e-Commerce has transformed the way of life by linking every seller, end-users, and buyer together regardless of the geographical location. Apart from revolutionizing the way of life, e-Commerce website development is now one of the most valuable and fastest growing industries across the world. It is a huge platform that provides boundless freedom for users to endorse your services and products without restrictions.
For many business owners, entrepreneurs, startups, retailers, and commercial enterprises developing an e-Commerce website is an essential decision that provides a competitive edge in online shopping for consistent revenue generation. e-Commerce websites allow consumers to discover, compare and buy desired services and products online conveniently with few clicks using tablets, smartphones, and PCs at home.
In this article, we look at the ultimate guide for successful e-Commerce Website Development. So, let's dive into a complete focus on developing a successful e-Commerce website without wasting much time.
What are the Main Types of e-Commerce Websites?
Before we step into the e-Commerce website development process, let's first examine the main types of e-Commerce websites. These include:
●Business to Business (B2B) e-Commerce Websites
As the name suggests, this involves selling goods and services between businesses through an online sales portal. B2B e-Commerce websites are designed to improve the company's efficiency and effectiveness in its sales efforts. A good example would be a machine-creator selling a cutting tool to a company that specializes in woodwork.
● Business-to-Customer (B2C) e-Commerce Websites
This type of e-Commerce website involves online purchases between a business and consumer. B2C e-Commerce websites enable customers to enjoy a shopping experience that is similar to what they get on offline stores, but by using an online catalog, checking out, and picking items for purchase virtually. Examples of such websites include Amazon, IndiaMart, Shopclues, and Flipkart.
●Consumer-to-Business (C2B) e-Commerce Websites
C2B Websites is another popular type of e-Commerce website that features a concept that is used in platforms that offer freelancers. In this setup, there are freelancers who work on the jobs offered by clients, which are mainly commercial entities.
●Customer-to-Customer (C2C) e-Commerce Websites
This refers to e-Commerce websites where one consumer purchases goods and services from another consumer through online modes. Examples of this type of e-Commerce website include Etsy and eBay.
●Auction/Bidding Websites
The websites present a platform where different products are listed for auction, and then users are allowed to share their bids to procure the product.
Benefits of e-Commerce Websites
- Grows your business reach by targeting various local markets, locally and internationally
- It helps reduce marketing and operational costs required to promote and run physical stores
- Increasing sales volume through attracting more potential clients due to the 24/7 professional online store
- Generating more cross-selling and upselling opportunities through remarketing campaigns
- It helps track consumers behavior to customize your marketing and products campaigns
Factors to Consider When Developing an e-Commerce Website
There are a number of factors that you need to put in mind from conceptualization of your plan to the final stage in the development stage. These include:
1. e-Commerce Website Development Budget
The first factor that you need to consider when developing your e-Commerce website is your budget. The website budget will play a critical role in determining the design and features of the website. The following key points will help you come up with the right website pricing:
- Choosing an affordable and reliable developer type: Consider the costs run when choosing either an in-house, independent or remote developers' team.
- Developer rates. This will mainly depend on the experience, location, and portfolio
- Web architecture intricacy
- Complexity and number of functionalities
- Assimilation and number of APIs offered by third parties
- SSL endorsement cost, web hosting cost
2. Carry out thorough research of the Business Industry
The other important factor in creating a successful e-Commerce Website Development is ensuring you have a thorough knowledge of your business industry. In this case, you need to conduct a market analysis that enables you to understand all the loopholes in the market. Moreover, a thorough knowledge of the business will help you set business targets and also develop strategies to help you achieve them.
3. Analyze your competitors
Search and analyze your competitors and understand their working segments. You can effectively achieve this by searching web indexes such as Yahoo and Google and using the applicable catchphrases. Check and determine the promotional schemes and features they are utilizing to attract customers and make a high sales volume.
4. Identify your target audience
Since you know what you want to sell, the next step should be identifying the one you would like to sell it to. Here are the key things that you need to understand about your audience:
- Purchasing inclinations
- Gadgets that they use for computing
- Their location
- Their demography
- Cultural values
5. Create a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
e-Commerce websites are designed to help you buy or sell goods and services through online stores. Creating an e-Commerce MVP enables you to test some businesses' level in pulling people to purchase goods and products from them. Moreover, creating an MVP allows you to develop an innovative, engaging shopping platform that runs on a unique algorithm to provide a wonderful user experience.
Main Steps in e-Commerce Website Development
1. Choosing the appropriate e-Commerce Solutions
Choosing the most suitable e-Commerce solutions is the first step in your development process. These solutions should turn your website into a fully-functional online store that integrates all the desired and required features.
2. Creating a user-friendly e-Commerce website design
After choosing the most suitable e-Commerce solutions, the next step should be creating a professional e-Commerce website design that is user-friendly. The e-Commerce website design should provide a competitive edge for your online store by providing a wonderful user experience.
3. Delivering an excellent online shopping experience
Creating a website that provides the best online shopping experience enables you to avoid losing current and potential customers to your competitors. This can be achieved by creating efficient product categorization, increasing the online store pages' loading speed, and applying product filtering options and advanced search.
4. Testing and launching your platform
Once you ensure that your website has the best online shopping experience, the next step should be testing all the components and features before launching your online store. You can launch your platform once you are satisfied with its performance and functionality.
5. Promoting your eCommerce store
Once you launch your site, it becomes available to potential buyers, but you need to promote it to the target audience to ensure that more and more people know about it. You can do this through digital marketing or social media campaigns.
6. Evaluating your business performance
The last step in e-Commerce website development is evaluating your e-Commerce performance to identify its strengths and weaknesses. This will help determine the updates that you need to make to ensure that you can attract more potential buyers.
Conclusion
Developing a successful e-Commerce website begins with identifying your desired goals and business needs that you need to achieve through your online store. Once you define your business needs and targets, you need to seek the services of an experienced and reliable e-Commerce solutions provider to take you through the development process.
Writter:
Thanh Pham (Bruce)
CEO
Saigon Technology
Vietnam
Thanh (Bruce) Pham strives to deliver successful projects maximising value for the Client by clearly establishing the project objectives and risks, controlling the programs and costs and pro-actively managing the project teams.
Email: [email protected]
