eCommerce Website Development: A to Z Guide

An eCommerce website is a platform that enables businesses to build their online store and carry out monetary transactions for making payments via the internet. e-Commerce websites are developed in 3 essential parts: a storefront, products and a check-out.

eCommerce website development is developing the technical aspects to build your eCommerce website — design, showcase products, select and move chosen product to cart, other functionality, enabling payment transactions, and automatically complete order flow and ensure delivery.

Benefits of eCommerce website development

An efficient way of reaching out to more customers: Since mobile and internet penetration has touched almost every part of the world, now more people can connect via eCommerce.

Sell round the clock: Unlike the brick and mortar shop, your eCommerce website remains accessible to people and is selling even when you are sleeping.

An excellent way to showcase your products and services: Exploring the services and products through high-resolution images and videos is an attractive way to sell. You can highlight your best collection; the how-to videos can also add effect.

Easy to update: Launching a collection online is very easy. Just keep adding and refreshing your collection. Offer discounts and sales from your eCommerce website itself.

Customer feedback becomes easy: Since most of us are mobile-friendly, it is easier to share feedback and reviews through the same platform of the eCommerce website itself.

Concept

Before getting started with eCommerce website development, you must finalize the idea and concept of your eCommerce website.

What to sell: Define your services or products

Service area: If your services are location-specific, you need to highlight the service area.

Business model (B2B OR B2C): Understand and follow the business model type, whether it will be business to business or business to customer.

Defining your targeted group: Based upon your service or product, research your targeted group/ targeted audience – age, location, the language they speak, gender, spending capacity, country of origin, Interests, etc.

Designing UI/UX

Landing page: In eCommerce website design services, first you need to make sure the landing page must have explicit content & attractive layout.

Simplest navigation: Navigation should be minimalist and straightforward, understanding the user journey.

Best Call to action buttons: You must have clear and direct call to action buttons on your eCommerce website portal like Register, Buy now, Add to cart, etcetera.

Search bar: Your eCommerce website must have a search button on the search bar located clearly on your website’s top banner for quickly finding something from your website.

Check-out screen: The check-out screen should be attractive and neat. It should be transparent with billing details, discount, promo code, shipping cost and everything mentioned there.

Clean, descriptive, easily readable content: ensure that while your eCommerce website is developing, the content should be readable, and the descriptions should be clear about the product or service. Font size, colour, and text placement. Everything must be clean and highlighted.

Elements for an effective eCommerce website

User-friendly: An effective auto-complete search, easy navigation, and direct Call To Action ensure that your eCommerce website users have a great UX.

Mobile responsive: Since almost 65% of traffic to your eCommerce website comes from mobile, make sure that your online store is mobile-friendly – content, CTA, design and everything.

User-generated reviews: It plays an essential role in your customers’ buying decisions as shoppers read reviews. Negative ones are killers; then, positive ones are also no less than a bomb.

Make it attractive: Add and update your eCommerce website with high-resolution images and videos to make your products look attractive.

Related items: Place such content in your eCommerce website like – you might like this, or shopper who bought this, also purchased this. This can be an effective way of marketing.

FAQs: Always include the basic frequently asked questions for your product and services so that your consumers can get their doubts answered.

Security features: Your eCommerce website must be built over a secured platform. You must run a check from time to time to scan and remove the possible security threats. Enable firewall, SSL certificate and more. Explore 5 best eCommerce platforms to choose from in 2022.

Payment options: Always include full payment options for your customers.

Transparent billing: Delivery or shipping charges should always be mentioned clearly on your eCommerce website’s check-out page so that there is no confusion for the users.

Features

• Fascinating UI Design
• Smooth navigation for a great user experience
• Specific Call to Action buttons to drive sales on your eCommerce portal
• The mobile compatible layout of your eCommerce website
• Security and Privacy concerns should be addressed with importance, as much sensitive data is shared on your eCommerce site.
• Customer support on your eCommerce website should be instant and highly responsive.

Getting domain name/web hosting

Customized domain name as per your business: The domain name is also referred to as “web address”, which means the address people will type to find your website. Get your domain name registered, and personalize it. Always choose a unique but straightforward domain name that connects with your business.

Website Hosting services as per your need: Secure a domain name, choose the right platform for your eCommerce website development, and select the hosting package. You also need to get an Internet Merchant Account (IMA), Payment Service Provider (PSP) and SSL certificate.

Hiring a development company

Hire an eCommerce website development company to help you build a robust and unique eCommerce website that will take your business to the next level.

You may hire a freelancer also, but a freelancer is not very responsible, and unlike a website development company, they will not be able to deliver complete services.

Implementation of new technologies

Artificial Intelligence (AI): Applying AI in your eCommerce website offers users personalized and interactive buying experiences.

Augmented Reality (AR): Augmented Reality allows the customers to preview and experience the product/service in their own spaces before purchasing.

Hyper-personalized experience: The experience takes your traditional eCommerce personalization to the next level. It enables you to utilize real-time customer and behavioral data to provide contextualized products or services for each consumer.

Ambient commerce: Ambient commerce, commonly referred to as checkout-free retail, lets the customers exit from the stores with the items they want without standing in queues. The AI technology tracks the user’s movements and automatically charges them.

Online to offline (O2O): Online-to-offline, also known as O2O commerce, is a new business strategy where potential customers are attracted from the online channels to visit offline stores and make purchases.

Chatbots: Chatbots in eCommerce websites play a crucial role by offering ways of communicating instantly with customers. This helps in solving queries of customers swiftly.

Conversational e-Commerce: Conversational e-commerce is done via various means of conversation like live support on e-commerce Websites, online chat using messaging apps, chatbots on messaging apps or eCommerce websites, voice assistants and using technology such as speech recognition, speaker recognition, natural language processing and AI.

