting services that offer a smooth and user-friendly experience. Most web hosting services that utilize a cloud-based system consider ease of use a top priority.

What’s a Domain, and How to Choose a Domain Name?

The domain name is essentially your website address. “abcd.com” is a domain name. Many of the rules of choosing a domain provider remain the same. Reserving a domain name is relatively cheap, too. 

There are some beneficial practices when choosing your domain name:

• Use keywords: If your website offers fishing goods, adding a fishing-related keyword like “pole,” “fishing,” or “fish” to your domain name can go a long way in making it easier to find.
  
• Use “.com”: “.com” websites are naturally perceived as more trustworthy. Trust equals clickthrough rates, which leads to more sales.
  
• Aim for a shorter domain name: Shorter domain names are easier to read and remember. Statistically, they generate more traffic. Opt-in for a domain name between 6 and 14 characters long.
  
• Minimize non-letter characters: Avoid using numbers, hyphens, and even double letters such as “tt” or “bb.” These elements impair the readability of a domain name.

And, of course, make sure that you find a free domain name (one that is available). Buying an owned domain name can be expensive, so if yours is taken, you can make certain alterations or use another extension like .net or .org

Select a Website Builder or CMS Platform.

An ecommerce website platform (such as a site editor and CMS platforms) is a great way to create an ecommerce website in Pakistan without web development skills. They are a relatively accessible approach to website building in terms of initial investment. This is despite certain technical limitations due to users handling a third-party system.

Nevertheless, almost every small business website is built via a site builder. This approach allows you to be self-sufficient and use pre-made website templates while having access to all the features that a large or small business site needs.

Top Factors to Consider 

Below are Factors to prioritize when choosing the best ecommerce platforms in Pakistan:

• Consider the nature of your business: Online stores tend to rely on SaaS solutions like NEXT BASKET and Shopify. Meanwhile, service-based ones may prefer Wix or even a simple WordPress website. Different web builders provide value for different business formats and niches (for example, a WordPress site is usually considered optimal for blogging).
  
• Integration potential: Integrations are external tools that can be added to your website to add new advanced features. Some of them are optional – extensions like ERP systems and accounting software. But can be crucial to a business’s everyday operations.
  
• Scalability: Pick a website builder for ecommerce in Pakistan that allows you to expand as your audience grows. At the very least, make sure it allows for a smooth migration (moving data from one platform to another).
  
• SEO capabilities: We’ll go over SEO in detail below. However, qualifying a site builder based on its SEO options is important.
  
• Budget: Most platforms require a monthly fee with other payments like templates and plugins. Your decisions should account for potential expenses.
  
• Live support: Quality in-site live support can help when you’re stuck and need technical help. This is important, as the support team is your direct communication with your chosen SaaS company.
  
• Ease of use: This doesn’t only include an intuitive interface. It means being easy to add co-workers, having access to easily readable analytical tools, and more. If you’re not a web developer, avoiding complex solutions is preferable.

Subscribing to a website builder is arguably the most important step since it houses other aspects of your website. Study your options well and test them out. Most website builders offer a trial period and act as a free website builder for a while.

Choose a Website Design and Layout

Your next step in creating your website is to develop its aesthetic.

Besides looking good and being consistent with your product theme; your design needs to be coherent and easy on the eyes. High-quality images have a tremendous effect on visitor engagement, so make certain you place relevant photos on your pages.

Other important design aspects are colors, fonts, and your logo. All of these elements can be hand-picked or created by you. However, hiring a web designer who understands what makes a website truly effective is recommended if you have the necessary budget.

A great first step when designing your website is to look at your competition for inspiration. More often than not, same-niche websites share fundamental qualities and features. Familiarizing yourself with the industry standards makes you trustworthy, as customers will see what they’re used to. This also puts you in a position to experiment, deviating from the standards to create something truly unique.

To kickstart your creative website-building process, you can always rely on the preset templates that most web builders have. With the click of a button, they allow you to build entire web pages while still letting you tweak any particular element to your liking. 

Add Key Pages

Depending on your industry, some web pages are essential for your business. Here are some of the most popular ones.

Homepage

Since most people will land on this page first, it should be able to tell your visitors who you are, what your business does, and what your unique ability to help your customers is. 

The content should be attention-grabbing and professional, while the page itself should be able to load fast. If you have any budget for copywriting or web design, prioritize allocating it here.

About Page

In reality, the About Page is more of a page expected to be there instead of one many visitors click on. The upside to this is that you can be a lot more liberal and creative with how you design it.

To make it effective, you have to identify why people would click on it in the first place. Perhaps it’s to find out if your brand is legit. Or to see whether they resonate with your values? As the age title suggests  – use it to show visitors what you’re about.

