Ecommerce is one of the most thriving industries in today’s world, and the reasons are quite simple. One, you can look through the whole catalog of any products, without having to move a single muscle in the leg! Two, you can have those products delivered to your doorstep, all you have to do is click and eventually walk to your door to receive your order (So, you do have to pull a few leg muscles!) Three – it goes so well with the cashless economy that we’re heading towards!
These three are just a few of the many reasons why eCommerce is such a hit. So, instead of moving on to a four, five, and six, why not talk about what makes an eCommerce website a success? When it comes to eCommerce website development, what are the factors one considers to measure their success?
As far as the perfect eCommerce solution is concerned, there is no one-way-fits-all strategy that could be counted upon. But, there are still some tried and tested tools of measurement which never go wrong.
#1. Shopping Cart
#2. Payment Gateway
#3. Mobile Responsiveness
#4. Search Engine Optimization
#5. Logistics
#6. Best Web Hosting & Security
Let’s take a look at them:
Shopping Cart
The first step of eCommerce website development is having a simple and efficient shopping cart in place. This one thing that is mandatory, is also the feature that plays a great role in describing the experience of your customer.
Things like, being able to update the number of items in the shopping bag or remove an item, or even being able to click a product in the bag and directly land on that product page – these are some of the things that make a shopping cart worthy of praise.
Payment Gateway
Next, the cart comes the part where a person pays, in order to complete the buying process. A dubious looking payment gateway, or the one that takes far too long to respond, is no good.
Your eCommerce website development process has to focus on payment gateway integration and make it not just seamless, but flawless to a fault. People care about their money; and by choosing to pay online instead of going for Cash on Delivery, they’re trusting you with it. An eCommerce solution, therefore, is incomplete without the inclusion of a smoothly operating payment gateway.
Mobile Responsiveness
Mobile responsiveness is an absolute necessity for eCommerce website development. People can’t carry their laptops everywhere and check for the latest deals or offers or discounts, or even the latest range of products you might have introduced.
Your online shopping website has to be mobile friendly. More importantly, with respect to the market size, you would be targeting, you can not afford to leave mobile users at all. Rarely would find anyone who doesn’t own a mobile phone. And none other Google has picked up on this fact as well, showing mobile responsive websites better in its results. Therefore, as any eCommerce expert will tell you, having a mobile responsive website is a necessary sign of a successful online portal.
Search Engine Optimization
A brand is heavily built on how much people know about it. But before the knowing comes, people have to first discover the name of the brand. And that is what marketing is all about – you get people to recognize a brand. Only then can you have people give you a chance to prove that your brand’s name is worth all the commotion! Search Engine Optimization or SEO is an essential part of online marketing, as well as an eCommerce Solution.
Whether it’s users reviewing a product on Facebook, or complaining about a service on Twitter, or reading a blog about a specific product on the Internet, or if it’s a brand letting its potential users know about its new range of products or services – it’s all covered under the roof of SEO. Because these are the tools that allow Google or any other search engine to see you. Or in other words, these are the instruments which optimize your brand to get visibility on the search engines. Hence, an eCommerce expert advice would be to get a well-planned SEO strategy.
Logistics
How do you plan to run a successful eCommerce business, if you’re not able to keep your promise of a timely delivery of your products? Ask any eCommerce expert, and they’ll tell you that if Marketing is the heart of a business, Logistics might as well be its very spine! The great thing though is that you don’t have to sweat too much about it these days, You have a lot of platforms such as FedEx, UPS, and so on which give an impeccable service.
As you grow your business, you can go for an in-house logistical operation. But till then, the perfect eCommerce Solution for you would be joining hands with a third party firm to seamlessly package and dispatch products to your customers. A good delivery system will go a long way in making your eCommerce website a success!
Best Web Hosting & Security
Cyber attacks are today more common than we would have liked. So, the obvious question one would ask is – what are you doing about it? Can people feel safe shopping on your eCommerce website?
Hosting your website with Payment Card Industry or PCI compliant interface can help as it itself complies with Data Security Standards or DSS laid down for this purpose. It goes without saying that before everything else, you should first get your website turned from HTTP to HTTPs.
Promotional Offers / Discounts
We regular shoppers, especially in a country like India, celebrate promotional offers the same way we celebrate a festival! A heavy discount on an amazing dress or an ongoing offer on all electronic items is just as good as hogging on all the sweets during Diwali, if not more.
Work on your loyalty programs, make promotion cards available that one can gift, give out redeem coupons, and bring out such offers especially when there’s an actual festival going on! This is a fairly guaranteed eCommerce Solution to shoot up your site’s customer engagement.
Manthan Bhavsar
Manthan Bhavsar works with Metizsoft Solutions, a leading mobile app, and eCommerce web development firm. Being passionate about technology, he loves knowing about new and upcoming technology tools. He’s fond of blogging and likes to share all that he’s attained both through research, as well as practical experience.