Step-by-Step Guide to Building an E-Commerce Website with OpenCart
29 Aug 2024
“Learn how to build a powerful and cost-effective eCommerce website with OpenCart. Follow our 8-step guide to create a secure, scalable, and user-friendly eCommerce platform.”
“Businesses can create their online presence by the reliable e-commerce solution provided by OpenCart. Build, enhance, and thrive your business with OpenCart development services that can be tailored to meet specific needs.”
With more and more customers opting for online shopping, more and more ecommerce websites are being created. There are several platforms with different tools and features that can be used to develop an online website for your business. However, for reasons such as responsive design, multi-store functionality, expensive plugin library, etc. OpenCart has become a popular choice within the ecommerce industry.
OpenCart can help build secure, robust and scalable ecommerce stores right from the scratch. A professional OpenCart developer with in-depth knowledge and understanding of this platform can offer reliable solutions for your website development. Any business planning to create an ecommerce website can align them with an OpenCart development company for the same. These developers can offer assistance with the migration of your existing website to OpenCart as well.
8 Steps Guide for OpenCart Ecommerce Website Development
For a compelling ecommerce website that is powerful, flexible, and user-friendly, you can rely on OpenCart. OpenCart allows effortless creation of websites and is full of several features and functionality for the purpose. Check out this guide for your OpenCart website development in 8 simple steps.
Choose Your Website Builder/ Partner with A Developer
Website builders allow you to create websites even though you have no background of coding. You can select one of the many free website builders available in the market for creating a new website.
However, the task of choosing a website builder and proceeding with website development might feel overwhelming when you have absolutely no experience in this domain.
Under such circumstances, it is advisable to hire a developer with an extensive knowledge of website development. These developers can help you select a website builder but more than that they can ensure the optimum functionality of your designed website.
Register Your Domain and Pick Your Hosting
The next step includes selecting and registering a domain name that reflects your business and a hosting provider that supports OpenCart. While choosing a domain name, it is suggested to select something that is catchy and easy to remember. On the other hand, for choosing a hosting, it is advised to make sure that it meets the system requirements for OpenCart.
Installing OpenCart and Providing General Information
Now to begin creating an ecommerce website, you need to install OpenCart and login to the admin dashboard. Under General Settings you need to provide the name of your store, owner, address, email, phone number, and other details.
You also need to choose the country that your store is operating from and configure settings for currency, language, and time zone. Furthermore, you also need to add and configure shipping methods for your store.
Designing Your Online Store with Custom Theme
You can choose a suitable template for your business, one that perfectly matches your brand. You can select different themes for different web pages and customize fonts, colors, and layouts to create an alluring website design that will attract your customer.
OpenCart themes are designed to be responsive and therefore provide the same look and feel whether your website is open on a desktop or a mobile phone. To enrich the shopping experience, you can also integrate extensions in your website design.
Create A Product Catalog for Your Items
Once you have completed designing your website, the next step will be listing your products. OpenCart allows you to create catalogs and add products effortlessly. You can provide product description, add images, price, and other important details of the products. You can further organize your products into categories and subcategories to offer seamless navigation to the customers.
Set Up a Payment Gateway and Tax Collection
You need to set up a secure payment gateway for the customers placing orders on your online store. Apart from being secure, the gateway also needs to be faster for a better customer experience. OpenCart can be integrated with several payment gateways including PayPal, Stripe, and Authorize.net.
You can simultaneously configure different payment gateway via the OpenCart admin panel for a smooth checkout process.
Determine Product Shipment Methods
Next comes adding the shipping details for the ordered products which should clearly mention details like shipping method, cost, and timing. With OpenCart you also get the freedom to integrate with third-party shipping companies. And don’t forget to provide order tracking methods for an immaculate buying experience.
Testing and Launching Your Final Website
Now it’s time to launch your website but before that, it is important to conduct a thorough testing of the final design. This phase can help you find and fix any issues with your website before it hits the marketplace. Once a thorough testing is completed and you have double-checked everything, you can finally proceed with the launching of your final website.
Build Brand Awareness Via Social Media
Although the process of building an ecommerce website is completed now, there remains the task of promoting your online store. Just creating a website is not enough for your business, and it is also important that you promote your website through the right channels. Social media is one of the best ways to reach out to your customers but other than that you can also go for email marketing, content marketing, print marketing, etc.
Conclusion
In today’s market, merely having an offline store is not enough and you need to get yourself an online store. Being a free and open-source platform, OpenCart provides a flexible and cost-effective way to create an online store. Creating your website with OpenCart can really help kickstart your business. You can take help from this guide to build your own ecommerce platform but if the process starts looking complicated, you can always approach OpenCart development services. The expert developers will not only design the OpenCart website for your business but also use it to improve site performance, boost search engine rankings, and drive higher sales.
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