Thinking about building your eCommerce store, but not sure where to begin? Well, there’s no need to worry. We’ve got you covered. This quick guide to eCommerce website development will help you create your eCommerce store quickly and easily.
Before we jump into the details, let’s look at some critical stats regarding e-commerce to understand better where the trend is heading.
Important Ecommerce Stats
According to Oberlo, eCommerce sales are expected to account for 18.1% of retail sales this year.
As per the finding by Oberlo, the number of global digital buyers is expected to hit 2.14 billion in 2021.
According to 99Firms’ Ecommerce Statistics for 2020, eCommerce will account for 95% of all purchases by 2040.
The Global Consumer Survey Report 2019 showed that users are more likely to purchase a product online using their smartphone rather than desktop devices.
Read down below to find out more.
Before you build your online eCommerce store, you need to decide on a physical product that you will be selling. You certainly don’t want to put all the effort into building an eCommerce store only to find out later that people are not interested in buying what you are selling. Sounds horrible.
Well, there’s no need to worry. You can avoid this by doing market research and finding your Niche. To ensure that your online business is profitable, you might want to choose a profitable niche.
Ideally, it would be the one that has a growing number of potential numbers, with a limited number of competitors in the market.
Ecommerce trends are constantly changing—the products top-trending today may not even be searched tomorrow.
Therefore, you must look for a product that won’t become outdated anytime soon. It’sIt’s always wise to use different online business tools and tactics to get an accurate picture of your market.
There are tons of different tools that can be used to identify trending products and services; some of them are:
Read down below to find out the difference between business models for eCommerce stores.
B2C eCommerce or business-to-consumer refers to online e-commerce sales transactions between a business and individual customers.
According to Statista, we can expect to see significant growth in B2C e-commerce in the retail industry in the next few years. Compared to 2019, global revenues are expected to increase by 85%.
B2C stores are suitable for online retailers that are targeting individual end consumers.
B2B eCommerce or business to business e-commerce is the sale of goods and services between two businesses.
According to a survey conducted in 2018, 48% of businesses are reported to make 50-74% purchases online. Also, as indicated by Forrester Research Inc., the B2B e-commerce market is expected to reach $1.8 trillion by 2023.
C2C eCommerce or consumer-to-consumer e-commerce refers to online e-commerce sales transactions between two or more consumers. Consumers are provided with an online environment where they can interact and sell/purchase goods and services from other consumers.
Statista recorded more than 100 million visits to the leading C2C and buy/sell marketplaces in 2020.
That shows that C2C eCommerce is becoming increasingly popular among sellers who want to increase their revenue by connecting with customers they wouldn’t be able to reach otherwise through traditional marketing methods.
Once you are done choosing the Niche, you will be targeting the product you are going to be selling. The next step is to select the eCommerce website development platform that you will utilize for your online eCommerce store.
When it comes to picking an eCommerce platform, there are many options. Let’s look at the top 3 most potent eCommerce web solutions.
Shopify is one of the most popular platforms for eCommerce stores. The fact that Shopify eCommerce stores are so easy to create and customize makes it one of the best eCommerce platforms for online retailers.
Also, it features several different eCommerce website templates and themes that can be customized according to your brand’s requirements. It is a fully hosted platform that offers several add-ons and SEO additions.
If you are not familiar with how Shopify works, you might want to hire a Shopify development company to develop your website.
You might be interested in reading: HOW TO DEVELOP E-COMMERCE WEBSITES WITH SHOPIFY
Magento is another popular eCommerce platform, but unlike Shopify, it requires technical knowledge to build. Therefore, most eCommerce businesses prefer to hire a Magento development company to create a fully functional eCommerce website.
Lastly, WooCommerce is another open-source, fully customizable eCommerce platform best suited to small to medium-sized businesses.
WooCommerce allows users to build an online store using WordPress. One of the best things about WooCommerce is that it is free, and the underlying WordPress software is also free.
Since it is easy to understand and manage, you won’t need to hire a whole Woocomerce development company to create your website for you.
Once you are done choosing the platform, you can start focusing on the website’s design. If you want to go about the design quickly and without spending much money, you might want to check out pre-designed templates that you can purchase at an affordable cost.
However, this might not be the best option for you. It’sIt’s better that you avoid this option unless you are 100% satisfied with the template as it is.
Altering this template to make it look like the picture you have in mind is time-consuming and takes a lot of effort, which pretty much kills the whole point of opting for the ready-made template.
Therefore, if you have a particular design in mind, it’s better to get a custom-made template. This will allow you to get the website design of your exact choice.
Here are some things to consider while choosing a template
Make a list of the features you would want your website to have. The features on your website are what make your website operational and exciting. Therefore, it’s vital to include valuable features that make it easier for visitors to use your website.
Your website’s home page forms the very first impression when someone first visits your online eCommerce store. Choose a homepage style according to your business goal that would fit the whole look of your website.
One of the most critical factors that affect the success of your website is whether or not it offers smooth navigation. The majority of visitors are most likely to leave your website if it is not easy to navigate. So, make sure that it’s easy for your website visitors to find the product they are looking for.
Once you are done designing your website, SEO optimization is the next thing to focus on. Using the right SEO strategies can help your website rank higher in search results.
Also, getting organic traffic depends on the relevance of your content in the eyes of web crawlers.
The two most important things to keep in mind while going for SEO optimization are:
Make sure you do proper keyword research to understand better what customers are frequently searching for. If the content of your website is not targeting the right keywords, then the chances are that your website won’t receive sufficient traffic.
On-site optimization refers to making your site more usable, accessible, and eye-catching. Use headings, titles, filters, drop-down menus, search bar, and more to make your site easy to use.
When it comes to online stores, the more payment options available, the better, it has been shown through studies that customers are most likely to abandon their shopping carts if the website is not offering the payment options of their choice.
To ensure that you don’t lose customers because of this one major mistake, try to make the checkout process simple and user-friendly. Also, it is better to include as many payment options as you can, such as cash on delivery, debit card, credit card, etc.
Once you have designed and optimized your website and it’s up and running. The next step is to start marketing it. This will help attract potential to your website and build your brand reputation.
There are many ways to market your product or your website. You can opt for email marketing, online advertising, or social activity on social media platforms; whatever option suits your business the most.
Many development companies that offer eCommerce website development services also provide the option of online marketing of your website.
That’s it for now. Overall, eCommerce website development is not a difficult task if you plan out the whole process of building and designing your website from the start.
Also, the right marketing strategies can help get the revenues flowing quickly. We hope this guide to eCommerce website development helped you!
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