We live in the age of information technology where you can not go shopping for hours, but simply place an order with a couple of clicks on your smartphone. Every day more and more people make purchases in the most comfortable conditions for themselves — without leaving home. Thus, a constant flow of customers from a wide variety of target audiences is ensured. The development of the Internet has provided entrepreneurs with a unique opportunity to open an online store and trade their goods online.
If you already have an existing website, you might be wondering, “Can I add the ability to shop?” Spoiler — yes, you can, but adding e-commerce to the site yourself is not an easy task, and may require certain technical knowledge about the correct organization of the process. It may take a month or even more until the opportunity to provide the opportunity to purchase on your site to customers.
If you order services from an e-commerce development company, then deprive yourself of a headache and get a solution that can satisfy all your wishes. Let’s dive deeper into this article and find out what are the ways to add eCommerce to your site. If you’re ready to explore some effective shopping cart integration solutions, keep reading.
How to Add eCommerce to Your Website?
Online selling is such a big business that you just can’t ignore it and refuse to be featured on your site! Fortunately, there are several ways and tools that allow you to save yourself from the need to create a site from scratch and add eCommerce to an existing one. This way, customers can shop while you save on the development, design, and more. To add eCommerce to your site, you can choose from one of the methods we present based on your needs, platform, and budget.
Solutions to Add eCommerce to Any Website
Using plugins
The first thing you might want to think about is integrating eCommerce into your website using the right plugins. For everything to work out, do not forget to update your CMS to the latest version and set up e-commerce. You need to choose your CMS, download the payment module, and follow the detailed instructions to install it. As a result, the merchant receives a branded form of payment on the site.
For example, if you built your website with WordPress, you can install the WooCommerce plugin. It is the most popular WordPress e-commerce solution that allows you to add products to your cart, checkout, accept payments, track inventory, and perform all the necessary steps to run an online store.
Another eCommerce site
Another way you can add eCommerce to your site is to create a separate site and place a link to it on an existing one. Thus, people who landed on your old site will be able to go from there to the online store to make purchases. But if you choose such a solution, then you need to follow some rules, for example, you must stick to the same style, and design, and create the same user interface so that it is easy for customers to recognize your brand and that they are not redirected to an incomprehensible site.
Please note that for this method you must invest in the development of a separate platform.
Integrating a shopping cart and adding a payment option
The next option on our list of how you can add eCommerce to your existing site is to integrate it with various payment options, such as Paypal, Google Checkout, etc. Thanks to convenient payment methods, customer loyalty increases, and the likelihood of repeat purchases increases. It is currently very easy to connect an online payment system to a website; this can be done both without the help of developers and with minimal intervention. With this basic functionality, any visitor will be able to select a product, add it to their shopping cart, and complete a purchase on your website.
Connection to the trading platform
Marketplaces are third-party resources designed to display your products or services. Attendance varies from tens or hundreds of thousands to millions of audiences per day. Such traffic to these resources makes it possible to significantly increase sales of your products to a huge “hot” audience.
Trading platforms are created specifically for buyers and sellers. With their help, you can introduce potential buyers to the goods offered by sellers in one place. Such sites allow users to quickly find the right products by selecting them using filters and comparing prices, terms of purchase, and delivery in different online stores.
This is convenient at the beginning, but in the long run, you will not be able to turn this type of income into an e-commerce business.
Integration with Shopify
Shopify is especially great for beginners because it’s much easier to use. Integrating Shopify with your site is as easy as pasting a snippet of code. Your account is automatically set up to accept PayPal payments using PayPal Express Checkout. Shopify’s Buy Button allows you to sell your products on your website or blogs. You can also use it to create a payment link to send to customers via email or social media. Useful for lead and customer relationship management.
Once you receive the code, you just need to copy and paste it on your website. You can paste this code anywhere on your website where you want the Buy Now button to appear.
Website design change
Like the entire Internet industry, e-commerce sites are developing at a rapid pace. Modern sites are not similar to their predecessors either in terms of appearance, functionality, or the number of users visiting the site every day. Competition is constantly growing, and standing out from the crowd is not only important but necessary for the survival of your business. At the same time, just a beautiful bright design is not enough. Your site should be more interesting and user-friendly than your competitors’ sites. But this is a really difficult task.
The UX of a modern e-commerce site should have a well-constructed logic, and system, and focus on predicting consumer behavior. It is also necessary to make room for the implementation of changes that will take place soon — this is important because trends change quickly, user requests grow, and changing the UI design should not disrupt the structure of your resource.
Final Thoughts
If you just want to add eCommerce to an existing site, then the options above may be enough, but such a solution may lack flexibility and functionality. Therefore, in order not to limit your business, you can consider open-source e-commerce platforms such as Shopware and Magento. Professional developers will help you create an e-commerce website that will be a reflection of all your ideas in reality.
If you already have a website up and running, you can use it to dive into an online commerce business. It is not necessary to create an online platform from scratch. And one or more of the methods presented in this article will help you with this.
