Things I learned while building my first e-commerce website

When I began creating e-commerce sites, I discovered there’s much more to making a web store than listing products and posting a checkout button. I felt that a successful design for the store would help me see where the rest of the building wanted to go. But I found out, that how the store looks is only one part out of several other parts such as usability, performance and trust! My biggest lessons were in creating the structure of the store. I made a plan of how I wanted the store to look and that made everything easier. When the store layout is finished, customers are able to navigate through organized categories and a simple homepage.

Customers must be able to tell what store they’re in if they’re supposed to buy something. I’ve realized that clean hero section, featured products and CTA buttons help in assisting customers. I discovered that with WordPress and WooCommerce, it’s not just about the platform you choose, but also the tools you use. I didn’t have to build an entire website with this since WooCommerce offers the features that could allow me to concentrate more on design and store layout for an improved site.

Every part of your website is important, but I found out that product pages are particularly the lifeblood of any e-commerce site. Quality images, straightforward product descriptions, easy-to-read pricing information and an “Add to Cart” button will help enhance the user experience. I discovered that users like being able to see things in a nice format, without the walls of long unfriendly paragraphs you have to struggle through.

The store also needed to provide a strong overall performance so that users would appreciate the experience. Using overly optimized themes and animations that added little value to the store also harmed performance. I learned that poor optimized images also detracts from the overall store experience. Keeping the site optimized and focused on performance is particularly important, as most users are e-commerce site visitors and buyers.

The most important thing that I learned that an e-commerce site is an ongoing process. Many elements will change following the users’ behaviors and will continue to improve the experience. In working on my first e-commerce site, I learned that success is not in simply having a lot of products available. I will leave adding products to other e-commerce sites. Instead, I hope to provide users with a website that has a unique look and strong performance.