eCommerce Web Development from Scratch

In this article I will be very briefly skimming over the vital stages it generally takes to get successful online businesses up and running from scratch. So let’s get started. Be sure to check off every aspect of development with this

67 Point Ecommerce Website Development Checklist + Cost Considerations by x-cart

Work out your products

Before you can do anything, you need to work out what you are going to sell on your online store. At the very least, you need to work out what niche you are going to cover which will lead to you finding relevant products.

It is often advised to try and build your ecommerce business around a passion of yours and it is good advice. You don’t want to be spending massive amounts of time building up something that bores you. At the same time, you must be confident that there is enough of an audience in the niche, not too much competition and there are products that they would buy.

That being said, if you do see a huge gap in the market then go for it. You just might not have the same enthusiasm to get you through the gruelling parts of the process if you aren’t passionate about it.

Either way, try to stand out!

Understand your audience

This is a good reason to go with an audience of people you can relate too in a niche you are personally interested and engaged with already. This is because you need to learn how your target audience thinks so that you can customize their whole experience in a way that will drive more sales.

As well as personalising the user experience for your target market, you can also use this information in your eCommerce marketing efforts to finely tune your targeting to make sure your ads are aimed at a worthwhile audience of eyeballs.

Pick a brand name

You need a brand name that stands out to differentiate you from your competition. Keeping it short tend to be best practice. Notice how not many brands use many words or even syllables. Short and catchy is what you want to be looking for.

Originality is a big one and can be tricky as you will probably find that a Google search for your concept name brings up a list of businesses with the same idea. You may also find trouble securing a domain name if you don’t have a completely original idea.

Try not to waste too much time on this but do keep in mind all of these tips mentioned. Once you know what your name should be and how it should look in a browsers address bar, buy up the domain and get ready for it to blossom.

Time for branding

Powerful branding will leave an imprint of your business embedded in the minds of people and that is exactly what you want.

The first place to start is with the color palette. You will want to have a small selection of colors that you will use in your logo and around your site to create a consistent feel.

For logos, I recommend putting down Microsoft Paint and getting a professional to do it. You can use a freelancer found online or even better, run a competition amongst freelancers where you can pick the winning design and pay the winner.

It’s all about building up an identity that people will remember and think of when they think of your niche.

Choose the best eCommerce platform

As online shopping grows, so does the list of platforms that can facilitate it. This makes it ever more daunting of a task to pick one.

If you are just a small business or are only just getting into online selling then a simple to use solution like Shopify is probably sufficient for you while something like NopCommerce would be much better for well established brick and mortar stores that want to bring their catalog to the world wide web or large enterprise solutions that need speed and stability while dealing with large amounts of sales and a big catalog.

This part of the process can require a great deal of research to get up and running but make sure you don’t get stuck in analysis paralysis and take too long to pull the trigger. While not exactly a fun job, you can always migrate to another platform down the line if required.

Download NopCommerce Official Download from source !

Work out your content

A web store generally requires a lot of content. Just think of all the product names. descriptions (long and short), prices, photos and text that populate category pages and even the home page.

It is essential that your product images are top notch to entice consumers. The original photos should stand out and be stunning but also make sure that you resize and compress them in a way that maintains their striking quality but doesn’t bring your product pages to a crawl.

This is also the best time to implement onsite SEO so make sure you have some serious keyword research done, probably by a professional and take on board the results of that research when filling your pages.

Blog articles can be an awesome way to bring people to your site in a less direct manner that will lead to sales. Writing on topics that would interest your audience or even better, answer the questions and pain points that they are typing into Google to draw them into the awareness stage of selling.

By using a good content marketing strategy with well written blog articles, you can attract your potential customers through both SEO and social media sharing.

Structure things well

Your eCommerce website has to be well organized so that it can be easily navigated by the quickly frustrated human of today. By keeping everything well compartmentalized in categories, you make it simple for visitors to find what they are looking for.

Try a minimalist approach when it comes to the taxonomy of your website. You want the potential customer to be able to get where they want to be in as little clicks as possible to reduce the chances of them bouncing.

By keeping everything well organized, you also improve the ability for your website to accurately recommend related products and so forth.

Category titles and descriptive text is an awesome place to make the most of your onsite SEO so make sure they are based on solid keyword research.

Optimize your processes

Once you have your store up and running, you want to make sure that it is as easy to run as possible. There are software solutions that can automate the fulfilment of orders for you. What that solution is depends on your business model is among other factors, but finding solutions that can automate anything for you will free up your time and energy which means you can either work less or, even better, scale harder.

Either way, automation will reduce stress and increase happiness so do as much as possible. If you can’t find a way to optimize something then consider delegating to someone else. Cheap virtual assistants can be found all over and with a little research and trial and error, you can find yourself one that you’ll love for making your life that much easier!

Before we let you go here is a compressive list of the top uk ecommerce company (s) in the UK

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