A lucrative ecommerce website is needed so that the users get interested in your business and become potential customers. This involves the ecommerce website development process for providing you with the best functions for your business. An ecommerce website includes many features like payment gateways, SSL configuration, architecture, ecommerce website design, and many others.
The process of designing an ecommerce website has many things involved like programming, web designing, creating the structure, publishing the site, and also a database management system. So, let’s first learn what ecommerce website development is, before discussing some of the tips for ecommerce website development with us.
What is Ecommerce Website Development?
Website Development is a process that includes many things such as building the site, and customizing its features of the site. It also includes adding to the existing websites with the help of programming using languages like HTML, CSS, or Javascript. Then the successful website development gets converted into an effective website that will act as a good platform for getting online sales.
Important Elements of Ecommerce Website Development
There are many things that you need to consider while following the process of ecommerce website development. Let’s learn about the main elements that are included in developing the ecommerce website here with us:
1. Select the Appropriate Platform and ThemeÂ
When you want to begin a new business, you require a suitable platform for launching it. Some of these platforms available for ecommerce website development are Magento, BigCommerce, Shopify, and many others which are capable of dealing with a large number of buyers that might come in later times.
After you’ve chosen a platform that fits your business requirements, the next important thing that comes is to choose an appropriate theme for your website. The theme should look appealing to the viewers, be customizable according to your brand, allow quick page loading, be very responsive, and be able to work on all browsers. This is where the customers will be spending their time most.
2. Ecommerce SEO and Performance of the Site
The ecommerce SEO is very crucial for the site and higher ranking so that the customers can find you easily online. You can get more traffic to your website when it appears at the top of the search results. This affects the CTR (clickthrough rate) a lot, as when the website drops to the second position from the first it decreases even more than half.
The overall performance and the speed of loading the website affect the UX and Google ranking. When the sites don’t load quickly, the shoppers become impatient, and also according to stats as per Eventige, 40% of the shoppers usually leave the website page if it takes more than 3 seconds to load it. In a nutshell, the faster the pages load, the more better the experience of the users online.
3. Make Your Website Mobile Responsive
There was a time when people were not accepting the mobile version of the websites and were only stuck with the traditional desktop version. But now as the time is changing, more people are viewing the website pages on mobile devices or smartphones.
According to Eventige, you will miss out on around 50% of the potential customers when you are not working on the mobile responsiveness of your website.
When the users find the ease of searching, browsing, and purchasing the products and services, they stay on those websites more. People are always wanting some short or reliable way of handling their purchasing and thus, mobile responsive websites are good for that.
4. Maintain Trust with Customers Through Secure and Safe Connection
The ecommerce website includes money transactions, which is why it is very important to maintain the security of their information. It takes time to build trust between the customer and marketer. This is the important factor that allows shoppers to make the decision about buying things on ecommerce sites.
This can be achieved by encrypting every page of your website with the HTTPS protocol especially the page for making payments. You can take the help of an ecommerce developer for accomplishing this task. Customers want their personal information to be safe when they are doing online shopping.
Not just this, when your website is accepting payments through credit cards, the payment page requires additional security. For this, your website should be PCI (Payment Card Industry) compliant.
Additionally, you should never store information like credit card details on your website, as the website might get hacked. This will leak your customers’ information and make you responsible for their possible loss.
5. Showcase Limited Product Options and Allow More Search on Your Ecommerce Site
Customers might feel overwhelmed by seeing so many choices while making a purchase. It’s always best to present fewer choices and display the top products on your ecommerce store. When they have fewer things to consider, it becomes easy for them to decide which product they want to buy. Otherwise, they go to other ecommerce sites when they feel confused.
There are ways to eradicate this problem that you can follow such as, displaying limited to the customers rather than the complete list of all the products on the products page. You can select the top products to display for the customers even though there are many products in that same category.
Besides this, you should make sure that the checkout process with very less clicks. The fewer the number of clicks in the process of making a purchase from the online store, the more the number of sales. Customers like those ecommerce sites that provide less hassle while making any purchase.
