Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Developing an Ecommerce Website

By Andrew Jacobs


One of the most popular styles of site in the world of website design has to be ecommerce. As bricks and mortar retail gets quieter, ecommerce is quickly increasing in popularity. The expenses are lower and a result, products can regularly be acquired far cheaper online, so its not surprising more individuals are buying from ecommerce websites than ever before with statistics seeing online retail exploding thru the roof.

When pondering about ecommerce website design there are numerous factors to consider.The market in which you'll be trading in being just one. For the site to be successful, a vital stage will be to do an analysis of the competition. Remember, the same selling rules apply online as they do offline and along with being found on search engines, you also need a USP to encourage sales once a future customer visits your website. This may simply be the price you are providing the products themselves or the quality of service offered. The best way to do that is to place yourself in the position of the buyer. Ask yourself if you would buy from your store and the explanations why. Also consider the reverse, why wouldn't you purchase from the site. With regard to the development of the site it is important to get the design right for the industry in which you'll be trading and simplicity of navigation round the site is important. As customers will be buying from the website, it's also critical to build up the trust. As well as showing trademarks from the trusted Payment Providers you use such as SagePay, Worldpay or PayPal, this can also be done by providing clear and simple T&Cs, a Privacy Policy, a contact address and telephone number.

After you've selected your business and evaluated the competition , you can go forwards with your web business.You have 2 main options, which are Drop-shipping or Traditional where you'll buy, hold and ship the stock yourself.

There are numerous drop shipment companies out there where all you have got to do is pass them the order and they look after the rest. While you won't get as higher margin, the benefits far outweigh the cons. Drop shipment suppliers frequently have information discs with all of their products on including images. Its often just a case of your web site designer running an import thru your ecommerce software and you?re done.

On the other hand you're able to earn extra cash by selling your own stock but obviously holding and delivering your own stock does create its own issues, the initial expense, the storage costs and the delivery logistics being only one or two.

Selecting the correct ecommerce platform is a key deciding factor when proceeding with a site design company. Depending on your industry it is often endorsed that you go with a custom solution rather than a developer that utilises an off the shelf solution. While off the shelf packages are quite robust and flexible, you are often tied down with the features. Additional features are offered by the way of add ons and if the plug in not exist for what you are endeavoring to achieve then you're stuck. With a bespoke solution, there are virtually no restrictions and additional features can be programmed in at any time should you need them. In most cases these days design firms that use their own solution will have done so over period of years. As a result, they often have a cheap answer for you as a customer.

Before approaching a site design company, you ought to have prepared the solutions to all of the questions they may ask you. As well as the above points this include postage techniques, sites you like the design or functionality of and most vitally if you happen to have any payment methods in mind such as PayPal or SagePay.




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