What Should E-Commerce Entrepreneurs Invest in To Build a Strong Shop

Types of eCommerce Solutions

In addition to an online shop itself, there are several eCommerce solutions entrepreneurs use to streamline their daily tasks, stay in touch with the customers, run marketing campaigns and manage data.

• Customer relationship management (CRM) system. This is the solution that allows for gathering data about the prospective leads and existing customers with a goal to develop better personalized interactions and marketing campaigns, delivering a more customer-centric shopping experience. There are both ready-made CRM systems and custom ones, created specifically for the needs of a certain retail business.
• eCommerce marketing software. Sometimes marketing features come as a part of CRM but in most cases, eCommerce companies use a set of dedicated solutions to run marketing campaigns across different channels.
• Custom eCommerce website. This is the core tool in eCommerce business since a custom eCommerce platform is the main point of interaction with the customers, working as a solution for sales, brand development and recognition, reputation building and customer data generation.

That’s why most eCommerce business owners consider their website the main priority that is worth their investment. However, not all online shops come with a potential to drive sales, so let’s find out the essentials of custom eCommerce development for business.

What Makes a Conversion-Driving eCommerce Website

Below are the main pillars of a successful eCommerce website that are worth investing in.

• Clear UI. The user interface of an eCommerce website should be as clear as possible so that the prospective customers have no questions about the process of discovering the products, adding them to the shopping cart and checking out. That’s why the UI design is always carefully tested on the MVP development stage with the help of users’ surveys and heat maps.
• Enjoyable UX. Both the shopping process and the process of interaction with your online store should be pleasant and enjoyable. The websites with clear UI are usually able to deliver positive UX, so these two elements can’t be separated from each other, and they are some of the most important points to pay careful attention to and invest in during eCommerce website development.
• Branded design. Web design for an eCommerce business is pretty specific. Firstly, the design of an eCommerce website should follow the best practices of UI/UX to make shopping enjoyable for the customers. Secondly, it should reflect the brand identity so that the prospective leads and the customers can associate the website design with a brand, develop a strong association and differentiate the brand from the competition. The colors used to design an eCommerce platform should also be aligned with the company’s value and mission – that’s why following the brand style guide is essential in the process of an eCommerce website development.
• Bug-free code. In the perfect picture of the world, any website should come with no bugs and technical flaws. Testing and quality assurance are even more important for eCommerce websites that work in a competitive business environment since a little technical flaw can lead to a high bounce rate, abandoned cart, and user data hacking.
• Recommendation engine and chatbots. Integrating an eCommerce website with AI tools is already a must. The users expect the opportunity to quickly chat with a bot instead of reaching out to the support team, plus get better-personalized product recommendations. Integrating these tools via APIs isn’t much difficult but these are the points you can’t miss during the process of eCommerce development.
• Integrations. Also, a powerful eCommerce website should be integrated with CRM, plus analytic and reporting tools to get data-driven insights, analyze and evaluate your marketing campaigns performance, unlock the users’ behavior patterns on the website, and use all the gathered data in the further promotion.
• Content and SEO. Promoting an eCommerce business is impossible without search engine optimization, and SEO is impossible without the highest-end content. Still, the content you should fill your website with is only one of the elements essential for SEO promotion – there are a lot of technical specifics as well. For example, clean code is one of the factors evaluated by a search engine, and that’s why custom eCommerce websites should always be developed with SEO requirements in mind.

We, at Eco & Tech, always stand for the opportunity to grow your website with the help of SEO, creating it according to the best practices and Google’s expectations. Get in touch with us for SEO-focused eCommerce development services!

The Ways to Build an eCommerce Website

There are several ways to develop an eCommerce website but not all of them can promise a conversion-driving solution with all the essential features and capabilities we have reviewed below. Let’s compare the options in more detail.

Online builders. Online builders are the website development platforms created according to the SaaS business model. After paying a subscription fee, the users get access to the eCommerce website templates, designs, and features to create their own shop. As a rule, these templates are rather standard, they have no room for customization and branding, plus successful SEO promotion of a website created with the help of an online builder is almost impossible.

CMS. A CMS or content management system is a smarter tool to build an eCommerce website. WordPress is the most popular example of a CMS, and a lot of business owners use it to create their platforms. To manage WordPress, you should have some technical skills and design vision. Plus, when it comes to eCommerce development with its help, you need a lot of plugins to deliver good UX, and that’s why the website loading speed can be lower, which also negatively affects SEO promotion.

No to low code platforms. These solutions combine the best features of online builders and content management systems, plus they come with an already predeveloped business logic you may either use immediately or change according to your business needs. However, even no-code development still needs technical skills and knowledge, so this option is good for idea validation but not for full-fledged eCommerce website building.

Custom development from scratch. Creating a fully custom eCommerce website is the most advanced and promising tactic those serious about their retail business usually follow. The path of custom development promises an opportunity to make your website fully branded, create such a UI and UX your target audience expects, plus add all the essential integrations without sacrificing the website quality and page loading speed. Custom websites are also easy to scale and grow along with your business growth, they are more appreciated by Google and most importantly, the users love the shopping experience a well-developed eCommerce platform can deliver.

Feel like custom eCommerce website development is value-adding for your business? Let Eco & Tech help you with this task!