Shopping in the modern-day has evolved greatly. Today, anything right from a toothbrush to top-end gadgets and automobiles, everything can be bought in just a few clicks. Comfort is not the only benefit that eCommerce offers. Buyers can also avail of various promotional offers and discounts, browse through a wide range of buying options, get their desired products delivered at a convenient time and location, and return or replace the items if they face any issues or change their minds.
Given these numerous benefits, most buyers prefer shopping online these days. Hence, for businesses to stay competitive in today’s market, having an eCommerce website is inevitable. If you plan on developing an eCommerce website for your business, read this article till the end. Whether you plan to build an online store from scratch or improve the performance of an existing one, this guide will walk you through all the steps necessary to create a successful eCommerce website.
What’s an eCommerce website?
An eCommerce website is a one-stop shop where customers can purchase your products or services by just visiting the site or app on their devices. Especially post-pandemic the demand for online shopping and eCommerce marketing has gone up with more and more people opting for contactless deliveries.
The best part is, both small and large businesses can use e-commerce websites to sell their products and services online. With an eCommerce website, they can browse your offerings and place their orders directly. You can also use it to offer subscription-based services or other recurring payments, like memberships, donations and more. So, it’s a win-win situation for the businesses and customers.
Things to consider before eCommerce website development:
Before you start building your eCommerce website, you need to conduct basic market research. This includes mapping the demand for your products, your competition in the market, the niche that your business is catering to, customer analysis, their buying preferences, and the platforms that they frequently use, among other things. Once you have your entire data sorted, you can get started with actually developing your website.
Getting started with eCommerce website development
📝Chart out a plan:
The initial step in any eCommerce website development process is to chart out a plan. This includes designing a basic website layout, setting goals for your website, and having a proper strategy in place. Once you have a basic idea about these aspects you can dive deeper into exploring it further. You can figure out the style and way in which your products will be shown, the brand persona, objectives, upscaling plans, etc.
✔️Select a platform and domain
Once your plan is ready, you have to select a platform and domain to host your eCommerce website. This covers selecting a unique domain name or a URL. One thing to keep in mind is that although your domain name needs to be unique, it needs to be easily identifiable for your audience. It’s basically a representation of your brand name so it needs to resemble it too. The best way to go about this is using your company name as a domain name.
Moreover, you can leverage various eCommerce platforms that help you build a website from scratch. Shopify app development is one of the best platforms that you can check out. You can browse through a variety of platforms available online and choose the best-suited one for your business.
🗺️Design a layout
After you select a domain name and a platform, you must design the basic skeleton or layout of your website. This will include creating a sitemap or an outline of your site pages. Sitemaps lay a path for your customers to navigate through your website. The more detailed your sitemap is, the easier it will be for your customers to navigate through your website. While designing your layout you need to consider product listings, customer reviews and ratings, checkout and payment processes, product videos, etc.
🖥️Website coding
Website coding or back-end development is one of the most important steps of developing your website. Coding is required for every function of your website to take place as intended. For this step you have two options, either you can choose to code your website manually or go for a CMS i.e., a content management system.
Manual coding will require a wide range of expertise and experience. But a CMS can simplify your job by covering all the basic coding elements for you.
✒️Design optimisation
Once you’re done with coding, you need to focus on the beautification of your website. Whenever someone visits your website, its design and looks are the first things that they are going to notice. Hence, design optimisation is a must in eCommerce website development. It also plays a great role in the overall user experience of your website. It will identify the look and feel of your website and decide the course of interaction that your customers will have with your website.
Design optimisation includes selecting the colours, themes, images, videos, etc. that will be included on your website. One thing to be careful about in this step is to ensure that your website is easy to navigate and load despite having an engaging design.
🏪Website launch
After completing all these steps, you are ready to finally launch your eCommerce website. But there’s just one small step that you need to take before this, which is testing the website first. This will give you a clear idea if all the functions of your websites are working as intended and also help you identify the gaps if any. While testing your website you need to check the entire buying process right from browsing and wish listing, to final payment.
Once you’re sure that all the elements are working fine, you can launch your website and focus on getting more customers.
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Related: Essential Marketing Strategies to Boost Shopify Sales
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Steps to increase your eCommerce website traffic:
- Leverage pay-per-click (PPC) advertisements: It’s a great way to reach high-intent customers and have a greater conversion rate.
- Have an SEO strategy in place: Apart from paid advertising, you can also reach your customers organically with the help of search engine optimisation or SEO. A strong SEO strategy will help your website rank higher on search engines and gain more traffic.
- Don’t overlook social media: Most customers today are extremely active on social media, making it crucial for your business to leverage it. You can use it to increase brand awareness, inform your customers about any upcoming sales, or offers and advertise your products online.
Final thoughts
To stay competitive in today’s changing marketplace, an eCommerce website is a must-have for businesses. While you can use the available online tools to create your website, collaborating with eCommerce web development and marketing experts can give your business an edge. You can explore the services of a leading growth marketing agency like Amura Marketing Technologies.
Amura is known for its website development, growth marketing, and tech expertise that will help you achieve your business goals better and faster. Moreover, with the help of analytics they also support seamless performance tracking and analysis. With their exceptional content marketing and UI expertise, you can provide a one-of-its-kind user experience to your customers. Are you ready to unlock ultimate eCommerce business growth? Get in touch with Amura Marketing Technologies today!
