How to design an online shop

The internet made starting a business easier and cheaper than it had ever been. With a modest investment you can reach a far larger audience than a shop on a street ever could, without the geographic limits of a physical location. That is e-commerce. But how do you actually design an online shop that works?

1. Choose the name and the domain

Before any design work, pick a good name. Keep it short so people remember it, and if it can contain a word related to what you sell, so much the better for search.

2. Choose decent hosting

This is the one investment you genuinely have to make. Hosting determines how fast your site loads, which matters both to visitors and to search engines. Cheap hosting is the most expensive decision in e-commerce.

3. Design around the product page

The product page is where the sale happens, not the home page. Good photography from several angles, a description that answers the questions a customer would ask in person, the price, the delivery cost and the returns policy visible without scrolling.

4. Offer the payment methods people expect

Every payment method you do not offer is a group of customers who leave. Card and the major wallets are the baseline.

5. Keep the checkout short

Cart abandonment is mostly a checkout problem. Every extra field loses customers. Do not force account registration before purchase, and show the total cost including shipping as early as possible.

6. Build it for phones first

More than half your visitors will arrive on a phone. If the checkout is awkward on a small screen, that is where your revenue goes.