With individuals and small companies able to buy and sell globally and developing countries allowed to compete on a level playing field, eCommerce is proving to be an unstoppable force in changing how the world conducts business.
fram^ has helped many businesses in different types of eCommerce business models successfully affirm their names in their industries with e-commerce website development.
Table of Contents
E-commerce website development is a critical process for businesses looking to succeed in the digital marketplace. A successful online store requires a user-friendly interface that is simple to navigate and visually appealing.
Mobile responsiveness is no longer optional. With mobile commerce expected to account for 54% of e-commerce sales, websites must perform seamlessly across all devices and screen sizes.
Security and trust are paramount. Implementing robust payment protection, SSL certificates, and transparent practices are crucial for converting browsers into buyers.
Technology is rapidly evolving. Emerging trends like Augmented Reality (AR), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and social shopping are reshaping how customers interact with online stores.
Performance matters more than ever. Website speed, efficient checkout processes, and intuitive search functionality can significantly impact conversion rates and customer satisfaction.
Ethical considerations are increasingly important. Consumers are willing to pay more for sustainable products and value businesses that demonstrate genuine commitment to responsible practices.
Continuous adaptation is key. Successful e-commerce websites must remain flexible, integrating new technologies and responding to changing consumer expectations to stay competitive in the digital marketplace.
E-Commerce website development is the process of creating an online platform for businesses to sell products or services digitally and potentially worldwide.
It transforms traditional retail approaches by allowing companies to conduct transactions globally through the Internet. At its core, it involves designing and building a comprehensive digital storefront that facilitates sales and provides a seamless, user-friendly shopping experience.
This specialized form of web development goes beyond simply creating a website. It encompasses a strategic approach to designing an online marketplace that meets both business objectives and customer expectations.
E-Commerce website development involves carefully crafting digital interfaces that are intuitive, secure, and capable of handling complex transactional processes across multiple platforms and devices.
Now that we’ve covered what eCommerce website development is all about
The site should be easy to navigate, clearly labelled with necessities such as a homepage, about us page, contact us and shop now pages easily accessible from every web page on the site.
Text should be kept to a minimum, and categories organized into drop-down navigation menus that help prevent the site from becoming cluttered with too many options.
I’d like to highlight that tip to keep text to a minimum—planning your content right is vital to eCommerce website development.
While visitors may intend to purchase your site, many won’t do so without first investing some time in researching the products. If your products have only their names in the description section, the most likely scenario is that they won’t get sold. On the other hand, lengthy text blocks about the history of how the products came to be don’t do well in driving sales either.
Study the detailed and straightforward product descriptions on Amazon as examples.
Try to keep your description short, informative, and straight to the point. Instead of just listing numerous components and characteristics of the products, highlight their key benefits and how they can solve your customers’ problems. Use bullet points to make these contents scannable if needed.
Allowing users to browse products efficiently creates a smooth shopping experience where the customer can quickly and easily compare the available options. Similar products can help cross-sell by considering the user’s previous activity and searches.
An experienced eCommerce web development company will be well-versed in the art of categorization and can help tailor the categories based on your target audience.
Online shoppers only have pictures and descriptions to rely on when purchasing. Therefore, it is an absolute must for eCommerce sites to provide them with high-resolution pictures for better visualization of the product’s quality. Blurry and pixelated images undermine the professionalism of your business, resulting in lower conversion rates.
You can leverage the experience further by uploading images taken from multiple angles. If possible, add a zoom feature to see small details clearly. The more convincingly your products’ pictures communicate, the higher the chance of you effectively closing the deals.
The view basket and check-out options should always be available to the user, and when they do head for the check-out, it should be as efficient a process as possible. Only information absolutely essential to completing the purchase should be required from the user. Asking for too much information can damage the trust between the parties.
A guest check-out option where an account is not required can increase your pool of potential customers. Users in a rush would rather abandon their cart than open and verify a profile on the site to complete a sale.
It is all too easy to get caught up with the style, content, and navigation of the site during development, meaning you neglect the crucial aspect of speed.
A highly responsive website, due to its speed, helps your conversion rate and boosts inbound leads by climbing the Google rankings.
And speaking of this…
After setting up your online store, the next step is to consider how to lead potential customers to visit your website. Often, customers do not navigate straight to your website. Nearly 46% of shoppers will start their journey on search engines with no specific product in mind.
