Launch your e-commerce website in five steps

It might’ve always been a dream of yours. Or, the chance to expand and make a go of your longtime side-hustle. Whatever your motivation, going from no-commerce to e-commerce isn’t nearly as scary and daunting as you might think.

In this guide, we’ll show you five steps for starting and successfully scaling your first e-commerce website!  

First, what do we mean by e-commerce?

Well, at its core—e-commerce is any business that mainly sells online, through a website. E-commerce businesses can come in a few flavours, such as:

• Retail businesses that sell physical products
• Service-based businesses where you offer specific services like dog-walking, web-design, marketing consulting and more
• Digital product businesses that involve selling downloadable goods like e-books, digital music albums and software

Step one: create your business plan

Okay—don’t order the fancy schmantzy tumblers and toques quite yet.

You need to create all the foundational bits and pieces upon which your e-commerce business will be built!

A good place to start is with deciding what you’re going to sell. Is it your lineup of artisanal, goose-shaped soaps, or perhaps you’re a music producer for hire. Sometimes, making your idea a viable thing can be the hardest part of the whole e-commerce process.

Next, you’ll need to draft up a business plan. This can be something as simple as a document that outlines:

• What your business is and why it exists
• Who your key market and customers are
• What you’re planning to sell and how it makes your customers’ lives better
• How you plan to market and sell your products and/or services
• Any logistics and tools that you’ll need: e.g. payment processing, shipping partners, etc.
• Financial goals and targets—because, let’s face it, you’re not doing this because you need a hobby, right?

Step two: register your .CA domain

Once your basic business plan is in place, it’s time to register your .CA domain name.

Why should you choose .CA? Because it signals to everyone that you’re a proudly Canadian business that sells (and ships) in Canadian dollars. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg!

A memorable domain name is one of the most essential parts of your brand and is often how people will recognize and find you on the internet.

How do you create a great domain name for the ages? For starters: keep your domain name simple, brief and typable. Aim for a sweet spot of five to 14 characters and avoid things like repeated letters, numbers and deliberate misspellings.

Need a few more pointers? Dive into our detailed domain naming guide!

Once you’ve arrived at a name you like, registering your .CA domain is as simple as doing a quick search to see if it’s available, then clicking on one of our CIRA-approved registrars to get set up.

Step three: pick an e-commerce platform

Now, let’s start bringing your site to life.

The first thing you’ll want to do is pick an e-commerce platform. Fortunately, there’s no shortage of great options:

Shopify is a super-popular option for its user-friendliness, massive selection of tools and ability to customize and tweak every aspect of your online store.

Shopify also lets you sell products through a bunch of different channels and works with over 100 different payment gateways worldwide.

If all you want to do is build and scale your store over time, Shopify is the specialized, all-in-one e-commerce platform.

WooCommerce is another great option. But unlike Shopify, it’s not a standalone platform, but rather a plugin for WordPress. WooCommerce is open-source, free-to-use and deeply customizable, but isn’t as “pick up and play” as Shopify and does come with a steeper learning curve.

But—if you’re willing to put in the time and do some tinkering, you’ll find a very robust (and cost-effective) e-commerce platform with a huge library of themes, apps and plugins to build your store, exactly your way.

Step four: build out your store!

Not only are you going to tackle the fun stuff—like choosing a website template and picking out fonts and brand colours—but this is where you set up all the key underlying features that actually let people browse and buy your products!

You wouldn’t open a brick-and-mortar store without shelves, working cash registers or a tantalizing selection of impulse-buy items, would you?

Here’s what you’ll need:

• Product/services catalog: if you’re selling physical things—like knitted cat scarves—platforms like Shopify will prompt you to enter product names, details, pricing and photos. If you’re more on the services side of things, this is where you’ll create clear, concise descriptions of what you offer.
• Payment gateway: let’s get you properly paid! Another un-skippable step is setting up a payment processor for your e-commerce site.

Popular options include companies like Square, Stripe and Clover. Though, keep in mind that Shopify does have its own in-house Shopify Payments system, too! Each processor will have their own sets of monthly fees and transaction fees, so do some comparison shopping and see what makes the most sense for your site.

• Shipping: without proper shipping and fulfillment, your products don’t go…anywhere. Unless, of course, you have a small flock of highly qualified carrier pigeons.

One of the easiest things you can do is integrate directly with Canada Post for all your inter-Canadian shipping needs! If you want to provide your customers with more options, you could look at third-party apps, like Easyship, which give you access to multiple carriers, shipping rates and more.

Also consider: offering free or discounted shipping to help entice customers to stick around and purchase more from you.

Step five: test, launch and promote your e-commerce store.

Look before you make the digital leap! Take a deep breath, put on some smooth Canadian jazz and test your site from top to bottom. Seriously.

Check every link, button and fillable form. Read, then re-read all your content and product descriptions to make sure everything is clean and free of distracting typos.

Trust us—it’s worth the time and effort, as nothing turns a customer off faster than a janky, frustrating shopping experience. 

Once you’re sure that everything’s reading and working well, it’s time to launch your store and start racking up those sweet, sweet sales.

Now, the sky’s the limit when it comes to marketing strategies. For example, you might consider:

• Doing a little research into the search keywords your audience is using and integrating them into your meta descriptions and webpage title tags.
• Creating compelling content pieces—like blog posts or guides—that inform, engage and drive traffic to your site.
• If you’ve got the budget, getting into paid search marketing to quickly boost your website’s visibility.

Bonus round: once your e-commerce site is up, making friends and influencing people, why not get your site featured in our .CA Small Business Gift Guide?

Not only is it what all the cool kids are doing, but the gift guide can help put you on peoples’ radar regardless of whether they’re looking for holiday gifts or Mother’s Day pick-me-ups.

Happy e-commerce-ing!