Strategies for developing eCommerce Websites

Developing an eCommerce website is pretty different from developing any other regular website. You must consider the products and user experience in the picture while developing an eCommerce website. The strategies for developing eCommerce websites should always be around maximizing sales. All other factors should point towards helping in making the sales conversion. It would help if you planned out the short-term and long-term strategies and your budget to sustain for at least two years. Before developing the website, you need to ask yourself how big you would be scaling the whole thing up, irrespective of the revenue generated.

Waiting for sales to pick up to allow you to invest again in the website is not a good idea. The dilemma is always whether the chicken came first or the egg. Waiting for profits to increase for you to scale the website may not work, as the revenue will rise when you have scaled up. Let’s look at some of the points you might have to consider to get your eCommerce website developed.

Full-scale Development or Testing of Market

You must understand how convinced you are of the eCommerce business for which you are developing the website. You must be clear on whether you want to test out the market before leaving that comfortable job and getting into it full-time. There is no point in spending a good amount of money on getting the perfect website if you are yet to test out the market.

It will limit or clear the functionality requirements of the website.

Technology Selection

Once you are clear of the intentions to go into the eCommerce space, you need to finalize the technology stack you would use. You must consider the database, SSL certificate, the server you will use, and their future charges. Most of these service providers offer them initially at a very low cost, but their cost increases drastically from the next year onwards.

WordPress-based E-commerce is a good choice for small-scale websites or if you want to test the market. It comes at a decent budget with many limitations you should not mind.

For a good eCommerce website, we recommend using Laravel as the framework. You can build almost anything on this framework. You can also go for a combination of React JS and Node JS. The cost for both frameworks is the same, with Laravel having the edge regarding SEO.

SEO System

SEO plays a very important role in the digital marketing of eCommerce websites. You cannot rely on running PPC campaigns for long, and it should always be seen and used as a fill-in gap.

 The website should allow you to add Meta tags through the admin panel dynamically. WordPress and Shopify have an inbuilt SEO system that has been tested thoroughly. We can develop the same website easily in other frameworks.

The website development agency you hire should commit to providing the best SEO services and server-side rendering. Most developers and clients do not know server-side rendering and its importance for SEO if the crawlers of search engines see when they crawl your website.

Must have functionalities in eCommerce Website

There are some basic strategies for developing eCommerce websites that an eCommerce website should have and is expected. Features like a discount system, coupons, multiple payment options, shipping, and cash-on-delivery charges are some of the functionalities you might like to have on your eCommerce website.

Ensure they are communicated to the eCommerce development agency clearly and in writing before you proceed with the development.

Future Maintenance and Third Party Charges

Work out the future maintenance and third-party charges you will be incurring. Sometimes it becomes too hectic and overwhelming if you take it lightly. Generally, maintenance charges depend on the amount of work to be done in maintenance.

As a leading eCommerce website development, we charge at least 2000 per month if minor changes are required per month. This agreement, too, we take after observing the work to be done for the first three months. If we are not convinced that the maintenance work will take more effort than anticipated, the cost can go as high as Rs 10,000 per month.

Design for Mobile

Always be mobile-first when it comes to any form of website development. With more than 80% of searches happening through mobiles, you cannot miss out on this part and stay in-game for a long time. Make sure mobile responsiveness is in your scope of work with the developer.

Also, provide for mobile screens are provided as UI designing services before the actual development takes place.

Optimized Purchase Process

An eCommerce website should have a smooth purchase process, and there should be no glitches. It would help if you worked on aspects like whether user login is required or not for purchase and storing the user data so that we need not fill it again.

Features like discounts, coupons, and charges like shipping or cash on delivery need to be shown on the cart dynamically. These figures should change if the user changes the quantity, and there should be no requirement to refresh the page.

Check other eCommerce websites, especially giant ones like Amazon, to finalize your process.

Image loading

Images form an important part of any eCommerce website, and you should consider the impact they will have on the loading and performance of the website.

Using lazy loading and preloading should help you, and insist the developer have it dynamically included in the website.

Product Categories, Tags, and Related Products

It would help if you had functions to create multiple categories and tags in your admin panel. These categories and tags are used to club products into different groups per some underlying aspect. They also help target new keywords that you might miss or will take time to work on.

Besides, they are good filters for related or recommended product sections on products and cart pages.

Website Page Speed

A website should have good page speed to ensure a low bounce rate and a good user experience. As one of the best website development, we know how difficult it is to achieve. The development process starts with keeping the server requests bare minimum and optimizing the CSS and JavaScript files.

We ensure that right-sized images are used as per the device size, and their loading is optimized to ensure the page speed is kept as high as possible.

Scalability

The technology stack you finalize should have no limitations when scaling it up in the future. You do not want to be stuck with something that has limitations anywhere, forcing you to compromise. It is one of the reasons we ask our clients to choose Laravel over WordPress, which has many limitations regarding scaling up and customization.

The framework should not ask you for plugins now and then for any customization. It is done in frameworks like Shopify, Magento, and open cart kinds of frameworks.

Search bar and filters

Search bars and filters are very much required on shopping pages as they allow users to filter through various options available.

Don’t miss out on price range sliders, as they are one of the most used filters on an eCommerce website. Search bars help users with the purchase intent get to the exact product fastest and can be very handy.

Abandoned Carts

Our eCommerce websites have a system wherein you can see the cart a user has selected and all data they have filled in. It gives you a good idea of what products are being added but not purchased. Based on these insights, you can provide additional discounts to the users and make changes to your offerings. It is not available normally on eCommerce websites, and we offer them proudly.

Developing an eCommerce website is pretty different from developing any other regular website. You must consider the products and user experience in the picture while developing an eCommerce website. The strategy for developing an eCommerce website should always be around maximizing sales. All other factors should point towards helping in making the sales conversion. It would be best if you planned out the short-term and long-term strategies and your budget to sustain for at least two years. Before developing the website, you need to ask yourself how big you would be scaling the whole thing up, irrespective of the revenue generated.

Waiting for sales to pick up to allow you to invest again in the website is not a good idea. The dilemma is always whether the chicken came first or the egg. Waiting for profits to increase for you to scale the website may not work, as the revenue will rise when you have scaled up. Let’s look at some of the points you might have to consider to get your eCommerce website developed.

How does AMITKK help in eCommerce Website Development?

We have the best developers when it comes to developing eCommerce websites. We understand the user flow and the basic strategies for developing eCommerce websites. Our development keeps digital marketing in perspective to ensure all the basics are adhered to. It would help if you had a very good website development agency for your business to hold your hand and help you achieve your dream.

Author: Tiasha

Tiasha is a brand management specialist and writes regularly on it. She is also certified in digital marketing and loves spreading the good advice through her writing.