However, if the reason for clicking on the About Page is because they don’t understand what you do, your homepage is ineffective.

Knowing what your visitors expect allows you to give them what they want in a brand-consistent way. Don’t be afraid to be creative here and show them how you’re different.

Services Page

If your business offers multiple services, you’ll want to have a services page that outlines each service. 

Before listing the services, though, it’s recommended to start with a value proposition. It’s a statement that defines the general offer, who it’s for, and how it’s uniquely valuable. Touch upon a pain point, explain how your services can alleviate it, and mention the benefits.

This is also a good place to add a lot of testimonials and as much social proof as possible. Add numbers, quotes, success rates, and all statistics that prove you know what you’re doing.

List the actual services and clarify the process so your clients know exactly what to expect. It’s key that you place multiple CTAs (call to action) throughout the page, along with a contact form at the bottom of the page for any potential questions.

Product Pages

Successful product pages are highly dependent on high-quality images. Ensure eye-catching photos, videos, and descriptions that clarify use cases, sizes, and pricing for each product.

On the general product page, a solid categorization system is very helpful in ensuring a smooth customer experience. Provide sorting by size, color, price, etc.

We recommend having most of these elements in your product pages:

• An SEO-friendly page title;
• Product images;
• Product details;
• An “Add To Cart” button;
• Product descriptions;
• “Recommended for you” section;
• Reviews.
  

These will boost the conversion rates of your ecommerce website and help site visitors make a quicker purchasing decision. 

Blog Page

Most blog readers will likely come from Google or other search engines (as opposed to being website visitors first.) Still, making your business blogs easy to find and sort is important. The actual blogs should have an easily readable font and high-quality images – not unlike a personal blog.

ToS and Privacy Policy

Terms of Service and Privacy Policy pages are usually legal necessities, so there isn’t much to them. Depending on your industry and business specifics, they might look slightly different. 

Many companies use templates, but it’s recommended to take advice from legal experts.

Contact Page

Make yourself easy to get in touch with so you provide a clear line for customer service and potential partnerships. 

Contact pages are usually a simple website feature but could be slightly complex, depending on the nature of your business. For example, if you provide services, you might need information regarding your potential prospect.

Create and Organize Your Website Content

Organizing your website’s content is important for ensuring a smooth user flow – for that purpose, creating a site map is important as it helps you to visualize the user journey. You’ll see if there are any content gaps, and you may find yourself removing irrelevant pages.

The website structure should be intuitive and straightforward. Imagine that a customer is trying to find something specific – how easy can you make it for them?

Dropdown navigation menus are your go-to when it comes to website orientation. Categories are very helpful, especially in e-commerce, so setting up an intuitive hierarchy is key.

Clear organization is also important for blog management. In any business, blogs are beneficial because they affect the website’s SEO performance. Set up blog categories and tags.

Optimize Your Website for Search Engines

SEO (search engine optimization) is your website’s ability to rank high in search engine results pages, for example, at the top of a user’s Google search. So many businesses are investing heavily in SEO because it’s one of the best organic search traffic sources. Effectively, it’s free marketing, too.

Tips for Ranking High

Below are different ways to rank higher in search results:

• Find your keywords: Find keywords primarily associated with your product, service, or general niche. These keywords will be helpful when writing your on-page copy. Keywords and keyphrases may change with the market and the customers’ needs. So, you should revisit this research every few months.
  
• Optimize your website’s speed: Ensure your website runs fast – reduce file sizes, cache your web pages, and reduce redirects. When search engines crawl they assess your site speed which also affects your SEO.
  
• Use available SEO tools: Countless SEO plugins and browser tools offer immense value to online entrepreneurs. Even a free version can help you greatly. Ahrefs or SEMrush are some of the most popular options.
  
• Write effective URLS: Internal and external links should be kept relatively simple. Short URLs rank better in search results.
  
• Develop categories: Not only does blog and product categorization help with organizing your website. It also helps you rank in search engine result pages.
  
• Meta descriptions, meta tags, and alt texts: These are small but mighty places to add your central SEO keywords while offering a better user experience.
  
• Avoid dead links: Non-functioning links or pages hurt search rankings. Once in a while, running “website crawlers” through your site is recommended to check for dead links.

A common mistake many website owners make is to place too high of a priority on SEO at the start. Having an excellent SEO score is difficult and oftentimes expensive. You’ll likely have better initial success using these funds for PPV Google ads. Still, establishing a good foundation for your SEO is an important step in building your professional online presence.

Implement Website Security Measures

It’s your responsibility to not only protect yourself from malicious attacks but your users’ info too.

Some website security measures you can introduce to your website are:

• Systemic updates: Update your CMS, plugins, and themes since many vulnerabilities are patched in new updates.
  
