How To Easily Create A Shop And Scale It In 2024

on 5 Mar 2024, by Bogdan, in Blog, Shopify, Guides

by Bogdan

If you’re looking for a way to scale your online shop or start one with the intention of growing it, you’ve come to the right place.

Creating and scaling an online shop enables you to provide the same user experience to all customers who visit your store – even in peak seasons. Converting these customers will increase your sales and revenue and make you more successful.

We aim to help you achieve this in the easiest way possible. This post will show you how to create and scale an online shop this year and earn your money’s worth. We’ll cover the following:

What a scalable online shop is

8 steps to create and scale your online shop effectively

So, strap in! We’ll start with what scaling an online shop is.

What does it mean to scale an online shop?

First, creating an online shop involves building a digital platform where your customers can see your products and services and purchase them over the Internet. However, this isn’t enough if you plan to scale your online store and win more customers.

Essentially, scaling an online shop entails implementing techniques that will invite more customers to your shop and meet their demands efficiently – without putting pressure on your website resources. As the number of prospects increases over time, the system your shop is built on should be flexible enough to handle high traffic, customer orders, transactions, and data without breaking down.

Simply put a shop that can scale can deliver exceptional and consistent user experience and performance, even if several customers visit your store at once. Creating this type of online store can help you:

Enhance your customer experience – by offering all customers consistent, fast, and reliable services when they shop with you.
Generate higher sales and revenue – Investing in strategies that bring in more customers to your shop increases your chances of success. The more the customers, the higher the number of purchases — and small businesses should adopt this technique.
Manage increasing data efficiently – As the number of visitors increases, you may be interested to know how they behave. Web analytic tools and marketing & automation tools can offer you insights and information on customer behavior. You can leverage this data insight for your benefit.
Adapt easily to ever-changing market trends – Scaling your shop prepares you for dynamic market trends, enabling you to respond and quickly adapt to these changes and stay competitive.

Now, let’s take a closer look at how you can create and scale your shop effectively and reap all these benefits and much more!

6 steps to create and scale your online shop effectively

In this section, we’ll walk you through the important steps you require to create an online shop that is scalable, sustainable, and profitable in the long run. We’ll also give you some tips and best practices you can apply if you want to get the most out of your online shop.

Step 1: Conduct market research

If you’ve already decided on the type of online shop you want to start. Whether you want to start a clothing line or an online bookstore, sell art online, curate subscription boxes, develop a niche product, etc.

Before anything else, you need to ensure that the business model of choice is sustainable and provides a unique value to your customers.

To do this, you can conduct a simple market research to:

Know who your ideal customers are. This involves figuring out the specific group of people most likely to be interested in and benefit from your product or service.
Understand specific customer needs and pain points of your target customers. What problems are they trying to solve, and what are their priorities?
How you will ship your product if the product can turn a profit, and how you will manufacture it.
Find out if there are any restrictions or regulations you need to be aware of. For instance, certain product categories, like food and beverages, require special licenses and permits. Not to mention that some products may be prohibited on certain sales channels or ad platforms.
Check if there’s competition in your area and find out areas where you can differentiate and stand out.
And much more.

As a bonus, you also need to keep up with the latest small business trends within your locality.

After you’ve figured out if the business model is feasible and how you’ll source your products, then you’re halfway to the finish line. The next step is to build a site where you’ll list your products.

Step 2: Build your online shop

Since you’re starting an online shop, you require a website. It has to be effective because more than 81% of customers search for a business online before they can purchase.

Additionally, this is where you’ll accept online payment and manage essential tasks. It can also be a one-stop shop for selling, marketing, payments, handling deliveries, and procurement.

For this, it’s important to find an ecommerce platform that can scale with you and host your site. We’ve got just the right tool for you!

Design your online shop with Brizy WooCommerce builder

Brizy WooCommerce builder integrates seamlessly with WooCommerce to help you simplify your customer ecommerce journey from start to finish. It is equipped with essential elements, templates, and visual designs you require to build all aspects of an online store and stylize them with ease to fit your store brand.

It is also important that your device is optimized and updated. This will ensure smooth and fast operation. However, it is worth noting that most users complain that their Mac is slow after the upgrade.

No coding skills are required. All you need to start is admin access to WordPress and the WooCommerce plugin. Brizy will take care of the rest for you until your online shop is up and running.

The following are some of the benefits of using Brizy WooCommerce builder:

Access to scalable WooCommerce features – including payment gateways, shopping cart, product pages, customer accounts, checkout, customer support, inventory management, upgrades, marketing and promotion, and social media integration – the list is endless.

Tip: Brizy provides domain name and hosting to help you get started as soon as possible.

Hosting on Brizy’s lightning-fast servers guarantees a consistent customer experience even as traffic grows, leaving ample room for continuous improvement.

A positive user experience – this plugin puts your customer first. It lets you streamline the checkout process for your customers. The navigation is smooth, mobile-friendly, and straightforward. The experience Brizy WooCommerce builder is designed to be out of this world.
Smooth integration with marketing apps – such as Zapier, HubSpot, MailChimp, etc. These tools also enable you to track important metrics and study customers' behavior.

NOTE: For more information, read our guide on how to build a WordPress website.

