Unless you plan to start a small retail or convenience store only, a physical store is not enough these days. Nowadays, people turn to the internet to find products to buy. That said, to compete with other businesses, you need to create an eCommerce website. Don’t worry if you are on a tight budget. Building a cost-efficient eCommerce website without sacrificing quality is possible.
This article will teach you how to make an effective website while reducing development costs. Continue reading to start your learning!
Utilize DIY Website Builders
A few decades ago, you could only build websites if you knew how to code. That is no longer the case. Over the years, DIY website builders have risen and they got more and more advanced each year. You need minimal coding skills to be able to use these tools. They provide you with drag-and-drop editors and AI-powered tools that make things easier.
Furthermore, DIY website builders have integrations with popular tools. That gives you access to amazing features that you don’t have to develop yourself. Just remember not to overload your website with too many plugins, as that can affect the site’s performance.
Keep in mind that these tools are usually not suited for building complex websites. However, their features are powerful enough for small businesses aiming to create good eCommerce websites.
If you are interested, check this list of the cheapest website builders in 2024.
Focus on Core Features
When planning the eCommerce website, identify what features you want it to have. You may list all of your ideas. However, before development, you should select only a few – the core features, and focus on these.
In a perfect world, you can build a website with all the features you can think of. Unfortunately, if budget is an issue, this is near impossible. With each feature you add, the development time will be longer. As it grows longer and longer, the development costs also rise.
That said, it is wise to focus on just a few features. Work on the features that make an eCommerce website work and maybe a few that will make your website stand out. Once you have made money, you can start adding new features.
Think About Scalability
The goal is to make a cost-effective website, not a cheap website. One key difference between the two is scalability. Scalability allows websites to adapt and alter their resources based on the demands.
Picture this. Let’s say you have realistic expectations for your small eCommerce business. You designed your website to be able to handle just a decent amount of visitors at a time. Then suddenly, lots of people flocked to your website during the holiday season or because of a sale. A cheap website without scalability will break. So, you would need to spend more to overhaul your website.
What if you set your website to handle high traffic? You have to keep in mind that the opposite could happen. You can set it to high, but if only a few people visit your website at the same time, you are wasting resources.
With scalable websites, you can turn the capacity up or down. This versatility will give you a higher return on investment.
Leverage Free Resources
You can find many free resources for building websites online. For example, you can watch free coding tutorials or take coding courses. Also, you can find free templates and design elements like fonts, images, and even videos. Utilize these, as these help improve your website without increasing development costs.
Outsource to Skilled Freelancers
What if you don’t know anything about web development? You can study how websites are built and learn the skill, but that would take lots of time. Hiring a web development agency or freelancer is a more efficient solution.
A web development agency will provide you with a team of skilled programmers who know the best web development practices. They have access to a wide pool of tools, ensuring your website will be great. However, depending on the service, it could cost you a lot.
Enter freelancers. They may have access to fewer resources compared to web development agencies, but they can match their skills. Their services are cheaper, and you only need to pay for what you need.
If you choose to work with freelancers, ask for their portfolios before hiring them. Ensure they have the skills they claim to have. Also, be clear about your budget and timeline to avoid problems and delays.
Choose a Good Website Host
The website host you choose will affect the performance of your eCommerce website. While you can get lucky and find cheap and reliable hosting services, some of them are what you’d expect. They cause issues like downtime and slow loading speeds.
Cheap hosting services may even be insecure, allowing malicious actors to easily steal private information. To illustrate how bad that is, they can steal people’s credit card information. Then, people may blame you.
That said, it is better to invest in good hosting services. They offer great performance, speed, scalability, and security.
Optimize Images and Content
Website speed is an important factor in SEO and user experience. It ensures your visitors can quickly find the information they are looking for and that they have a positive experience when navigating your website.
Optimizing your images is one way to improve website speed. It can also reduce costs by lowering data usage. That said, you should compress your images to reduce their file sizes. Use reliable image compressor tools so that they do not lose too much quality. Regarding the file format, the most popular choices are JPG, PNG, and WEBP.
You should also use videos sparingly. As much as possible, use only one video per page. Videos are larger than images, so they have more impact on the website speed. If you add too many videos on one page, they will definitely slow down your website. Like with images, you should also compress your videos.
Incorporate Cost-Effective Content Creation Strategies
You can create images or videos yourself or hire people to create them. However, you may encounter problems regarding the production costs. It can become higher than what you expected. Thankfully, there is a cost-effective solution. You can rely on user-generated content instead.
You can share testimonials and product reviews from your customers. It can help build trust and strengthen your relationship with your customer base. Also, you can use ready-made images and videos instead of making them from scratch. Depending on who you are buying them from, the costs could be cheaper.
But that is not all! You can also repurpose the content that you already have. There also will be times when the image or video that you want does not exist yet, so you have no choice but to create it. The good news is that there are plenty of free tools that you can use for content creation. For example, Canva, one of the most popular online editors, is a free tool.
Bookkeeping
You will have to make numerous financial decisions for as long as your eCommerce website is up and running. You should base them on records and data rather than your gut feel.
That said, bookkeeping is important for eCommerce websites. It is the process of recording, organizing, and managing financial transactions related to an online store. With bookkeeping, you can look at accurately recorded financial data, allowing you to make informed decisions.
Let EcomBalance handle bookkeeping for you. The team offers monthly bookkeeping services for growing eCommerce businesses. The team will keep track of your financial data, allowing you to quickly find answers when you need them. On top of that, you will receive a monthly analysis of your records, which could help you in decision-making.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is something you should never ignore. It evens out the playing field, allowing websites with limited resources to compete with the websites of giant companies.
SEO has three branches: technical, on-page, and off-page. So, how to do this?
On-page SEO
Optimize the content on your website. Find relevant keywords and strategically place them in your meta titles, meta descriptions, and content bodies. You should also use headers to improve readability and fix internal links to improve navigation.
Off-page SEO
Off-page SEO focuses on factors that are not within your website. It includes social media and reputation management, and backlinks building.
You can build backlinks through guest posts, where you write articles for another website. The said blog post will contain at least one link to your website. However, please note that the main goal is to promote their business with the article. Otherwise, if it does not provide value for their business, they will not approve it.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO focuses on ensuring your website meets the technical requirements of search engines. In other words, it is about ensuring search engines can crawl and rank your website. It includes selecting the version of your website that you want to use, submitting your sitemap, and creating SEO-friendly site architecture.
What Is EcomBalance?
EcomBalance is a monthly bookkeeping service specialized for eCommerce companies selling on Amazon, Shopify, eBay, Etsy, WooCommerce, & other eCommerce channels.
We take monthly bookkeeping off your plate and deliver you your financial statements by the 15th or 20th of each month.
You’ll have your Profit and Loss Statement, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow Statement ready for analysis each month so you and your business partners can make better business decisions.
Interested in learning more? Schedule a call with our CEO, Nathan Hirsch.
And here’s some free resources:
- Monthly Finance Meeting Agenda
- 9 Steps to Master Your Ecommerce Bookkeeping Checklist
- The Ultimate Guide on Finding an Ecommerce Virtual Bookkeeping Service
- What Is a Profit and Loss Statement?
- How to Read & Interpret a Cash Flow Statement
- How to Read a Balance Sheet & Truly Understand It
Conclusion
Building a cost-efficient website without sacrificing quality is not as difficult as it seems. You just have to know what to focus on and which tools to use. You can access free and cheap services and resources. By paying close attention to these, you can find gems that will help you build an effective website without breaking the bank.
