9+ Tips for a Successful eCommerce Website Development
E-CommerceHave you built the right ecommerce website? Do you still have doubts about the success of your business in the online world? Well, an Ecommerce store development is not limited to great design and feel.
It is all about grabbing the attention and keeping your visitors hooked on it. Adding the right features and functionalities is the first and foremost responsibility.
We will be looking at the procedure, strategies, and tips to enhance the performance of your ecommerce store.
What is an eCommerce Store Development?
The process of building an online store to sell products and services effortlessly. The business growth around the globe is remarkable with the help of an ecommerce store. The three types of business models that are commonly used:
- Business to Customer: The products are sold directly from the company to the customers without indulging in third-party users.
- Business to Business: It means that the products are sold from business to business. This is like involving manufacturers, retailers, and wholesalers.
- Customer to Customer: Some platforms allow individuals and retailers to sell their products.
What is the Key Process of eCommerce Web Development?
1. Know what you will be selling
To begin with ecommerce web development, you need to decide what you are going to sell on the platform. You need to have a specific market and offer your services to potential customers. Perform deep research about the products and target audience.
2. Know the target audience
You plan to start an online business, and it is important to know the market. It is significant to put more effort into understanding the audience to provide them with the right solution. This means dealing with the user experience, interface, visuals, content, and more. You must be aware of their interests, background, age, and more to provide them with great services.
3. Decide on a business name
Go through your competitor’s profile but ensure to avoid falling for cliché names. Some tips before you come up with a name:
- Keep it short. This helps in better recognition and makes it easier to remember.
- It must be compelling. This ensures that people do not forget the brand name even after visiting it once.
- Make it clear. It must deliver the message to the customer in the best method possible.
4. Register the domain name
After you have decided on the brand, move ahead with choosing a domain name for the website. There are various online tools to help you effortlessly purchase the perfect domain for your platform.
5. Determine the brand
You must have a memorable logo, voice, and colour theme on your ecommerce website. These are the essential elements of the ecommerce website development process. Tell your audience about the story of your business to connect with them better. It is crucial to at a human touch on your platform instead of making it sound robotic.
6. Choose a hosting platform
There are choices like Shopify, WordPress, and Magento Development that help host your ecommerce store. You must choose the right one to grow your business effectively. The key parameters you must consider are:
- Speed: Check the website speed provided by the hosting provider
- Uptime: Record the recent uptime of other websites using this host
- Support: Know if they provide infrastructure and management services to enhance the performance
- Scalability: The hosting provider must effortlessly adapt to the business requirements
- Security: Ecommerce websites deal with personal details, which means you must provide data security to provide a safe experience.
7. Have a content strategy
At the beginning of ecommerce website development, you must develop a content strategy. This includes content, images, videos, infographics, and more to increase user engagement. To build a strong content strategy, follow the below tips:
- Know the common queries of the customers about the products and services
- Provide relevant information to the users in simple and easy language
- Research the competitors and know the missing points that you can provide
The main aim of building a content strategy is to communicate with the customers and provide them with the best services.
8. Search Engine Optimization
The website must be SEO-friendly in order to reach the top ranks on SERPs. This also enhances the website’s performance to provide a great user experience. Make your website mobile-friendly, voice search support, faster page loads, and more to improve user experience. It is smarter to get ecommerce SEO services from the experts to use the best strategies and increase your store visibility on search engines.
9. Introduce Product Categories
It is a significant part of ecommerce website development to keep it structured. Once the visitors enter your ecommerce store, sometimes they have a clear idea and want to reach the product in minimal clicks. Categorizing the products makes their journey effortless and provide them with results faster. An ideal categorization will help visitors choose products more quickly and easily.
10. Add Multiple Media
The average time a user spends on a website will be less than 15 seconds. This is the limited window to gain their attention. It should be convincing enough to let them explore more on your platform and stay for a longer interval. The perfect solution is to add compelling images and videos above the page fold.
