Ecommerce Website Development Solutions For Beginners

You may be a student, offline seller, or a working professional who wants to start an online business. In this article, all your eCommerce website development solutions are mentioned with detailed information.

No doubt having an online store gives a global presence and advantages in doing business as compared to offline mode. As per the data, there are 20 million websites that are engaged in online business but if you are planning to start yours then you must focus on some of the major facts and figures of online business and the world of eCommerce, and you may think with 20 million websites, you are nowhere in the competition but focus on the users that are expected to reach 2 billion globally.

You have to make strategies for your online store before launching the website because making sales is your objective but before that, the process must be clear to you. Many service providers would offer web development solutions for your startup, but you have to select what suits best to your business model and audience.

Strategies Before Launching Your eCommerce Stores

To look engaging and satisfying to your customer you need to add these points before launching your webpage.

Develop Your eCommerce Business Model

First, you need to clarify what business you are planning to do, do you want to deal with customers directly? Or are you looking for other businesses to look for your services in their work? Three business models you may do:-

B2C Business Model-

• Without third-party intervention, you have access to offer personalized products/services directly to your audience to maximize customer satisfaction as Amazon and Flipkart do. 
• The B2C model is widely accepted by retailers as they have to spend a lesser amount on marketing compared to B2B but makes it a point B2C also has a lower average order value.
• You need to deliver quality products as buyers can only compare your products with other e-business stores in terms of quality and price but they cannot physically touch them.

B2B Business Model-

• If you choose this model, then you must have products in bulk to offer other businesses to sell. You need to define your demographics to reach your targeted audience as IndiaMart does.
• B2B’s revenue is expected to reach $1.2 trillion by 2021 in the US alone and 93% of buyers prefer online purchase of B2B products for their business. This shows the opportunity to grow.
• You have a higher average order value compared to the B2B model because you persuade companies to buy your services in bulk that helps you generate much higher revenue and profit.

You can also look for expert guidance like James Choi says about B2B business model:-

C2C Business Model

• Here, you are offering an e-commerce platform by which other individuals can do their business and offer their services to the end consumer. You earn here by commissions and ad models.
• Here the main concern is you have to build your brand value by inviting other sellers to sell their items on your platform. If you are fine with this it may lead to high profits.
• Your objectives for this e-commerce platform apart from sales must be to build relations with other sellers and help buyers to locate them and find the sellers they need.

Must-have Features For Your eCommerce Business Model

• Create a buyer persona to relate with your audience to market the product they want.
• Focus on providing value to your audience either they are sellers or buyers.
• Your platform needs to be compelling, so optimize your pages for conversion.
• Engage with the audience and reply to their queries to build trust in customer support.

Ecommerce Website Development Solutions For Designing Your Platforms

Now that you have analyzed your business model, your next step should be budget and competitor analysis because avoiding them may negatively affect your startup. 

1. Budget Estimation

The budget of creating a website depends on your requirements, and there are many factors that affect your budget allocation.

Types And Purpose 

After analyzing the first step of the business model, now you need to clarify the objective of developing it. A clear goal would help you determine what type of website you require for your e-store.

It includes personal blogs, brochure websites, e-market, web portal, catalog, and educative websites. For e-business websites, if you are adding 100-1000 products, it costs $5,000-$50,000 (it includes all from design to development to maintenance).

SEO, Multimedia And Graphic Design

Designing logos and images for your platform requires additional cost and may add to your budget. Graphics and multimedia are also key factors that add to the cost of your website development.

Optimizing SEO is an essential task that lets search engines consider your platform among the searches that users make. SEO is an ongoing process and you must stay updated with the current algorithm of search engines, which requires costs.

UX Impacts The Costs

There might be chances in the future that you would have to change the overall user experience of your online store. The reason being maybe an old template, too rigid, and then you may have to shift the entire settings done to another platform.

2. Competitor And Market Analysis

SEO techniques involve competitor analysis and if you are new to SEO you must hire some experienced professional that would do it. It simply means to analyze your competitor’s activities like, on what keywords they are ranking? It also involves their backlink analysis, top content analysis, and keyword gap analysis. With this, you may find who is your tough competitor and what tactics you need to follow more.

Market analysis involves the research of demographics, customer values, and market trends. Building a network requires intense research on what is in trend in your industry? Where is the right audience that would generate revenue for you? What is the age of your target audience according to the product you deliver? Effective research will help you in finding your potential customer, so never avoid market analysis.