Just pick the right platform for your eCommerce website development.

WordPress: Popular CMS platform lets you build a website on your own, like literally. Managing content is very convenient. Hence it is most preferred.

Hire a WordPress developer who will deliver you an efficient WordPress eCommerce website for your business.

Magento: Another eCommerce site-building platform by Adobe that is costly but provides a professional and excellent experience.

Shopify: a great scalable, full of features platform for eCommerce website development.

WooCommerce: A free plugin by WordPress for eCommerce shops to add to your WordPress website. Being WordPress’s teammate, it gives excellent pre-built SEO plugins and is cost-effective.

BigCommerce: This is a SaaS solution that is preferred for being highly scalable, excellent customer support and plenty of built-in features.

Kickoff the eCommerce website development work

• Finalize the business concept for your eCommerce website – what to sell, where to market and other things.
• Approve the UI/UX designs
• Select the platform for eCommerce website development
• Select the technology for your eCommerce website development
• Hybrid app development is in trend. Learn all about Hybrid app technology.
• Let it roll!

Light and fast theme

• Keep the theme of your eCommerce website minimal
• Your theme for the eCommerce website should be compatible with different types of plugins
• Must have intuitive zoom-in images
• eCommerce website themes need to be mobile responsive as most users do online shopping via their smartphones.
• Make sure the themes load fast so that your eCommerce website loads faster.

Mobile responsive website

• Best user experience for mobile users
• Better content visibility on small screens while exploring products/services
• Reduced cost of eCommerce website development if your eCommerce website is already mobile responsive, and you don’t have to get a separate site made for mobile users.
• High conversion rates are seen with mobile responsive shopping websites with the right call to action buttons.

Navigation – admin panel, user panel

Interlinked navigation: The navigation from the fixed menu on your eCommerce website that takes your users to different sections on your website.

Architecture flow: Better navigation architecture flow after understanding the user’s flow, user’s psyche.

Categories: Specific product/service categories to be highlighted in the main menu

Justified number of categories: Do not add too many or too few categories for product/services

Internal search: The search button lets your eCommerce website visitors search within the website.

Search suggestions: While your customer is typing words in the search button, give them search suggestions and make the job easier.

The admin panel must have all the necessary controls: To add/delete users, view account details, purchase orders by a customer, etc.

The user panel must have a dashboard: Like profile, past orders, track current demand, and more such details.

Order process flow

The normal eCommerce website development will ensure a natural and automatic order flow such as –

• The customer places an order through your eCommerce website
• Adds the product/services they like to the cart
• Move to the Check-out page
• Select the payment option, and then key in the address for delivery
• Makes the payment
• The warehouse receives the order request
• Item is picked from the warehouse and packed
• Order is shipped for customers’ residence
• Order is delivered to the customer’s location
• Customer feedback depends upon whether the customer is happy or he is unsatisfied with the product/service.

Products and categories

• Add relevant categories of products/services
• Write appropriate product description
• High-resolution product/service images
• Add relevant product/service videos

Quick check-out

Quick Check-out CTA: Check-out CTA should be easy to locate on your eCommerce website.

Social media login: Since everyone has a social media account and is active on social media platforms, give your users an easy way to sign in/log in with social media.

Quick registration/sign-in: Do not ask for too many details. Let your customers sign in/register in minimal steps.

Minimal step check-out process: don’t let your users halt for a long time on the check-out page. You should provide a quick check-out with a maximum of two steps.

Transparent billing page: The billing page must have all the necessary information like the levied charges, shipping charges, and delivery/packing charges.

Offers, discounts on check out page: The coupons and discounts offered to your customer should reflect on the check-out page.

Return and exchange

• Clear Return/Exchange policy to be mentioned on your eCommerce website
• The return process should be simple and indicative
• Define and detail the exchange process on the terms or policies page.

Security

• Secured web hosting
• Choose a safe eCommerce platform
• Using HTTPS
• Promote strong password hygiene
• Regular SQL checking
• 2-step login verification
• Regular Data backups
• Protection against Malware, Phishing, ransomware
• Never store user sensitive information

Testing

• Functional testing
• Usability Testing
• Security testing
• Database testing
• Performance testing
• Mobile app testing

Unique Payment methods

• Integrate all popular payment gateways like PayPal, Stripe, Apple Pay, etc
• Include Payment on Delivery
• Include payment through

Valuable content

• It is essential for an eCommerce website to do content marketing and include valuable content that can help you differentiate from your competition.
• Clear, focused topics related to the product/service you are selling
• In-depth knowledge about your targeted group and what they want.
• Strong CTAs will encourage your customers to take the appropriate action on your eCommerce website.
• Share great, engaging content that is interesting to read and share

Website SEO

• Keyword research: look for the popular keywords related to your industry and buyer intention.
• Competitor research: Always keep an eye on your competitors. What keywords are they using, where are they ranking, and are they running any ad campaigns, on which keywords?
• First, focus on your eCommerce website’s homepage SEO
• Optimize your inner pages, especially the product pages.
• Make sure to create the backlinks.
• Keep the site architecture simple.

Website search engine optimization is a crucial aspect of eCommerce website development. If you have made the best-looking website, if you are not able to bring relevant users to your website, then it is of no use!

Xpert eCommerce website development services

• Elegant eCommerce website with great UX/UI designs
• Cost-efficient and within the quick turnaround time

Your shipping integration must have –

• Shipping options to choose from
• Time incurred as per the delivery distance
• Shipping charges incurred as per the delivery distance

Zip-Zap-Go To market!

Your eCommerce website is ready to go live!

This article includes all the aspects of eCommerce website development in a simplified manner. For more information, you can contact our experts from our leading eCommerce website development company.