How to Build an Online Store in Less than 1 Hour?

Do you want to increase your sales, brand awareness, and customer engagement for your business?

If the answer is yes, then there is only one solution which is building an online store. Furthermore, if your goal is to stay solid in the market against your competitors, and your business is still offline, then you must shift to online. 

You know that the Covid-19 outbreak shut down many established businesses in 2020. Only those businesses that remained profitable had a good online presence. Also, Statista reports revenue in the eCommerce market is expected to reach US$99.44 billion in 2022.

So, undoubtedly we can say an online store is an ultimate thing in making your business successful in this digital era.

But creating an online store means coding work, and hiring developers. So will it be easy to create an online store when you are non-technical? 
Yes, it will be when you follow a perfect guide. This guide will provide every piece of information to create a perfect online store. So, without wasting any time, let’s get started. 😀

What is an Online Store?

An online store is a commercial website or app with catalogs of products and services from which buyers can purchase stuff electronically and directly from a seller using the internet through a mobile app or website.

For Example: 

• Bookselling business with a website.

• Selling shoes online with a website or app.

Normally, an online store holds different components and functionalities that let people

• Shop online,
• And make payment.

So, in a word, we can say that whenever a buyer shops and pays online without human cooperation, that is an online store.

As in an online store, buying, selling goods, and transmitting data and funds happens over the internet, electronically; it is also called an eCommerce store.

What You’ll Need to Build an Online Store?

We told you earlier that an online store can be a website or app. Here we will teach you how to make an online selling website in one hour without writing any single code.

Now, when it comes to the components you need to build an online store, let us tell you it is the best ever time to create your online store. 

The reason is there are several platforms and smart tools in the market that eliminates 

• the coding work completely,
• an enormous amount of time learning the technology,
• hiring developers, 
• investing a lot of money, 

and enables everyone to build an online store with just a computer and internet connection.

So, why wait? Let’s create an online store. 😀

1: Domain and Hosting:

A catchy domain name and powerful hosting are the foremost components you need to build your online store for your business.

If you are a beginner in this website-building field, you may be confused about domain and hosting. Don’t worry, we will explain it.

Domain:

Your domain name is your website name and a human-readable web server address where internet users can search, identify and access your website on the internet.

For example: 

• Amazon.com
• YouTube.com
• Facebook.com

A Few Things about Domain Names:

• In general, a domain name is always unique and always different from each other. Therefore, it is impossible for two sites to have the same domain name. 

• If your domain name is mydomaim.com and someone searches for it from any browser, that person will only lead to your website. Not any other site.

• Furthermore, you have to register a domain name before using it. 

• A domain must have a domain extension, the last part of a domain. Such as mydomain.com. Here .com is an extension.

• A domain name can hold letters and numbers. Like: mydomain365.com.com

Many domain registrars provide great domains at a low price. 

We recommend the NameSilo & Godaddy domain registrar. Here you will get every type of domain extension you need for your online business.

Web Hosting: 

Hosting is an online service that lets us upload our website files like HTML, CSS, blog articles, images, and videos to make them accessible.

A Few Things about Hostings:

• Hosting is the service of housing and maintaining files for one or more websites.
• For Example, It is like paying rent for a place on a live server to store all the files that make up your website.

• How much space is allocated on a server to a website depends on the type of hosting. 

• There are several types of web hosting, but the primary types are:
  • Shared 
  • Dedicated 
  • VPS 
  • Reseller

Like the domain register companies, there are also several web hosting companies. But you need to choose a hosting company that is reliable, powerful, and offers 24*7*365 customer support.

In the market available a number of the best hosting companies. But

We recommend HostArmada hosting company. 

They provide

• Affordable, 
• Improved security, 
• Constant stability,  
• Superfast 
• Reliable web hosting service.

HostArmada Features:

Here are some amazing features you will get if you go with HostArmada:

• Daily backups
• Offer cloud SSD storage
• Free website migration
• Free drag and drop site builder
• 99.9% up
• One-click WordPress install
• 24*7*365 customer support 
• Web server cache
• 45 days money-back guarantee and many more.

Recommend Hosting Plan of HostArmada:

We recommend HostArmada’s Managed WordPress Hosting and its Speed Reaper plan. It is the best plan that enhances the loading speed of your website.

Pricing & Features of Speed Reaper Plan: 

• This plan starts from $5.39 per month.

• It lets you host unlimited websites.

• It offers 40 GB SSD Storage, 6 Cores CPU, and 6 GB RAM.

• Free domain, free SSL.

• 21 daily backups.

2: WordPress & WordPress Theme

As we told you earlier, we will not do any technical work; therefore, we will use a smart tool to build, launch and manage our website.

And that is WordPress. Now, what is it?

WordPress: 

WordPress is a popular open-source content management system(CMS) with which an individual or business can edit, manage, and maintain existing website pages without technical knowledge with just a few clicks.

Though there are several CMS platforms like Drupal, Shopify, and Magento, around 41.4% of websites currently use WordPress as a CMS, which is 835 million.

Benefits of WordPress:

Here are some strong reasons to consider WordPress as your CMS platform.

• WordPress is absolutely free to use. You just need to choose a reliable hosting provider.

• It is non-coder friendly.

• It offers tons of free themes and plugins.