Another important factor that counts in online purchasing is that the search should be fast. Customers usually do a site search for finding the products they are looking for. You must not depend on the default search engine that is available on most ecommerce sites. Instead, utilize a third-party search engine and give as many filters to the customers for optimizing their search.
The final thing, to consider while starting ecommerce businesses is to provide thorough product descriptions. The product description should contain various keywords for making the search engines find your products online easily.
6. Add Embedded Standard Pictures and Videos on the Product’s Page of your Ecommerce Website      Â
According to Jacob Nielson from Nielson Norman Group,
“Visitors often leave Web pages in ten to twenty seconds, but pages with a clear value proposition can hold people’s attention for much longer. To gain several minutes of user attention, you must communicate your value proposition within 10 seconds.”  Â
The customers will give you only 10 seconds and you need to get their attention on your website only within that timespan. You should be able to directly show them what they are looking for and let them stay on the website long enough so that they read the full product descriptions.
For this, use as many photos as possible of your products and add videos for getting their attention. You can also add photos and videos to every page of your ecommerce site. This will increase the traffic of the users to your ecommerce store.
Mostly try to add videos of all your products as they are more powerful than just the photos. Videos are capable of keeping the customers stuck to your page. According to the Stacks and Stacks retailer, the conversion rate of the shoppers increases from 144% when they watch the product’s videos in comparison to those who didn’t.
7. The Payment Process must be Hassle-Free
After you have followed through with all the possible great tips for ecommerce web development, what is left is the transaction. Now as you are able to bring the customers to finally add the product to the cart, the next step is the transaction.
After the customer has found the product they were looking for by site search, amazing product descriptions, and great photos plus product videos. Then, they next add the product to their shopping cart and proceed to check out. But the process of making the transaction using a credit card looks tough to the customers and they might want to leave the cart.
Some of the problems they might face include additional shipping costs, type of payment not acceptable, no return policy, and even making an account to complete their purchase.
After facing some of these hurdles, the customers get frustrated and might change their decision to purchase your product. For this, what you can do is inform the customers about all the additional shipping costs on your homepage itself beforehand.
You can update your ecommerce site and include all kinds of international credit and banking card payment options and also online payments such as PayPal and Stripe. Moreover, you can provide the services of digital wallets like Apple Pay and Amazon Pay.
The biggest obstacle that customers face is signing up for an account. This step is very tedious while making any purchase, so you can add a guest sign up with relatively one or two clicks.
8. Order Tracking for the Customers After Making the Purchase
After the customers have completed their purchase, the next phase is the order tracking of the products. The order tracking happens on both sides that is, customers and brands after the purchase is done.
The tracking API feature should be added to your ecommerce website. This way, the customers can get the tracking details of their shipment right from the beginning. Usually, they have given a reference or order number for the product they purchased. They should be able to check the status of their order or even check the shipment on the ecommerce website. The customers also receive SMS or text messages on their mobile devices for their order tracking.
What customers receive updates when the order fulfillment starts, the order has been shipped, the order is out for delivery, the order is received, and the delivery is completed.
Likewise, the company keeps a record of its logistics from the time the product is picked up from the original location. The product is brought from many warehouses to finally be delivered by the delivery guy to the customer.
9. Support System for the Customers When the Order is not Received
Finally, your ecommerce website should include customer services like a support ticket system. This feature is helpful in supporting the customers when they are facing problems in receiving their orders. Customers can generate a support ticket for their issue particularly by providing the details of their query.
That query can be tracked on the ecommerce platform by the customers and they also receive emails regarding that. This ticket is unique to everyone and the customers are given uniquely generated ticket numbers for tracking it. It can also be used to put the requests they might’ve regarding their order.
Conclusion
Following these above tips is very helpful in the ecommerce website development process. The goal is to create an ecommerce website such that the customers can get the most amazing experience of purchasing the products online.
When the customers find the website to be attractive enough while it also provides their desired products, they stick to the site until the purchase is complete. Also, making the transaction process easier and short makes the customers satisfied.
Other than this, you would require support from professional ecommerce developers. Finding a good ecommerce developer is not an easy task and therefore you can work with a website development company. One such development company in Delhi NCR is Rankingeek. You can contact us here.