Building a Shopware 6 online shop from scratch

For most of us 2020 was a challenging year in many ways. But there is one thing we have to know for the future. Online shopping has never been so necessary for our businesses. The perfect time is here for your business too, and Shopware 6 offers a great opportunity for all of us, to create an online-shop. Before you start you shop,I’ll write you 4+1 key elements, you have to focus on, to get results also in your first period, and sharing my experiences of building a Shopware 6 online shop. It will be really helpful for you, if you do it yourself, or you have an agency, or a freelancer, who will help you creating your new online store.

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From Shopware 6 shortly:

You have to know, that Shopware 6 is an e-commerce platform, which gives you an opportunity, to have more flexibility, and less complexity in one technology while you creating your online store. That is the main reason, why many swiss entrepreneurs love working with it, and able to integrate many softwares or payment methods, which are popular in Switzerland. You can use it free, and you can get many additional functions if you need in the future. If you want to download it or start right know, click here, and see what special offer do they have, besides the free version. And you can easily test the main functions in a test enviroment.

1. Setup the technical enviroment of your shop:

One of the most important thing before you start your online shop, is that you have to know, how complex will be your store in the future?

-       How many products will you have?

-       Does the products have any special type’s? (Colour, size, package, etc?)

-       Do you want a multi-language online shop?

-       Do you work with B2B or B2C or both?

-       What will be the main payment methods?

The more complex shop you have, the better technical enviroment you will need for the future.

But what I really suggest you based on my experience, is to create a great background enviroment for your store. There are many hosting companies inSwitzerland, who offer especially servers, and background administration help for your online shop. I really like the company Trendhosting offer, who basically have an optimized enviroment for Shopware 6 stores. It will be the heart of your store, and if you want to avoid the future problems, and have a great technical server and database support, this will be one of the first decision you should make. A fast, and easy to use online-shop, is one of the key factor you will need for your future success. After you make your decision, you can install the Shopware 6 software to your hosting enviroment. The magic will start after that, on your shops admin site.

2. Easy, and clear navigation for you shop

User experience has never been so important for all of us. You can create the most beautiful site for your brand, but if the users don’t like it, or it is hard them to buy something, or get all the informations before they buy, you will not have so much results in the future. My focus, when I create a website or an online store, is always on: How to help the future customers, to make their shopping experience as easy, as it is possible?

You need to focus on for example:

-       Create an informal an catchy main site to your shop,

-       Clear product details,

-       Search and navigation items, which are easy to use,

-       Available contact details, or question opportunities,

-       Shipping informations and details,

Shopware 6 has some sample storefront options, which you can personalize, and make fit it easily to your brand. It can be really helpful for you, especially when you start a new online business, because you don’t have to setup everything from scratch. You can make you storefront on your own decisions, and create the best user experience for you future customers.

3. Payment methods

In Switzerland, there are different type of payment methods, which are very popular:

-       Cardpayment

-       Paypal payment (It is automatically integrated in Shopware 6!)

-       Twint

-       Part-payment options

-       etc...

Shopware 6 has a backend, administration system, where you can integrate multiple payment methods, and in this case, you can make your customers life easier again. The more options you have, the more customers will be satisfied with you online shop experience.

4. Products details

We all know, that an online shop, is like our virtual storefront. But sometimes we do not really care some details, which can be really helpful for our online success:

-       Optimal size pictures in different angles from our product,

-       Clearavailability,

-       Productdescriptions,

-       Category selection for easier search,

-       Meta descriptions for products and for pictures,

From my experience, I really suggest you to make all of these little elements for your products, because they will have an impact for your future success. The best thing in that is, that you will have samples for your further products in the future, so you will not forget these elements, and your colleagues van also help you in it. The more detailed products and informations you have, the more results will you get from your ads or from search engines like Google.

+1. Plugins

If you don’t have time or, don’t want to create some function manually for your store, Shopware 6 has a great Community store, where you can select the best Plugins for your shop. It is really helpful for your future integrations, better experiences for your shop also. There are many developers, who are specialized for Shopware 6, so they always create new free or payed plugins for your store. An installation of a plugin is really easy, only have to make 4-5 clicks, and it works for your shop.

Summarize

Shopware company is really care about their users experience, and help their community.They have monthly updates and developments, which make our shop owners life easier day by day. A growing company like them, is a great reference for all of the future shop owners. I really suggest you to start it, give it a try, and if you have any further questions, do not hesitate to contact with me. I am also gladly here, to help you building and creating your successful only shop for inSwitzerland.