From relying on mega online e-commerce websites like Amazon and E-Bay many companies are now focusing on building their own e-commerce sites to directly try and tap their customers. In the last couple of years, we’ve seen a significant rise in the number of websites that are selling products online and with good reason. If you have some products you’d like to sell, it’s better to focus on developing an e-commerce website from scratch. You’ll have more control over the products you sell, the customers you are targeting and you have greater control over the pricing of the products. But if you’ve decided to build a website or are thinking about getting a professional e-commerce website development team, here is a checklist that you should be aware of.

Guidelines for E-Commerce Website Development

1. Understand the customer and product
Don’t build a website simply because you want to have an online presence without the customer base of the product that will sell online. There are plenty of products that have a higher propensity to sell offline than through online sales to ensure that you’ve made the right choice in going ahead for an e-commerce website development. If you need additional advice you can always get in touch with the best website development company in your area.

2. Choosing the right platform
Once you’ve decided to come online the next question becomes which platform to use and there is plenty of e-commerce website platform to choose from. You can either go with Hybris, Magento, WooCommerce, Shopify or even consider building your website from scratch using HTML, Java, and CSS. What you need to keep in mind, especially if you have a sizeable user base is to make sure you have
– A functioning customer relationship management tool to handle all their requirements
– A payment gateway integration to make paying for your products simpler
– Strong backend which can support your frontend activities
– Mobile responsiveness for all pages

3. Website Hosting Provider
Once you’ve decided which platform you want to choose the next choice to be made is the hosting provider you will go with. Now you may think that all host provide the same services, but in our multiple years of experience in website development and web design, we’ve seen that some services, although priced identically, have vastly different service levels. If you need more details on hosting providers for your website please feel free to get in touch with us.

Here are some things to keep in mind while selecting your hosting provider
– Speed is of the essence. Google rewards sites that provide data to the customers faster with a better ranking
– Choose a hosting provider that will make sure your site is available to the customer at all times. There should be zero or very marginal downtimes
– Since you will be dealing a lot with sensitive customer data, privacy and security or a concern. Make sure you choose a hosting provider that keeps your site protected at all times
– In case there is any issue you want to make sure that your hosting provider is there to support you at all times. Choose a host that has good service staff to support you.
– You might be starting off small but you should be able to build your website as you go so scalability in terms of server size, space, and reliability are always important

4. Choosing what you want your customer to see
Another important aspect of an e-commerce website development project is to make sure you know exactly what pages you’ll be showing to your customers. How easy the website is to navigate? Are the images too cluttered? These may not seem like important factors when building an e-commerce website but they are all very relevant not only to your customer but to Google as well.

Conclusion
If you use e-commerce platforms like WooCommerce and Shopify you might be able to develop an e-commerce website yourself, but without the help of professional reliable web development and design company, your website won’t have the much-needed fascination to the public. If you want someone to professionally build your e-commerce website, get in touch with us today.