When it comes to developing an ecommerce website, each business has unique needs and goals. Creating an effective ecommerce site to sell your products online involves weaving together multiple variables. To reflect your brand and the types of customers you want, you’ll need a strong combination of clear design and a friendly user interface.
Fundamentals for Having a Successful Ecommerce Site
Whether you’re creating a new ecommerce site or updating an existing one, remember that as website capabilities have evolved in recent years, so have customer expectations regarding the shopping experience. Ask yourself these questions in order to guide your ecommerce development plans:
- Can customers easily access the site on their phone or tablet (responsive design)? Do photos and videos load quickly?
- Can customers easily search and purchase items on their mobile devices? Can they simply press “buy” to make a transaction?
- Can customers easily navigate products in ways logical to the business?
- Is it easy for administrators to add products or update information and images? Is it easy to find programmers when needed?
- Does the ecommerce system integrate well with back-office tools, such as NetSuite, QuickBooks, and ERP, POS or CRM systems?
- Does it work with shipping software to facilitate inventory management?
If you already have an ecommerce website and answered “no” to any of these questions, it may be time to update to keep it the best in its market. If you’re embarking upon creating a new ecommerce site, use these questions to guide what you need the site to do.
To make sure your site satisfies current customers and attracts new ones, while being easy for you to work with behind-the-scenes, include these key features:
- Distinctive site design that reinforces your branding
- Efficient transactions using credit cards or PayPal
- Security of information
- Search friendly design and search engine optimization (SEO) methods
- Configured to the needs and goals of your business, i.e., showing shoppers related products
- Database integration to easily update data feeds and upload to shopping channels
- Integrate well with back-office software for accounting, supply, shipping, etc.
- Scalability to easily add products and product lines
- Drop-ship integration for selling products from other suppliers
June 7, 2020
All Articles