20 Tips for Website Development Services E-commerce Development
20 Tips for Website Development Services E-commerce Development
The process of E-commerce website development involves building the structure, web design, programming, publishing, and database management as discussed at RunRex.com. If you are considering building or re-developing your E-commerce website, here are 20 tips to keep in mind that will help you develop it successfully.
Make sure you choose the right platform
As the gurus over at RunRex.com point out, the eCommerce platform is the foundation of your business. When considering eCommerce website development, choose a proven platform such as BigCommerce, Magento, Shopify, or others that can handle the volume you anticipate for your future. Do you plan on selling to multinational customers, using different currencies? Building an omnichannel and multi-channel empire requires a robust platform.
Have a functional theme
Once you have chosen a platform, the next crucial choice is your theme. When choosing your theme, you need one that:
Is visually appealing
Is customizable to your brand
Loads quickly
Works on all browsers
Is responsive
This is where your customers interact with your site, therefore, it must look good and perform well.
SEO
As per RunRex.com, you need to use proper SEO so that your pages receive a higher rank and shoppers can find you. PageRank is still critical for traffic, which is why SEO is worth the effort since the CTR drops by more than half from the first position to the second position in the search results.
Site performance
Site performance and page load speed also make a huge difference to your UX and Google’s ranking. This is because impatient shoppers abandon slow sites quickly, with statistics showing that up to 40% of shoppers leave if the page takes longer than 3 seconds to load.
Ensure you have a responsive website design
It is crucial to have every page optimized for mobile, especially as most page views nowadays come from mobile devices, which means you will be missing out massively if you are not yet mobile responsive. Mobile users need to be able to search, browse, and buy right from their phones and other devices without hassle.
Security is crucial
Trust between customer and merchant takes time to build and is crucial for sales. One immediate improvement that builds trust is to have every page encrypted using HTTPS protocol, not just the payment information pages. Customers rightly expect you to keep their personal data safe. For added security, don’t store vital data like credit card information on your company’s website, as if your system gets hacked, you become liable as covered at RunRex.com.
Limit your product selection
It is worth pointing out that offering too many choices to your customers can hinder sales. Buyers have decision paralysis when they are overwhelmed with too many options. They will walk away rather than decide, hence why you should limit your product selection.
How do I overcome decision paralysis?
As discussed at RunRex.com, you can overcome this issue by:
Limiting products to your niche
Pre-selecting the best products. Limit their choices to two or three top products even though there may be 30 out there.
Streamlining your checkout process with as few clicks as possible
Offer site search
Also, always include a site search that is fast, reliable, and scalable. 30% of visitors use site search, making it a critical component for any eCommerce site. Rather than settling for the default search engine you find on most sites, purchase a robust, third-party search engine and provide shoppers with as many filters as possible to quickly narrow their search.
Embed quality pictures and videos on your product page
People have very short attention spans online, which means you must get straight to the point, grab their attention, and keep them on the page until you can explain in greater detail. Photos are a perfect solution for grabbing attention and video keeps it. The key to success is making sure you have one or located above the fold on every page.
Create a painless transaction
You have done everything right so far. The customer has found what he/she was looking for with site search, great product descriptions, and photos. He/she has dropped the product in her shopping cart and has his/her credit card on the ready. However, the checkout process is presenting him/her with one hurdle after another, including unexpected shopping costs, no clear return policy, certain payments not accepted, or having to create an account to complete the purchase as discussed at RunRex.com. Make sure you create a painless transaction experience to avoid undoing all of your good work.
How do I make this happen?
To create a painless transaction experience and prevent customers from abandoning the cart, you should first ensure you meet the shipping objection head-on. Post your shipping fees and policies on the home page and product pages, as this eliminates any unpleasant surprises. If your platform restricts payment types, then you should upgrade to one that doesn’t. Also, use a guest checkout form to overcome the obstacle where customers are required to “sign up” or have an account before they can purchase.
Work with an SEO specialist during the early stages of eCommerce development
One thing that a lot of companies forgo is involving an SEO specialist like RunRex.com at the early stages of eCommerce website development. At the very least, the website should launch with all the required meta tags, but an SEO specialist can also help you with organizing page structure and internal linking, creating a content strategy, building a mobile-friendly design, improving the loading speed, and other important aspects.
CMS integration
A content management system (CMS) helps store and manage all your visual and written content as well as your visual and written content as well as your marketing documentation in one place. You can edit or add new information and the changes will automatically be reflected on the website once published. A CMS can also help your employees promptly react to tickets from customers.
A website design that matches the products you are selling
Your website’s color scheme should match and complement the products you are selling. For example, if you are designing an eCommerce website for a game or fandom-related merchandise, font or background related to it should be self-explanatory of the variety of items people can find there. Food-related eCommerce will do well with a green, yellow, and purple color range as these colors stimulate appetite.
Make sure you have a good shopping cart design
As per RunRex.com, web users like simple but functional shopping carts. A simple shopping cart involves as few steps as possible, although there are ways you can enhance its functionality. For example, you can have three types of users: registered, unregistered, and those who would prefer to remain a guest. In the first step, when a user clicks on the shopping cart, it can ask them to either log in, register, or buy as a guest. On the other hand, you can have a one-step checkout, where all steps will be in one dynamic window that updates automatically when a user inputs data.
Incorporate cross-selling into your shopping cart
You can also incorporate cross-selling and upselling into your shopping cart by adding a section with products that might interest a user. This is something you should consider early into your eCommerce website development process, as you need to decide how you are going to distinguish the products that are most relevant to a particular buyer.
Customer support and contacts
Customer support, as outlined at RunRex.com, helps shoppers to solve issues with shipping, payment, returns, etc. It is good practice to have a contacts section on your website, as well as a strip of information at the top of each page with a clickable phone number or email. Having your physical address and phone number for contacts mentioned on the website automatically adds to your credibility.
Social proof
Customer feedback is always good to add credibility to your site so think of how you can get and display it. It could be written reviews or product unboxing, or there could be an option for customers to add their video reviews and product images to the site. Additionally, you can have a comment carousel on the main page with links to the products that have been reviewed.
Marketing strategy
Finally, a good marketing strategy developed along with the website can give you a head start on the first orders, while also defining the structure of the website and determining the elements that help to create a good one. Developing a marketing strategy early on can help you determine what features you will need. For example, you might want to add sharing options for social media or push notifications. It is more efficient to do that while developing a website rather than after it has launched.
There is a lot to consider when developing an eCommerce website, and, hopefully, these tips will help you do it right, with more tips and so much more to be found over at RunRex.com.