11. Test and Launch
It is crucial to test all the features and components of the website to ensure a smooth experience on the platform. Some sections that you must check are:
- The navigation experience is compatible with all browsers, mobile devices, and other platforms.
- The checkout process should be seamless for the users
- The security level to manage sensitive information
- Coding structure and response of features on the website
- The integration of custom extensions
12. Promote the Store
The ecommerce website development process does not end after building the platform. The whole process is to reach potential leads and bring revenue. To promote your store and generate sales, you can consider some of the below methods:
- Optimize the ecommerce SEO strategies to reach potential buyers
- Use paid search engine ads to attract more users but ensure to fit in your budget
- Perform social media marketing campaigns on multiple channels to increase your store awareness
- Take benefit of newsletters and promotional campaigns to promote your products to interested users
13. Evaluate the Business Performance
Owning an ecommerce website will require periodic evaluation of the performance to understand the strong and weak links. Some suitable metrics you need to focus on are:
- The monthly traffic volume and sources like search engines, social media, referrals, paid ads, or returning visitors.
- Conversion rate
- Average order value
- Product sales volume
- Product category sales volume
- Average session duration on each page
- Cart abandonment rate
- Bounce rate
This will give you a clear picture of your ecommerce business and provide you with strategies to apply the right approach.
Why is eCommerce Website Development Vital?
It helps users get their favourite products and services with just a few clicks. Some reasons you need to invest in the right ecommerce website development services are:
- First Impression: Your website is the first interaction with the customer. An effective ecommerce website development ensures that you leave a strong impression on the visitors.
- Better User Experience: Having a smooth user experience is vital to generating leads and increasing business sales. The good practices in ecommerce website development will ensure faster page loads, structured coding, effective URLs, and hyperlinks.
- Beat Competition: The main aim is to stand out in the market and win the competition. A unique Ecommerce website design and experience must have updated, quality, and effective content to drive leads.
How to Make the Process of eCommerce Website Development Effective?
1. Get the Right Platform and Theme
Whether you use Magento, Shopify, or WordPress Development, you must explore all the features and functionalities to grow your business. The platform must be robust to handle the demands and targets you have for the future. The theme must be visually appealing, customizable, faster loading, responsive, and engaging.
2. Focus on SEO of Website
There are online tools that help to know the SEO of the website and provide solutions to improve if necessary. The site performance and page loading make a huge difference in the website’s ranking. Your platform loads within 3 seconds must provide a great user experience.
3. Must be Mobile Friendly
It seems like every second user accesses the website from their smartphone. Around 50% of the views on your platform are from mobile devices. So, it becomes important to optimize your website for mobile users.
4. Maintain High-Level Security
To gain the visitors’ trust, you need to follow the right security measures. The best method is to encrypt every web page using the HTTPS protocol. Customers are expecting to keep their details secure on your ecommerce website.
5. Embed Quality Images
It would help if you always get to the point to hook them on your store. Hire ecommerce Developers to add perfect attention-grabbing content on the website and place them at the right place. Try and make the web pages as interactive as possible for the visitors.
6. Have painless payments
The customer has reached the final destination, but they exit after getting this section. If you provide hassle-free payments, it will increase the cart abandonment rate, which will affect the brand reputation. Make sure you define shipping charges, clear policies, payment methods accepted, and details required to complete the purchase.
Make it worth their while!
All the efforts you put into ecommerce website development should fulfil the purpose of your ecommerce business. We have disclosed the method to provide an excellent experience to the visitors. There are amazing platforms that help build an ecommerce store from scratch with minimal effort and resources.
Hiring an ecommerce expert might be helpful to streamline all the ecommerce processes and grow your business at a large scale. Elsner has been a part of the digital industry long enough to understand the demand at the moment. This helps us provide a personalized solution based specifically on your business requirements.
Contact us now! To avoid confusion and own a smart ecommerce store!