Some tips on the road to your successful webshop

Want to start a webshop? Here we go through some things you need to consider about your new online store and e-commerce.

If you're involved in sales in any way, starting a webshop is probably your first choice today. With a professional online store, you can always sell, no matter what time of day, and to entirely new markets. Here are some tips to consider when starting an e-commerce business. 

Your webshop is more than an ordering function! It is one of the most important meeting places for you and your existing and new customers. It is becoming more and more popular to use your physical shop as a showroom or shop window and let customers order from your online store. This allows your customers to feel and touch, try and see, and then order from home at their leisure.

It may be easy to think that setting up an online store costs a lot and requires a lot of investment. But if you use Abicart to start your webshop, it's actually the other way around! An online shop with us only costs a few hundred euros a month. Check our prices here.

Things to consider when choosing a domain:
You've probably spent a lot of time thinking about domain names for your online store. It's wise to choose a domain name that is the same as your business name. This will make it easy for your customers to recognise your web shop. It's also good if the name is easy to remember and easy to spell and pronounce. Always use Google and check if there are competitors or similar companies using the same or similar domains. Thinking of selling in different markets with different languages? Check what your company name and domain name mean in different languages, it can save you some trouble. 

Another line you can take is to use a domain name that contains important keywords for your e-commerce business. For example, mopedrenovering.se if you sell parts for renovating mopeds.

Google Ads Keyword Planner and Google Trends are two really good tools that you can use to check which keywords your customers are googling for when they are looking for products or services that you offer in your webshop. 

Maybe you need multiple domain names? Maybe a shorter one that you want to use for promotions or on social media?  Also check if there are similar domain names that might be worth buying to protect you from competition or misspellings. Also consider buying domains on several different top-level domains. If you have a .se domain, a competitor might register a .com domain. The most common domains in Sweden are .se, .com, .nu - but there are lots of different top level domains. I usually use Webb.se to search for domains.

What do you want your webshop to look like?
Under the hood, many online stores are quite advanced with integrations to business systems, payment solutions, advertising tools and social media. This makes it extra important to use a simple design that is easy to use for everyone who visits your online store. If you choose Abicart as your e-commerce platform, there are several ready-made themes that are stylish and super easy to use. 

You can easily be tempted to equip your webshop with lots of smart functions and features, as there are so many functions that are easy to connect to. But the most important thing is that your online store is easy to use and clear. A successful webshop attracts with its products and offers rather than with technical solutions. 

But of course it's good to use all the smart features if you need them. An example might be a feature that allows visitors to save products in a favourites list. Another good feature might be to save abandoned shopping baskets that you can use in promotions to your visitors. 

Of course, your online store should always be up to date and current. An effective way to keep your stock balance and other details up to date, is to connect your webshop with your other systems, such as warehouse systems and business systems.Abicart offers ready-made integrations to leading business systems. You can read more about it here.

How will you get your visitors to stay on your webshop?
Your prospective customers don't just come to your online store to shop. Often they are looking for information, checking availability and prices of goods and services they are interested in. This pattern is particularly evident around so-called lifestyle products that attract customers who identify with certain brands or products. Here you have good opportunities to promote new products and services, using those you already have and sell a lot of. Making your webshop interesting is the key to driving additional sales and attracting repeat visits. 

Be generous with information and stories about your products. For example, if you sell moped parts, feel free to blog about your and your customers' mopeds and refurbishment projects or why not make a film. 

An active and interesting online store also needs to be visible on your social media channels, such as Facebook and Instagram. If you are active on social media, you can attract more visitors to your online shop. 

Use Google's tools
If you want to rank high on Google with your webshop, it is important that you actively work with keywords and content that make your webshop interesting for the search engines. To measure and analyse this, Google has great tools that are completely free to use. With Google Ads Keyword Planner you can see what your customers are searching for. Customize the texts and information on in your online store to cover your important keywords.

Another really great tool is Google Trends, which I mentioned above. With Trends you can check which keywords are popular. For example; how many people are searching for "eggnog" at the end of December? Are people more likely to search for "summer dress" around Midsummer or around Easter?

It can be super effective to keep up with words that are trending in searches on Google. But you have to keep up, because trends come and go. 

Be clear with important information about your company
For your webshop to sell well, it is important that it is perceived as safe and serious. Be clear with information about your company, how to contact you and what to do with any complaints. In Abicart's themes, it is very easy to create a clear footer that contains all the important information about your business. 

When you run an online shop, you also need to inform your visitors about cookies - such a function is built into Abicart, so it's easy for you to comply with data protection laws and GDPR if you use Abicart as your e-commerce solution! 

An important thing to remember is to be clear about the payment and shipping options you offer. You can read more about the payment solutions available in Abicart here. Being clear about the shipping method, shipping cost and inventory is also important to create a trustworthy webshop. Here you can read about Abicart's solutions for shipping, warehousing & logistics.

Of course, there are some rules you need to adhere to when conducting e-commerce. The most important ones are the E-Commerce Act and the Act on Distance Contracts and Contracts Away from Business Premises.

Good luck with your online shop!

Rikard Sigvardsson, Textalk (we who run Abicart)

Ps. And you... if you don't already have an account in Abicart, it's free to start a webshop with us. The first 30 days you don't pay a penny. And after that, it's also incredibly private. Give it a try! - It's both free and fun :-) Try it for free here