For the past ten years, the market for an e-commerce business has grown rapidly in popularity. Online sales increased by about 15% last year across the board, and this trend is expected to continue. If you’re starting a business and selling items, you’ll need an eCommerce site to leverage the increasing development of online sales.
While you may employ a web developer to get your firm started, the fees associated with that can limit your potential to grow quickly. Choosing an already-developed eCommerce platform saves you both time and money. We know that you know how to build an e-commerce website but there are certain things that you need to consider.
Here are the 8 things to consider while selecting an Ecommerce Website Development:
Payment and Pricing
When looking for an eCommerce platform, the first thing to consider when building an eCommerce website is the pricing. Whether you’re a new small business or an established brick-and-mortar company going online, you need to know exactly what you’ll be paying.
A monthly fee will be charged by almost all platforms. The price will vary based on the platform you select (self-hosted vs. hosted). You should also think about the processing fees that will be charged by the platform. Don’t give up stuff you’ll need for a lower price.
Integrations
When evaluating eCommerce interface systems, you should also examine their integrations and plugins. Most platforms, like Shopify, will provide you with a plethora of tools to help you run your business. When deciding on the plugins that will work best for you, consider your business needs. While researching multiple platforms, consider tools you’ll require or already use for your business. Here are some of the most common sorts of plugins to look for:
- Accounting plugins to help with the management of sales, taxes, revenue, and profits.
- Email marketing solutions to assist you in staying in touch with your customers
- A platform that enables you to reward customers for utilizing your products.
- Apps that help you ship your merchandise
Website safety and Security
Customers will not purchase anything from your eCommerce site unless they are confident that their financial information is safe from hackers and data thieves. As a result, every platform you use must include critical security features such as PCI (Payment Card Industry) compliance, SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate, fraud detection, and data backups. Security audits should also be performed on the platform to identify any security risks. As a result, relevant measures should be implemented to safeguard clients from any hazards.
You should choose a platform created in an object-oriented programming language because such platforms provide embedded security procedures.
Magento and Shopify are two major platforms that emphasize two-factor authentication to reduce website vulnerability. Security plugins can provide additional security in platforms that lack multi-factor authentication for critical information protection.
SEO
Customers will only visit your website if they can locate your store in search engines while looking for products similar to the ones you offer. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is an essential requirement in designing an e-commerce website to make your site rank higher and more visible in search engines.
As a result, the platform you select should include SEO-related capabilities such as allowing users to create a product’s meta description, adding a blog to their website, utilizing their domain name, allowing customers to leave reviews, Google site map compatibility, and so on. The presence of these capabilities in the platform will have a direct impact on the SEO rankings of your site.
Some SEO-friendly eCommerce platforms are Onveos, Magento, OpenCart, and Woocommerce. While Onveos delivers stand-alone SEO aspects, the other three complement inbound marketing operations.
Customer Support
Customer service is a vital component of any organization. Because conventional brick-and-mortar businesses give an experience in a real location, they often have more influence over how well their business functions.
Ecommerce is a completely different spot; software breakdowns and server downtimes are frequently beyond your control and will prevent any of your consumers from accessing your website. Your servers are likely to crash at the worst possible time at some point. This can have an impact on both your earnings and your brand’s image.
Flexible Web Design
With more than half of all American eCommerce shoppers making purchases through a mobile device in 2019, eCommerce shops can’t afford to ignore this sizable segment of mobile users. Such clients should be able to simply visit their website and make purchases from their mobile devices.
If eCommerce web development companies choose to have a distinct desktop and mobile site, they will have to maintain separate marketing campaigns, banners and product information, catalogs, and so on. As a result, their costs will rise and their resources would be depleted.
A responsive web design, which automatically adjusts a site to the screen sizes of multiple devices such as desktops, laptops, mobiles, and tablets, is a better and more cost-effective alternative to a separate desktop and mobile site. As a result, focus on responsive web design enables you to give a wonderful experience to users regardless of the device they use.
You should select a platform that allows for responsive site design and develop an e-commerce website. The Magento, WooCommerce, and Shopify platforms all have a variety of responsive themes and layouts for creating vertically stacked websites. Users of Shopify can also directly edit HTML and CSS. They may also alter the size, position, and colors of any element on the page from within the platform.
Technical Assistance
Unwanted events such as software failures, server downtimes, and server crashes can occur at any time, preventing customers from accessing your website and making transactions. These will not only cost you money, but they will also harm your brand’s image.
To get out of such circumstances quickly and get your business back up and running, you need swift technical support from your eCommerce platform.
Scalability
Every business owner hopes that their company will grow in the future, but you never know how much. Nonetheless, it’s critical to look for a platform that can grow with your Custom eCommerce development company.
When you first start, you don’t want to pay for features and storage that you won’t use. You also want to be able to meet increased demand as your company grows. Choose a platform that allows you to adapt to the size of your business while not charging you exorbitant costs to do so.
Bottom Line
Opening a new business is difficult, but transitioning from a traditional storefront to an online one can be frightening. Especially with so many options to choose from, which is why picking an eCommerce platform is so difficult for many business owners. It’s difficult to predict what your store will require as it expands and to stay up with trends, but it’s well worth it in the end to establish processes that function and scale with your business. Knowing what to look for ahead of time simplifies the process of selecting a platform and can help you achieve success!