Along with the fact that websites on the top spot of Google search results are 10 times more likely to be visited than another page holding the 10th spot, it is probably in your best interest to focus on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to be as high in the top ranking as possible, or else your customers will turn to competitors instead.
So, having SEO as part of the development process is an essential step to growing in your niche market and starting to sell!
Coding a responsive eCommerce website is vital, as over half of Internet users now access websites using mobile devices.
Having an online store that is accessible and ready for mobile users to shop on can help an online business stay ahead of its competitors. This can be achieved by a responsive design that expands and contracts effectively across different devices.
67% of consumers say they casually browse items online, with 77% of those respondents saying they make impulse buys while doing so. If a site is clunky on mobile or has a buggy check-out, you can be sure the customer will move to another less frustrating site.
A search bar is absolutely necessary for a successful eCommerce site and provides the most effective way of finding a specific product.
The ability to filter for colour, brand, price, etc. optimizes the search process for the user even further.
Such a feature will greatly enhance user experience. Most of the time, customers already have a specific product in mind when they arrive at your website.
If customers cannot find what they want after a few clicks, they will likely switch to your competitor’s site or elsewhere rather than spend more time navigating your website. If possible, consider adding filters to improve your site’s search bar. This allows customers to narrow the options to be as specific as possible.
Having reviews and testimonials on your eCommerce site can greatly increase conversions and promote your sales. Almost 95% of shoppers read reviews before making their purchases, according to the report from Spiegel Research Center. You can have all your testimonials appear on the homepage, or if possible, try to include a separate rating section for each of your products. That way, customers can find relevant reviews easily without navigating the site too much.
A point to make is that businesses shouldn’t be wary of having negative reviews on their sites. While it’s true that 5-star ratings enhance the confidence of your customers, a website with 100% positive comments may seem a little bit off. People have different criteria in their judgment, and it sounds unreal that no one has any complaint to make. As such, some negative remarks may actually add more legitimacy to your business. If you handle those remarks well, it can even improve your brand’s reputation.
An eCommerce site must be PCI compliant by adhering to the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard. This makes SSL certificates mandatory and ultimately builds trust between the user and the online retailer.
These certificates encrypt sensitive data sent over the internet, as does HTTPS. Firewalls can protect against DDoS attacks, adding another layer of security to the site.
A chat app will allow a customer service agent to deliver instant customer service to multiple shoppers at the same time.
This personalized approach can significantly increase conversion rates, as a frustrated user who is not given the help they need will simply move to another site.
It is possible to track the success of your chat app in converting sales and make changes accordingly.
There are many different approaches to using coupon cards on an eCommerce site; they can be time-limited, giveaways, or incentive-based, to name but a few.
A well-designed eCommerce site will offer flexibility with the types of available incentives, as they need to be adaptable according to the needs of the business’ marketing strategy. Coupons are an extremely effective way of collecting targeted data.
Blogs can prove crucial for marketing your products and maintaining a presence in your product’s niche area.
Creating original, engaging content will enable you to build your brand consistently and can drive your site up the Google rankings.
Lazy loading is an emerging design trend that adds more products to the existing page rather than continually requiring new pages to be loaded.
The beauty is that this technique helps speed and performance and increases ‘perceived performance,’ making the user think the page is loading faster than it is in reality. A custom website development company will implement this as a standard.
In the past, developing an eCommerce site required a considerable budget to hire a team of developers with extensive technical expertise.
However, there are many ‘turn-key’ eCommerce options on the market, with Shopify, WooCommerce, and Magento offering ready-made platforms without any coding required.
Still, even for smaller players, it can still be worth seeking out eCommerce website development services for small businesses to ensure the store is fully optimized.
Magento, in particular, can be a great option, offering flexibility in the store’s look and feel. It comes with valuable default features and added open-source plug-ins.
There are two categories of eCommerce databases, with different systems required for site content and transactional data. The site content database organizes the product info, contact information and FAQ, etc. while the transaction data organizes the customers’ transactional history, tracks inventory and processes orders.
Small to medium-sized data can be treated directly by the backend of the site, however to handle a larger volume of data, alternative solutions may have to come in to play. Big data analytics can be employed to ensure that vital underlying insights are still uncovered even when processing vast quantities of data.
User experience (UX) is defined by a site’s branding, usability, and functionality.