Step 3: Design your website for sales and conversion

This is the fun part. Typically, the primary goal of any online shop is to bring in as many customers as possible to your shop and convert them. The more customers, the higher the chances of success.

As a shop owner, achieving this goal requires you to design your website exclusively for sales and conversion. Brizy WooCommerce builder enables you to optimize your site for sales and conversion by

Offering unique, highly customizable themes and templates – Brizy provides plenty of online store templates you can customize to make your business look unique, inviting, and modern.

Setting up a product listing – You need to be clear about what you sell when visitors arrive at your shop immediately.

While your off-site advertising and marketing efforts should help with this, you’ll want to reaffirm your area of expertise via clear page headings, clear search menus, and a powerful catalog of products or services.

The product listing feature allows you to showcase all the information and aspects of your product. These include high-quality and intentional product images, image galleries, compelling product descriptions, pricing, clear CTAs, promotions, etc.

Offering upselling and cross-sell features – When customers select a product, they can also see related products and choose to add them to their cart and increase their order value.

Mobile-friendly design – At least 79% of smartphone users make their purchases online. Brizy helps you create mobile-friendly websites that cater to your customers who use mobile.

Step 4: Work on your business brand

Typically, your brand is the image customers have of your business. This includes everything from your business name, logo, favicon, brand palettes, brand voice, and tone to your unique selling proposition.

Working on things like your website’s design, the customer experience, reviews, ratings & testimonials, and product listing can also help you reinforce your brand identity. Therefore, take time to define your brand thoughtfully and early, before the market does it for you.

Getting your branding done right is a lot easier said than – and Brizy WooCommerce builder helps streamline this process for you. This plugin provides multiple robust features that’ll enable you to create a compelling branding identity including:

Fully customizable and intuitive design – enabling you to create memorable shopping experiences for your customers. This flexibility ensures that your brand's visual elements, such as colors, fonts, layout, design, imagery, etc can be tailored to match your unique style and brand.
Branding elements integration – Our plugin lets you add various branding elements such as logos, favicons, taglines, brand name, messaging, brand story, etc intentionally and strategically in different sections of your online store to reinforce your brand recognition.
Product page customization – enables you to showcase your products in a way that aligns with your brand's aesthetics.

If you get your branding right, your shop will start seeing more customers visiting and doing business with you.

Step 5: Create a strong digital marketing campaign

Up to this point, your online shop is now ready to take on sales. If you're looking to expand your business, it's essential to also invest in a solid marketing strategy focused on customer acquisition and retention.

Here are some organic marketing strategies that small businesses can implement to retain and attract new customers:

Social media marketing – Utilize popular social media platforms such as Facebook, X, TikTok, and Instagram to promote your business. Choose a platform where your target audience is most active.

Tip: Consider leveraging influencer marketing to make a significant impact and build brand loyalty. You might also want to consider using social proof as a trust signal on your online store website.

Email marketing – This is your best shot if you want to directly engage with your customers, and send personalized messages, and updates on upcoming events, and promotions. To streamline this process, make use of email marketing and automation tools such as Zapier, MailChimp, Sendinblue, etc.

SEO – You can boost your online visibility by creating a profile with Google Business Profile to target local customers. Implement strategies like creating backlinks, adding schema markup to your website, and using plugins like Yoast SEO, SEMrush, etc., to optimize your pages for better search results.
Loyalty programs – This is something you can also do with Brizy’s affiliate program. This program will help you secure repeat customers and increase your customer lifetime value rates.

If you’ve got the money, you can also opt for paid marketing plans like Google shopping ads, Facebook ads, and Instagram ads.

For a more in-depth exploration of Facebook advertising, you may consider using tools to download Facebook ads for analysis, gain insight into your competitors' ads, and optimize your own campaigns.

Step 6: Streamline your operations and logistics

Shipping is a big deal in online shopping, so it's important to have a tool that can manage all the shipping details. This includes tasks like calculating shipping fees, printing receipts, notifying customers about their order status, and ensuring timely deliveries. These details are important because they can make customers happy or unhappy.

By default, WooCommerce's shipping options are limited and may not provide these necessary features. As a store owner anticipating more customer traffic, it's essential to install a plugin that can seamlessly handle your operations and logistics.

Opt for a plugin with a robust inventory management system, efficient order processing workflows, integration with existing POS systems, and the ability to offer various shipping solutions to your customers.

Consider partnering with delivery services such as FedEx, DHL, and, if applicable, food delivery apps like Uber Eats, Deliveroo, or Grubhub for restaurants. Collaborating with these services can help ease the workload on your end.

Conclusion

Creating an online shop that can scale is beneficial. It effectively handles increasing customer demand while maintaining optimal user experience and site performance. This approach proves to be cost-effective, adaptable, and sustainable, facilitating continuous growth in sales and revenue over time.

Using Brizy WooCommerce builder enables you to swiftly create a scalable online store right from the outset of your business. This powerful plugin prioritizes delivering an outstanding customer ecommerce journey, attracting more customers to your shop.

Build your shop today with Brizy WooCommerce builder and enjoy the rewards of scaling your business.

Article by Bogdan

Co-founder & Head of Design, Bogdan has a passion for everything that works great and looks awesome. Guilty for most of the UI and UX around this place, you can say "Hi" to him at bogdan at brizy dot io