The small BIG things in Ecommerce projects
Over the last few years, the eCommerce industry has witnessed an exponential growth across the globe. The eCommerce industry has been successful in attracting many entrepreneurs and investors’ attention and this trend is expected to only grow in the future. This means the birth of many new eCommerce stores will be seen in the near future and rise in competition. Another major reason behind the rise in eCommerce investments is its ease of development and setting up of operations.
With the plethora of eCommerce websites available and high competition within the industry, it is important to survive. To stand out among the competitors, it is important to pay undivided attention at every step of eCommerce development. Let’s take a look at some major small things which should be developed meticulously to bring big positive changes to the website:
1. Identify the audience, products, and services
It is repeatedly mentioned in almost every article that the first thing every eCommerce store owner needs to do is to know its target audience. Having complete information about the target audience helps in developing the e-store and reaching them in the best possible way. This step doesn’t end at the initial stage. Even after the successful launch of eCommerce store, it is essential to interact with the customers in the form of feedback and reviews to know them better and improve the customer service, which is of great importance at present.
Along with knowing the customers, it is vital to segment the products and services according to the target customers as this help in marketing each product and service in the right way to the right audience.
2. Choose the right eCommerce web hosting platform
A good hosting server plays a major role in the success of an eCommerce store. It is imperative to choose a quality host as the hosting platform decides the performance efficiency of the eCommerce store. There are a few parameters to check while selecting the web hosting platform, let’s take a look at a few major of them:
• Scalability
The web hosting platform should be able to adapt to your business needs i.e. the website should be able to handle the overload of traffic and optimize the overall costs as well.
• Provision to plugin new web technologies
New web technologies are emerging in the market day by day. The platform should be able to integrate with them and inherit the benefits of it. For example, PWA is a generic web technology that can help your website to transform like a mobile app. This will help eCommerce business to spread among mobile users.
• Multi-Device support
The platform should have accessibility in different devices and adopt the options within the device.
• Speed
It is a well-known fact that every eCommerce has just 3-5 seconds to grab the attention of its audience and therefore, having a speedy web-hosting platform is vital for the success of an eCommerce store. The hosting platform should give good speed to the website.
• Uptime
Another parameter to focus on is to check for the uptime record of the websites hosted by the hosting vendor for better availability of the eCommerce website anytime, anywhere. High uptime is very important for the smooth functioning of the eCommerce website.
• Security
Being an eCommerce website, it is obvious to accept online payments and this is a very crucial part to pay attention to. It should be checked that the hosting platform is PCI-DSS compliant and provides good data security.
3. eCommerce website testing
Testing has its own importance in improving the overall performance of an eCommerce website. It checks the usability of website, bugs, response time, and good shopping experience of the customers. Testing is carried out across various platforms, in various browsers and across different devices and is done manually or can be automated. Thus, it is important to check the testing services provided by the vendor.
4. A good design
The design of the website should be unique, simple and engaging. It should be paid attention that the color theme of the website should be kept the same throughout the website. Images, products, and the text should all be aligned properly with the color scheme of the website. The display of products and their descriptions should be clear to catch the attention of the audience.
5. Easy and safe checkout process
2019 is the year of enhancing the customer experience. So, a major factor in enhancing customer behavior is a safe and quick checkout process. Websites should pay attention to allowing guest users even to pay securely and save the paying details of the returning customers. So, developing a simple and easy checkout page should also be paid attention.
6. Have a clean and SEO-friendly code
Another thing to focus on is having a clean code and SEO friendly code. The optimized code helps the search engine spiders to check the eCommerce store and rank it accordingly. Having a clean and SEO-friendly code of the eCommerce store also helps in easy optimization in the future and also increases the overall return on the investments.
7. Integration with the social media
Social media holds a pivotal role in bringing success to a business. Audience across the globe is sitting online most of the time and hence, it is important to make your business’ effective presence on those social media platforms. Therefore, this makes it a requirement for the eCommerce store owners to integrate their stores with the social media they expect their audience to be sitting. Sharing content on social media can be very helpful in promoting the store and keeping the audience updated about the latest offers and additions.
8. Comprehensive sitemap
A sitemap is very important in letting customers know what the eCommerce store has for them. Not only visitors, but even the search engines can navigate the eCommerce store and discover the contents. Another thing to keep in mind is to continuously update the sitemap whenever new additions are made to the eCommerce store.
9. Marketing
Marketing of products and services to the right audience at the right time is very important. It is generally observed that organizations usually make their marketing plan after the launch of an eCommerce website. But, to run a successful eCommerce store, it is advised to chart the marketing plan before the launch of the eCommerce store. There are many ways of marketing products online like social media marketing, e-mail marketing, content marketing, etc. Every marketing channel has its own importance while marketing the products.
Choosing the right channel to market the products is very crucial as the online audience is sitting on different channels to look for particular services and products. So, having a good marketing plan is necessary for the success of an eCommerce website.
There are many aspects to consider while developing an eCommerce store, but if attention is paid on the above-mentioned aspects, there are high chances of developing a highly responsive eCommerce website and make a strong position among competitors.