• Make regular backups: Make backup versions of your website and its data so you can return it to previous states if something goes wrong.
  
• Use SSL encryption: Encrypting data is a safe way to protect your data from being interpreted. Even if a third party acquires your customers’ info, they would still be unable to understand or use it.

Last but not least, some online tools allow you to scan your website for security holes. They might only offer a partial picture, but running bimonthly or monthly checks is recommended.

If you’re using a reputable SaaS website platform, these checks will probably be included in your monthly subscription plan. 

Set Up Website Analytics and Tracking

Most CMSs and website builders have in-built analytics tools and dashboards that can help you track your website’s performance. This includes traffic, demographics, page visits, engagement, profits, and inventory tracking.

Alternatively, you can acquire a more detailed view of all these indicators (and more) via a centralized ERP (enterprise resource planning) system. Implement one, granted that your platform of choice is compatible.

Analytical data is extremely important for improving your website’s performance. Therefore, setting up a lasting system, analyzing the data, and implementing changes accordingly is a natural part of an online business’s growth.

Test and Launch Your Website

Before you go through with your website launch, make sure you test it. Examine each page and every possible interaction. Check for small elements like integrations for social media platforms, icons, and navigation arrows. 

Don’t forget to optimize your website for mobile devices. Invite beta testers to share feedback regarding intuitiveness, flow, and cohesiveness. 

During your launch, it’s especially important to take note of analytical data and make dynamic changes. Don’t be surprised if your website looks more or less different than your initial design.

Data that could influence your Pakistani ecommerce website design, UI, and copy are:

• Visitor profiles;
• What devices do visitors use;
• Most visited pages and products;
• User behavior;
• Traffic sources;
• Website loading speed;
• Conversion rates.

To get this information and much more, it’s heavily recommended to set up Google Analytics.

Maintain and Update Your Website Over Time

Conducting systematic updates and audits is crucial to maintain a high level of security, relevancy, and performance. 

Here are some healthy long-term practices:

• Software updates: Update your plugins, themes, and other apps to keep them up-to-date with modern features and guarantee better security.
  
• Content updates: Update pricing, blogs, and general information to ensure it’s accurate and up-to-date. Outdated information reflects poorly on the website’s authority and professionalism.
  
• Security checks: Perform periodic security audits and vulnerability assessments to identify weaknesses.
  
• Monitor performance: Handle your analytical data to make adjustments accordingly to increase performance.
  
• Consider user feedback: Observe social media reactions and leave an open contact form on your website. User feedback is a first-hand source of insights.
  
• Check for dead links: Run crawlers to remove any existing broken links.
  
• Update your SEO: Review your keywords and SEO elements, such as meta tags and other content. This tells if you’re still performing as well. If not, you can make alterations as needed.

You can also experiment and see whether new website features improve your performance. At a certain point, you might also decide to rebrand or refresh your website’s aesthetic to keep it visually appealing and modern.

Marketing Your Ecommerce Website in Pakistan

The success of your website doesn’t end with setting up a beautiful and working e-shop. You’ve got to drive traffic to your store to get more eyeballs on your products and finally make sales. We already discussed SEO for ecommerce websites in Pakistan, which is a great way to get more visitors, but another alternative way is to actively promote your site through various channels. 

These are the actionable ways to market your ecommerce store:

1. Social Media Marketing

So many people struggle with growing on social media because, yes, it is saturated. However, if you master these platforms and create content your audience loves, you increase your chances to grow.  Create ad campaigns through Facebook to target your audience and get them to click links to your site. 

2. Email Marketing Campaigns

If you aim to get prospects to trust you before shopping from your store, it is ideal to use email marketing to make this possible. Rather than directing them from your ads to your website, you can get them to subscribe to your newsletter. From there, you can connect with them better and send them tailored recommendations, which they will find on your website. You also get to share time-bound and exclusive deals with them, which makes them feel special. 

3. Influencer Marketing

If you’re struggling to get visibility on your own on social media, influencer marketing may not be a bad idea. Firstly, you need to find small to big influencers in your niche who will vouch for your product’s quality. It comes at a handsome price, but if you use the right influencers and track performance, you should see results. 

4. Local Advertising Channels

If you were to increase your visibility in Pakistan, you would have to use local channels like TV, radio, and newspapers. Use flyers, posters, and billboards to get people in your area talking. Also, attend local events and be involved in competitions that will showcase your business. 

5. Supervise Your Marketing Efforts

How do you know if you are doing the right thing when you are not tracking it? Thankfully, today’s social media channels can allow you to see more information on how content is achieving its goals. You can also use Google Analytics to supervise your blog posts and web pages. Tweak your strategies to get what you want.