• Creating pages and publishing posts is simple and hassle-free.

• Creating an online store on WordPress is just a piece of cake.

• Updating WordPress themes and plugins is simple. It just requires a few clicks.

So, WordPress will be a perfect platform for building your online store.

How to Install WordPress from HostArmada Hosting?

HostArmada offers conventional cPanel, a web hosting control panel software that makes website and server management easy.

You will get all the tools you need to handle your website from the cPanel control panel. So, let’s install WordPress in HostArmada.

Step 1:

Go to your Hostarmada dashboard, scroll down to “Your services with Hostarmada”, and click on the “cP” icon (control panel).

Step 2:

Now the control panel is open, click on the search bar and enter “WordPress.” After that, you’ll see “WordPress Manager by Softaculous”. Click on it.

Step 3:

Now you will see the WordPress management dashboard. Next, click on the “Install” button. 

Now select your domain “in choosing the installation URL” with https:// protocol.

Step 4:

Scroll down and fill in the basic details such as

• website name, 
• description, 
• account username, and 
• Password.

Step 5: 

Now, in the last step, scroll down and click install.

WordPress Theme: 

A theme is something that holds the complete designs of a website. A website theme includes a header, footer, menus, hero section, sidebar, background, color palettes, etc.

Now you need a perfect WordPress theme for your online store that exactly looks like a branded online store. 

We recommend Astra, the free & paid, Litespeed, and responsive WordPress theme.

Why Choose Astra:

• Astra is extremely lightweight.

• It is responsive and mobile-friendly.

• It is compatible with powerful page builders plugins like Elementor and Beaver Builder.

• Plenty of customization options are available. 

• Provide updates from time to time. 

• Offer hundreds of premade templates.

How to Install Astra on WordPress Website: 

To install the Astra theme, 

1. First, go to your WordPress dashboard. Then click on Appearance.

2. Just under appearance, you will get the Themes option. Here you can install any theme you want.

3. Then click on Add New Theme.

4. Next, click on The search themes box and type Astra. 

5. Click on Install. Then Active it.

Recommend Astra Starter Template To Build Online Store:

Now, this is the reason why we have chosen the Astra theme. They provide 230+ starter templates, the best feature of the Astra theme. 

With the help of a starter template, we can build our online store without any technical work.

We have chosen the Electric Scooter Template to showcase how to build an online store using the Astra starter template.

This is what your online store will look exactly like, after importing the Electric Scooter template. 

Also, we recommend Elementor as your page builder over Beaver Builder, Block Editor.

To build an online store from scratch: Follow This Guide

WooCommerce:

WooCommerce is an open-source eCommerce plugin for WordPress. It is specifically built for small to big online retailers using WordPress as their CMS platform.

Benefits of WooCommerce:

• WooCommerce is the primary tool on WordPress to build your online store and sell any product physical or digital.

• WooCommerce is non-techy friendly and best for beginners.

• WooCommerce is free to download and use eCommerce software that runs on WordPress CMS.

How to Install WooCommerce:

To install WooCommerce:

• First, you have to click on the Plugins section. Then on Add New.

• Type WooCommerce on the search box.

• Click on Install Now and Activate.

Now you are ready to rock with the WooCommerce plugin.

How to Set up Your Online Store?

Now, it is time to set up our online store. 

Read Also: How to Set Up a New WooCommerce Store?

1. Shipping: 

Now it’s time to set up shipping.

Statistics say 56% of buyers will not purchase a product from a merchant if they had a bad delivery after a poor shipping experience. Therefore, an efficient eCommerce shipping strategy is extremely vital. 

You can learn more about shipping policies from this guide.

2. Taxes:

Setting up the taxes on your online store is one of the most important aspects if you want to make your store ready for the world.

But, Setting up taxes can be quite complicated. But If you use our recommended plugin WooCommerce, setting taxes on your online store will be very simple. 

It just requires a few clicks, and it automatically calculates sales tax. Also, many options let you set up taxes how you want in terms of the city, state, country, etc. 

3. Payments:

You know, eCommerce stores are different from normal websites as they provide payment options.

It is a crucial point for your online store, as customers normally use different payment methods. 

WooCommerce is equipped with a set of basic payment gateway options. Here, you can configure your preferred payment methods from various available options.

4. Adding Products:

You need to focus on certain things to make your online store attractive. Here are those 

• Design your product category pages,

• Create great product descriptions,

• Upload high-quality product images,

• Provide details about the product,

• Highlight the benefits and all the features of the products.

5. Testing Your Store:

eCommerce testing is all about the process of experimenting with several elements of an eCommerce website such as 

• design, 
• functionalities, 
• specifications, 
• features and page

to check whether your eCommerce site is going hand in hand with those elements or not.

eCommerce testing improves your user experience and conversions as it

• Enhance user engagement,
• Produce marketing strategies,
• Boost conversion rates,
• Easy to understand the likes and dislikes of your users.

Conclusion: 

To sum up, creating an online store at this moment is very simple when you use a platform like WordPress, WooCommerce, and a super fast theme like Astra.

In this guide, we have shared all the details you need to create a custom-friendly online store, from making the strategy to testing your store. 

I hope this guide helps you to build an online store for your business. So, that is the end. If you have any questions, comment below.