6 Steps to Building an Effective Online Store
Anyone who sells goods or services on the internet needs a great online store. In a world where so much shopping happens online, it’s not enough to just list products and prices on a website. Your client needs to stand out with beautiful design, a great user experience, and a seamless shopping process.
An effective ecommerce website can help your client reach new customers, drive more sales, and grow their business. The key is to optimize the shopper’s journey from start to finish; reach new customers with thoughtful marketing; optimize site speed, navigation, and inventory management; and drive more sales with better merchandising and a smoother checkout process. These steps will help you create an online store that drives real value for your client’s business and helps their brand reach its full potential.
1. Speed up website load time
A slow site is a fast way to lose customers. When you’re trying to drive sales, you don’t want to give shoppers any reason to leave the store. While Squarespace websites are already built to handle high traffic, there are steps you can take to ensure your client’s website runs as quickly as possible.
Use smaller images: No online store is complete without beautiful imagery, but reducing image size can help you improve your client’s site speed without sacrificing quality or clarity.
Reduce page size: Generally speaking, the more you put on a webpage, the slower it will load. By cutting down on clutter—like unnecessary blocks, animations, fonts, and custom code—you can speed up your client’s website and create a cleaner user experience.
Design for mobile: Your client’s website should load quickly and clearly on any device. Though Squarespace websites automatically adapt to different devices, you can leverage Fluid Engine and responsive design to deliver a stronger, speedier experience on mobile.
If your client’s website feels slow after you’ve followed these best practices, look for third-party troublemakers. System-wide issues, unsupported browsers, and local connection speeds can all cause websites to run slower, as do excessive URL redirects, third-party plug-ins, and more.
2. Make the website intuitive to navigate
When customers visit a brick-and-mortar store, they’re often greeted by a salesperson who helps them find what they’re looking for. Online, they don’t have that luxury. As a web designer, you can use navigation elements—like menus, search bars, and links—to guide them around the store.
The site’s main navigation should show customers everything they need at a glance. They should be able to browse products, learn about the brand, and return home whenever they want to. Keep in mind that many customers won't start their journey on the homepage. Display product subcategories in a nested menu to help them understand where they are and how a product relates to others, and add links and calls to action to guide them to relevant content.
The website itself should be well-organized, and branding should be consistent from page to page. If a customer has just discovered your client, you want them to have a cohesive and memorable experience. Create a homepage that gives customers an immediate feel for the brand, and use clear language and consistent styles across the site.
3. Merchandise the store
Once customers find your client’s online store, they need to have a great shopping experience. With thoughtful merchandising, you can help them find what they’re looking for—and discover things they didn't even know they wanted.
When adding products to an ecommerce website, include plenty of relevant information. Online stores can’t replicate the experience of trying stuff on or holding items in your hands, but they can provide lots of handy details at a glance. Choose clear, appealing product images, write informative product descriptions, and build trust with product reviews. You can even enable special features, like quick view and image zoom, to help customers make decisions faster.
Use categories and tags to organize products, so customers can spend less time browsing and skip straight to what they want. Categories are great for grouping similar items, while tags are ideal for topical themes and trends. Both are handy to add to navigation menus and are indexed by search engines, making them a great way to help potential customers find your client’s website.
As you style your client’s online store, get creative. After all, great merchandising doesn’t just help customers find products—it also tempts them to buy. Showcase standout items with product blocks and summary blocks. Suggest related products as customers shop, and use limited availability labels to flag when popular items are running low. Help your client launch discounts and sales, and use an announcement bar to advertise limited-time promotions.
4. Keep inventory up-to-date
Have you ever added something to your shopping cart, entered your payment information, and clicked purchase—only to discover the item was out of stock? This is a frustrating experience for any customer, and one you can help clients avoid with proper inventory management.
When adding products to a store, verify that the stock quantity is accurate. Squarespace automatically adjusts an item’s stock level as people purchase it—and Squarespace’s point of sale system keeps stock data consistent, whether your client sells something online or in person. Use custom sold out labels to mark out-of-stock items, and enable inventory emails and push notifications so your client knows when stock runs low.
Keep customers happy by offering alternatives when products sell out. Create waitlists for items your client plans to restock, and advertise other products—like gift cards or custom merch—in the meantime. You can also avoid logistical hiccups by proactively setting up shipping options like carrier-calculated shipping, automatically collecting taxes, and offering clearer processes for canceling and refunding orders.
5. Market the store far and wide
Even the most beautiful ecommerce websites need marketing to maximize their reach and value. Whether your client wants to build awareness or maintain momentum, they should leverage social media, email marketing, and search engine optimization (SEO) to drive customers to their online store.
Spread the word on social media
Social media is a great place to discover new products, making it a perfect marketing channel for promoting product drops and deals.
Connect your client’s website to their social media accounts, so they can share content on their favorite platforms. Add social icons to their website so customers know where to find them. Lastly, design a Bio Site that captures the look and feel of your client’s brand. These one-page hubs are perfect for “link in bio” moments, when your client wants to succinctly share lots of information and resources.
Create engaging email campaigns
Email marketing is an effective way to drive conversions. After all, if someone subscribes to your client’s newsletter, they already know and love the brand—and they want to learn more.
With Email Campaigns, you can design beautiful, on-brand emails that help your client reach their goals. Set up automated emails, add personalized details, and take advantage of built-in analytics. Create exclusive discounts for newsletter subscribers and help your client grow their mailing list by adding newsletter blocks to their website and inviting customers to subscribe when they buy something.
Harness SEO
SEO is particularly powerful, because you can use it to target customers who are actively searching for what your client sells.
While Squarespace handles many SEO best practices for you, there’s more you can do to boost your client’s SEO performance. Use strategic keywords, add descriptive alt text to images, and write clean URL slugs. Always fill out the SEO title and description fields. Link to relevant content when possible. Don’t forget to periodically vet your client’s website for posts that should be updated or removed.
6. Create a smooth checkout process
Great marketing, design, and navigation can get people to visit an ecommerce website and add items to their cart. But checkout is never guaranteed. The key is to keep the checkout process simple and direct. If things get complicated or confusing, customers may abandon their carts mid-purchase.
Avoid confusion with clean design and clear instructions. You can style the checkout page with custom fonts and colors, and you can add custom order forms, personalized gift messages, and more. Always keep the focus on driving sales, and place a test order to vet the checkout experience from start to finish. Speed things up by enabling express checkout, and ensure the “Continue Shopping” button leads somewhere exciting.
Set up an intuitive payment processing system so your client can manage payouts and accept payments through their website. With a smooth setup experience and a dashboard that’s straightforward to navigate, Squarespace Payments makes managing transactions efficient for both you and your client. Squarespace Payments is fully integrated with their online store, so there’s no need to connect to a third-party processor. Learn more about Squarespace Payments.
Even with a smooth checkout process, customers may abandon their carts. Abandoned checkout recovery helps you regain some of these sales by automatically reminding customers that they didn’t finish shopping.
Building an effective online store on Squarespace
An effective online store does more than display products—it tells a story, builds trust, and makes shopping easy. When you design with the customer in mind, you help your client reach new audiences, grow their business, and create a memorable brand experience.
By following these six steps, you’ll build ecommerce sites that are visually strong, easy to navigate, and optimized for conversion. Stay focused on clarity, functionality, and the user journey—and your clients (and their customers) will thank you.
Explore more ecommerce tips and strategies for web designers.
This article was originally published on November 15, 2023. It has since been updated.
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