There has been a substantial increase in the utilization of ecommerce web development for carrying out the ecommerce businesses. The virtual world provides everyone with easy and swift means of trade and commerce. Anything that the one wishes for is just a click away. Thus proper attention must be paid while going for ecommerce website development. Creating an ecommerce portal could be a confusing task for those who have little knowledge about the actual technicalities. This article would try to lower down the anxiety by enumerating a few tips and criteria which when ensured, would make ecommerce web development, a profitable venture.
The planning stage: Never haste into getting a website. Prior to ecommerce web development, always sit back and plan out the entire scenario, not just in your head but on paper as well, which would give you a better clarity of thought. Remember the three-click rule. Your website should be user friendly enough to let users get all that they are looking for in a maximum of three clicks. Otherwise they’ll just click “BACK” and you may lose your clients.
During the planning stage, decide for the target audience. You can’t please everyone and similarly your site can’t cater to the needs of everybody. Decide a specific group of population you would like to target (your target market). This decision will have its impact on the entire process of ecommerce website development. This would determine the content, the presentation, the style and theme of the website; e.g. trendy and stylish for youths, decent and sober and perhaps religious as well for the senior citizens etc.
Also take a toll of your requirements and limitations. Requirements are all the features you would like your website to contain. Like a chat forum, or a search option that would help users in searching your products better. If you lack the technical knowledge, you may have to outsource the ecommerce website development services, which may cause the budget concerns. Survey the industry and squeeze out an amount required for professional ecommerce web design.
The choice of the platform for the ecommerce website development is also important. The budget can be brought under control if you go for an open source platform. Also if there is an online store/community for the platform comprising of fervent users, it would be an extra advantage as you will get new plug-ins and extensions developed by others.
The platform should allow for easy product imagery benefits and should not commit the SEO errors like generating a new URL when the product images are cycled. It must also enable you to create custom Meta information and edit titles, Headers, Image attributes etc in the admin page. Thus carefully chose the right platform and you may seek professional help for the same.
The final stage of ecommerce web development is where the content is put together with different images and other material and the final look of the website is released. This is, needless to say, the most crucial of all steps. Weeks and months of planning and proper platform decisions would be futile, if this stage is not taken care of. Give due importance while finalizing the content of your homepage. Just keep in mind that it is not a dumping ground where you put just about any and everything. Keep it very clear, crisp and concise. It should sound professional and in accordance with the mindset of your target group. Directly state what is the purpose of your website, what are you and what makes you stand apart from the umpteen similar websites? Remember all the planning would be in vain if the presentation isn’t interesting enough. Users online are impatient and are looking for instant gratification, thus keep it simple, crisp and informative enough.
You needn’t enlist all of your products if you have too many of them. Give a separate internal link to the products and services section.
Play with the user’s attention. Offer various discounts and schemes and display them on the homepage to attract the users, if any one of your products is doing a handsome job in the market, display it with user comments or any catchy information which would testify the success of the product. Also on your homepage, provide your previous clients’ feedback and testimonials etc to help the users in trusting your firm with proper services.
Thus be prepared and make the ecommerce website development an enjoyable experience by keeping in mind the above tips.
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