TIPS FOR BUILDING A SUCCESSFUL CUSTOM E-COMMERCE WEBSITE

Imagine you have two options: going to a brick-and-mortar store and spend there hours waiting in long queues or staying in your cozy home and order everything you need in just a couple of clicks. Most people would definitely go for the first one. This being one of the most significant factors why the eCommerce industry is growing so rapidly.

Sure, having an e-commerce website is a plus to your business, but you should never forget about the complexity and many efforts you have to apply. Here the question arises: is it really worth it? Our answer is definitely yes! In this article, our e-commerce development team will tell you exactly what you need to know before starting building an e-store from scratch.

Why you need a custom eCommerce website

For creating an e-commerce website, you are free to choose from a range of approaches. There is an option to use an e-commerce platform like Magento, Shopify, etc, and ready templates. Sure, it will save you time and resources for the development; however, there is still another option we strongly recommend you to consider, – fully customized website. And here are the main reasons why:

To start with, you can easily make integration with particular back-end software. It can also be helpful if you need peculiar payment methods to implement. By the way, You can read our guide to integrating payment gateways into the Commerce website.

Customization is a great way to give more opportunities to your customers. And here are some of them:

• highly customizable or specific products.
• A higher number of shipping options.
• A unique design and handy features
• The particular needs of your business are easily met
• You are standing out by not being a standard e-shop.

There is always a place for something new, especially when it comes to IT industry. So you are free to create, invent and come up with fresh ideas.

Must have eCommerce website features

In such an intense competition we have in the eCommerce industry nowadays, you may add everything you wish to meet the customers’ expectations. However, there is a set of the features your e-commerce website definitely needs:

Top-level domain with HTTPs. The domain name is something more than just a combination of letters. It’s the security, and comfort to find you. In case your website is targeting a specific country, use the domain of it.

User-friendly navigation. You don’t have to make the challenge out of the buying process. The navigation is great when the customers can perform it intuitively.
Customer login. Don’t make it obligatory, but providing special promotions and updates for the registered users are doubtlessly tempting.

Shopping cart. Yes, you do need a shopping cart not only to know what products the customers want to buy. There are other functions a shopping cart should perform. Those include overall price calculation and navigation to the checkout page.

A search bar is inevitable if you want your users to find what they want fast. Product filtering and sorting are important to avoid time-consuming scrolling of products if they are not categorized.

Diverse payment options. This one is simple – want to attract more people – provide the versatile payment option to suit more buyers. Besides, it is a great plus for secure money transactions.

Best practices for eCommerce website development

In SapientPro we strongly believe that analyzing the market can help determine the strong and weak points of the competitors. All the information can make a business owner more armored and compatible. Here are some tips we prepared for you:

Distance your website from clutter. In most cases, it is better when it is simpler. Don’t try to distract your customers with too many icons, images, and buttons. An overloaded website not only confuses the visitors, but it also has a detrimental effect on the performance.

Organize the products with a neat and clear-cut menu. Categorization is great, but know when enough is enough.

Add images and videos of high quality. Let the users see the product from different angles, rotate them and zoom. And don’t forget about the detailed description. More product information increases the reliability and chances of selling goods.

Beware of ads. Don’t do yourself harm by helping others. Besides, advertisements are really distracting.

Step by step eCommerce website development process

Preparation of the technical project

Being the first step, it should define the essential aspects, resources and of course, functionality stack. Advise experienced developers, they definitely know all technical ins and outs of the eCommerce project development.

Creating a prototype

You can start with an MVP (minimal viable project). It is a great possibility to see where you are moving. A simple model should contain the features you need to implement.

Creating a Design Pattern

Custom or not, take care of simple and responsive design. Having a unique website is awesome and attracts customers, but on the other hand, it requires more investments.

Layout

It’s time to arrange all the visual elements on the page. Don’t forget about optimization for mobile devices and tablets.

Development

And here the hard work start. Coding, adding something new and solving issues. Be ready that the development process requires a lot of effort and communication with the team of devs

Testing and debugging the site

Be sure that no bugs crawl into your website. Testing should be profound to assure the highest quality of your future eCommerce website.

UI/UX design for eCommerce website

One more step you cannot simply ignore when building your digital strategy is deciding on how your website will look like. You should provide your customers not only with the blazing first impression and beautiful interface. Make the purchasing process as easy and comfortable as possible. Contended customers will return to you website for sure.

To make your website trendy be sure the design is simple, the main features and categories are highlighted, there is a visual hierarchy and the elements don’t offend the eye. Yet, it’s always an option to experiment. People are attracted to all new, so don’t be afraid to try.

Post-development actions to make your custom eCommerce site successful

When the development process is finally finished, the question arises: what should I do next? How to launch an e-store successfully and attract first clients?

The first and foremost thing for you to remember is that in order to visit and buy something on your eCommerce website, people have to hear about it or at least see in the search results. As you can see, marketing cannot be underestimated.

Think of your target customers, what are they interested in, where you can find them? For example, if you are selling something for the youth, your potential buyers are all in socials: Facebook, Instagram, and others. Introduce some powerful and eye-catching ads.

One more recommendation for you is taking care of SEO and analytics. If you constantly track the performance of your website, you can easily identify problems and bottlenecks and be more prepared for solving them.

Cost of eCommerce website development

If you come to the development team and ask them how much will it cost you to build a custom website for eCommerce needs, don’t expect to get the budget estimated right away.

Price is what should be considered very thoroughly, as far as the budget is dependant on numerous factors. Those include the size of your business, the choice of e-commerce platform, the uniqueness of the design and of course the functionality. In general, more features-more money. If you need more information about estimating the budget, read our article, where we are discreet about the prices of building eCommerce websites in 2019-2020.

There are still so many questions to be discussed. If you feel like continue the research into creating a highload eCommerce website, get in touch. Our e-commerce development team has many years of experience behind, And still, we always thrive to learning, implementing new techniques, keep up with the times. That’s why don’t hesitate, we will help turn your idea into a real project you will be proud of.