Creating an e-commerce store and Instagram page for Finnish start-up Happy Moments Design Studio

The primary objective of this project was to create an e-commerce store for a Finnish start-up fashion company, Happy Moments Design Studio. The secondary objective was to create an Instagram business page for marketing purposes that will help to create an awareness of the brand and bring more traffic to the e-commerce store. For creating the best possible experience for the business owner and the customers, different e-commerce platforms were investigated, and based on the needs of the Happy Moments Design Studio business owner, the most suitable e-commerce platform was chosen. All integrations that are necessary for functioning and better user experience were added to the e-commerce store. A business Instagram page was created and over 40 posts where added. The theoretical part of the thesis report includes a wide concept of e-commerce business and the most important definitions for e-commerce and Instagram marketing. Research was conducted using a qualitative research approach and four different areas were analyzed for this thesis. In the first research three e-commerce platforms were compared in order to investigate the most suitable for the Happy Moments Design Studio company. The second research was conducted to find all necessary integrations for Happy Moments Design Studio it to function in a way it would be user friendly for the company and customers. The third research was conducted in order to make search engine optimization for the e-commerce store of Happy Moments Design Studio; for this key word research was conducted. The fourth research was made in order to analyze the competitors of the company, such as what products they sell, how often and what content they post on Instagram. The research outcomes were clear and helped to achieve the goal of the thesis. The results showed that the Shopify e-commerce platform is the most suitable platform for the Happy Moments Design Studio needs. Key word research showed what key words Happy Moments Design Studio company can use in order to improve search engine optimization (SEO) and as the result to get traffic to their e-commerce store. The research was primarily made in order to create an e-commerce store that would benefit Happy Moments Design Studio. However, the research methods can benefit other companies, who are planning to open an e-commerce store. This research can be a guideline for other companies to see what factors to pay attention to when opening an e-commerce store, what factors affect the traffic to the store and how to choose the key words for the products that will be sold on the e-commerce store