7 Essential Elements of Successful Ecommerce Website Development
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Ecommerce website development, or e-commerce website development, depending on your preference, is one of the most important aspects of your business, because if people can’t order from you online, they’ll have no reason to buy from you at all.
Every single aspect of the technical side of your eCommerce site should be carefully considered, and that includes seven essential elements that every successful eCommerce website development project needs to account for and optimize for success.
1) Planning
Planning your eCommerce website development should begin with a discussion with your developer to determine what it is you want to accomplish.
The aim is to get a clear picture of how you want your online store to function and operate.
- What elements do you envision?
- Do you envision adding additional payment options?
- Will there be multiple payment gateway options?
- How will customers order items, check out and track orders?
Your eCommerce developer can help guide these decisions by ensuring that any infrastructure required for those features will be available during development.
Ideally, a point-of-sale system should have all of those capabilities from day one so that no matter which technology or payment processor you elect to use, everything will work together seamlessly from start to finish.
2) User Experience Design
User experience design (or UED) is a process that's essential to establishing an eCommerce website. Without a solid UED plan, it can be hard to properly assess how well your website and products will actually sell.
Generally speaking, user experience design encompasses a set of techniques and principles for enhancing customer satisfaction with a product or service. In practical terms, UED involves testing your designs and products against real-world use cases.
For example, if you are selling shoes online, consider walking around town wearing different shoes—and have other people walk around in them too.
The better your understanding of customer needs and user experiences, the more likely you'll succeed at building out a profitable eCommerce site. Keep these points in mind when creating an eCommerce website
- Consistency: This refers to a user’s ability to find what they’re looking for easily while navigating through multiple pages of content on your website. Use elements like buttons and logos as visual cues throughout each page so users know where they are at all times.
- Trust: Users need to trust that their information is secure on your website — after all, many users do not purchase items from websites they don't trust! While designing an eCommerce website, look into using SSL certificates to provide visitors with peace of mind about their data security on your site.
- Customer Service: Providing good customer service is key to developing strong relationships with customers — especially repeat customers!
3) Payment Gateways
Accepting payment from customers on your eCommerce website is very important. But when you’re just starting out, it can seem overwhelming and expensive to accept all forms of payment that your customers may have access to (not to mention PCI compliance).
It doesn’t have to be like that though! In fact, one way to cut down on costs as you get your business off the ground is by choosing a single payment gateway and building around that. For example, many people start with PayPal before they fully understand their customer base or establish profit margins.
Then, once they do more research, they add additional gateways as needed—or move away from PayPal altogether because it no longer fits their needs.
This process allows you to take payments at an affordable price point while still maintaining options for growth. If you want to create an eCommerce website, there are multiple options for building an eCommerce website; however, we suggest using Shopify or Big Commerce due to their vast user-base support system.
We will discuss how each platform functions below:
- Shopify - Build beautiful online stores using powerful themes that automatically adapt to any device without coding knowledge. Simply choose a theme, customize it with your logo, colors, and fonts, then publish your store to start selling in minutes.
- Big Commerce - Built for eCommerce success through powerful features including unlimited product catalogs & image galleries & mobile commerce functionality designed specifically for small businesses looking to succeed online.
4) Shipping Options
How you ship the impacts of your products how much you can charge for shipping and how many people will buy from you. You can offer free shipping or subsidized shipping, which means you pay for part of it. With free shipping, make sure that your customers' orders are over a certain amount; otherwise, don't offer it at all.
As with regular shopping carts and checkout pages, offering multiple payment options is a must in today's e-commerce world; make sure to support as many options as possible. For example, Amazon offers its shoppers 70 different payment options (e.g., PayPal and bitcoin).
- Shopping cart design: Many businesses have their own shopping cart design that they use on their website instead of using popular solutions like PayPal or other third-party services. This might be fine if you're selling only one type of product.
But if you're selling a variety of products, you'll want to go with an established solution so your buyers know exactly what they're getting into when they purchase something from your site.
- Shipping rates: Once someone makes a purchase on your site
_how do you determine how much to charge them for shipping?
_If someone buys several items at once should each item be shipped separately?
_What about oversized items?
Make sure that when someone makes a purchase online,
_he or she knows exactly what he or she is paying for and why?
and then ask yourself whether there are any additional fees involved before making any purchases.
5) Security Measures
If you’re going to accept payments for products and services, your site needs to have robust security measures in place.
That includes using multiple payment options and gateways, encrypting all data stored on your servers, taking advantage of an SSL certificate (which is also called an HTTPS certificate), requiring SSL certification for any online forms that collect sensitive information, and making sure your users’ passwords are encrypted with a one-way hash before they reach your database.
These are among some basic—but important—security measures to keep in mind as you build your eCommerce website. It’s also a good idea to use pre-built solutions whenever possible. For example, WordPress has dozens of plugins available that will help you secure your site from spam comments and other vulnerabilities.
Use them! Your customers will thank you later when their credit card information isn't compromised because someone hacked into your store's back end.
6) SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
SEO, or search engine optimization, is a process that helps optimize your website and encourages search engines to list it in their search results. SEO shouldn’t be left until after your site is built — do it as part of your development process so you can make sure you’re building things with SEO in mind from day one.
This will save time, money, and resources down the line. If you’re not familiar with SEO but want to learn more about how it works, there are plenty of resources online (we recommend Moz for beginners).
You might also want to consult an experienced web developer who specializes in eCommerce websites.
In short: if you don’t know how to do SEO, don’t try doing it yourself! It may seem simple enough on paper, but implementing an effective SEO strategy requires knowledge of a wide range of concepts and skills that most small business owners don't have. If you don’t know how to build a website, find someone who does.
A good developer should help guide you through everything from design and functionality all the way through to launch and beyond.
- They should understand what makes a great user experience, what features work best together, and how to organize them into an intuitive interface.
- They should understand SEO best practices and be able to advise you accordingly.
- They should offer ongoing support long after launch (for example, they could set up automated email marketing campaigns that target people based on their buying history).
Most importantly though: they should communicate clearly throughout every step of the process, keeping clients informed at every stage.
7) Mobile Friendly Webpages
The bulk of internet users is now accessing websites on their smartphones. For e-Commerce businesses, with a mobile-friendly website, you will be able to increase traffic and sales through increased conversion rates.
With an eCommerce business already established, one of your primary goals should be to create a mobile-friendly version of your website.
Fortunately, many great companies offer free eCommerce website templates that are optimized for mobile devices and offer great features like direct access to product pages and coupon codes.
These companies also allow you to edit these features as needed in order to better fit your brand or shop's needs.
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