What is the user’s experience of navigating the site and buying a product? If it is an enjoyable experience from beginning to end, there will be increased trust and, therefore, a higher conversion rate. Effective UX design comes from putting yourself in the customer’s shoes and finding out what makes them tick.
Speed, ease of use, and a simple layout are prominent components of a well-designed web store. People do not like to wait for websites to load, nor do they want to struggle to find the information they seek. It is a UX designer’s job to consider why the potential customer is there, what features the website needs to offer, and which design considerations can be implemented to best guide them there.
By integrating ERP or CRM, a business can glean precious information about their customers from the data collected by the site. This helps build a customer profile and increases the site’s understanding of what they want. This can lead to auto-generated leads, upselling, and cross-selling.
The system must be capable of handling all the data, image management, and SEO that will be pivotal to the website’s performance. More and more content will be added over time, and a well-built website should be designed with this in mind. Some big giants even ask for top software developers who can build custom CRMs that are fully tailored to their business strategy.
Neglecting the speed and performance of your e-commerce site is a surefire way to drive away customers. Instead, it is advisable to optimize page-load times across all browsers, devices, and networks, for instance, by separating content and only sending the required minimum amount for each type of device.
A site needs to stay current with current performance acceleration techniques to be competitive. Every fraction of a second affects customer retention. It is crucial to consider how each component of the site can affect the overall speed and predict how the ongoing maintenance of the site may affect it in the future.
As one of the best eCommerce Development Teams around, we offer a complete range of services needed to accelerate and maintain a high-performance site. Check out how the fram^ team can help you with e-commerce website development!
Your eCommerce website needs to go through the Quality Assurance (QA) stage before launching. It is not a good idea to release a clutter and error-prone website, since you will only receive complaints on the website operations instead of revenue. Hence, do your testing properly. Put yourself in the customers’ shoes and go through their purchasing journey to find any possible bottlenecks. Get your friends, relatives or even a professional testing service provider to help you for a more objective opinion if possible.
An apple a day keeps the doctor away. Regular site checks toss the errors aside. Frequent maintenance keeps your website smooth-running and provides your customers a seamless experience. Moreover, it allows you to keep track of your site’s growth, as well as its capacity to accommodate current and future traffic volume. With this information in mind, you can execute an optimization plan accordingly, further increasing your return.
Not sure how your eCommerce website is performing? Contact us to get a free eCommerce website health check right away!
In the shorter term, there are a few ecommerce trends which are expected to grow in significance and should be factored into a company’s ecommerce website development strategy.
As AR technology becomes more integrated with smartphones, virtually trying on clothes before buying or checking how a potential new sofa looks in your living room will become the norm. Both VR and AR could have a massive effect across a range of industries, enhancing the shopping experience for the customer and bringing, ‘Try before you buy’, into the 21st Century.
Typical industries: healthcare education, manufacturing, fashion, travel, retail, F&B, information media and construction.
With Alexa and Siri creeping into more and more homes, voice-enabled devices are a new battleground in the ecommerce world. A forward-thinking ecommerce website development plan will take this into account and optimize for these devices.
Chatbots are another emerging tool that can help guide a consumer seamlessly through to the check-out. Effective AI software should learn from the consumer and then offer a more personalized user experience, but its usefulness does not end there. AI can also increase efficiency in the supply chain and pre-empt any potential problems that the human eye might miss.
Typical industries: Healthcare, education, manufacturing, fashion, travel, retail, F&B, finance and energy.
As consumers hop between devices, social media platforms and various shopping channels, ecommerce businesses need to integrate their operations as widely as possible. A consistent omnichannel consumer experience is becoming more and more crucial, as their customer’s expectations and range of options grow.
Call to action buttons, robust customer support and brand consistency can set a business apart from its competitors and create brand loyalty in its customer base. Social commerce is growing across many industries but is most apparent in the fashion and retail industries.
Typical industries: Fashion, retail.
A 2019 report found that overwhelmingly, consumers want sustainable products and up to a third of buyers are willing to pay 25% more for them. The second biggest determiner of brand loyalty after the product’s quality was ethical business practices. Expect to see it loud and proud across leading ecommerce sites this year, as conscious consumers demand ethical ecommerce practices.
Typical industries: Fashion, retail, F&B, energy and manufacturing