3. Build A Store For Your Electronic Commerce

Now that you have done all the strategies and research. It is time that you pick the best eCommerce website development solutions by choosing the suitable platform for your website. First, you need to understand that you must select the platform based on your requirements and goals, not just because it is popular. Some factors to look at while selecting it are:-

• Look for the vendors that are offering an SEO-friendly platform. This will not allow ranking on search engines, but you can use your domain name, users can also leave reviews.
• Mobile-friendliness websites are more preferred by the users because not all your audience will use laptops or PCs to search for your listed products/services. 
• That gives you security as it is a digital platform and customers will be adding their card details for payments, so you have to make sure you prevent hacking and easy access of payment.
• When you expand your business or when your business will scale, it requires improvements in features due to high traffic, look for the platform that provides the support in this case.

Website Builders, That Provide The Best eCommerce Website Development Solutions:-

• WooCommerce and WordPress– WordPress offers many features that help you keep your design, content, and functionality separated from each other by giving you complete control of your website.

• WeCodeFuture–  Develop eCommerce websites, Redesigning, Designing logos, security features, and web development are essentials for your platform to be done. So you can use them for these properties.

• Magneto– This platform helps you to reduce the page load time, query processing and other essential points like your e-store platform can have hundreds of customized extensions. 

• Prestashop- Apart from customized logos and themes, it is a pocket-friendly platform that fits your budget, also it has many payment method integrations that are available for free.

• Shopify- One of the most popular platforms can be quite expensive for you in the beginning but it is worth it because it comes with 24*7technical support, secured hosting solutions, multiple payment gateway, and many others.

Must-Have Features For Your eCommerce Website Development Solutions In Selecting The Platform:-

• E-commerce Analytics
• Flexible product pricing
• Flexible shipping
• The third-party customer review system
• Multiple online payment gateways
• Website customization

Additionally, you are advised to consider the eCommerce website development steps so that it becomes easier for you to develop. Also, it would prevent you from taking steps that you should not take.

4. Select Website Hosting

Web hosting is as important as building your website or you can say they both are independent of each other. Web hosting means after website building you need your e-store to go live otherwise there is no use to do all the hard work in website development.

• Purchase the one that is up to your budget and offer to host at reasonable rates.
• Prefer better page load speed hosting and low-performing woes.
• Prefer the one offering high uptime, meaning you can control the website 99%.
• As mentioned above, buy that offers security and a flexible domain name.

5. First impression is the last impression!

This saying is very much applicable in your startup and this is a very common practice to adopt. Tell me is there any time when you prefer a dull layout over an entertaining layout. Whatever strategies you have adopted in website creation and your business, customers will only go for the one that has a pleasant look and design.

Don’t “over-bomb” your e-market design with logos and images rather make it look attractive. You can also hire a website development agency for the same that has expertise in doing this according to your requirement.

6. Promotion 

After you have made your e-store and added all your services to it, it is time to market yourself. With the high competition, you need to make a social presence and brand awareness among your audience and potential customers. Either you can hire an expert or do it by yourself. One effective practice is already mentioned i.e SEO. Others are Social Media Marketing, Content Marketing, Influencer Marketing, and Collaborations.

You have various sources to learn web development from scratch and apart from this blog, I recommend this video to you, this video of “GeeksforGeeks”.

FAQs Asked By Some Hustlers

Q1- What is the best way to develop the website?

With all the above-mentioned strategies, you can implement them effectively or you can hire experts like WeCodeFutre for the same that offers the best services including custom website design and development.

Q2- How does a website development agency help you build a business?

No doubt building a startup is not an easy task and requires a lot of effort. But the ecosystem of e-business will help you in the process as it has many advantages compared to offline stores like you require less startup cost, you have access to global presence, and technological advancement.

Final Thoughts

These mentioned tips and strategies are done by many because they are effective. But not all have gained what they thought. Reasons being- cut-throat competition, inconsistency, lack of coordination among members, budget issues, and many more.

But you just need two things i.e patience and knowledge. These cannot be done in a day, week, or month. It takes years to strategize and implement. So be patient and grab knowledge by reading blogs, videos, and business case studies. You can read further articles on website development which I have mentioned here “why eCommerce website development is significant in 2021?”