Ecommerce Website Development Process

6 Steps to Building an ECommerce Website

Over the last few years, the ecommerce industry in India has seen exponential growth. It is expected to continue the same trend in coming years. By 2020, it is expected to touch $80 billion. This makes all small business owners show interest in choosing an online platform for their business.
 

There are 6 major and important steps in developing an ecommerce website:

• Product/service identification:  keep the following points I mind when you are identifying products to sell.
  • Go niche, where there is sufficient demand
  • Product pricing, low pricing make it difficult for you to get returns. And also high-value items difficult to make people to purchase
  • Product availability and convenience. Chose the products which are not easily available. Usually those kind of products will sell quickly online
  • Know your customer: It is important for any business to know who their target audience is so, that they can reach them in the best possible way. Check your competitor customers and evaluate them.
     
• Right ecommerce platform: It’s a software which helps you build your online store where you put your products for sale and where you customers buy. Choosing the right ecommerce platform is crucial for any business and it is the very first step in ecommerce website development process. You chose between hosted and self hosted platforms. There are many hosted platforms like Magento, WooCommerce, Shopify and opencart etc., almost all these platform have the essential features of an online business. Based on the requirement you can customize the platform features.
   
• Right hosting platform: Choosing the right hosting platform is vital to any online business as it plays a crucial role in making your online store up and running without any interruption. A right hosting platform determines your website’s accessibility and performance efficiency.  Some of the important parameters to consider when you chose a hosting platform.
  • Security
  • Uptime
  • Speed
  • Support

• Right design / development agency: The next important thing is to choose the right development partner. With the emerging online trend we have lot of options in choosing an agency. But, we need to look for the below aspects when you are chosen your ecommerce development company.
  • After sale support
  • Location
  • Design, development approach
  • Scalability 

• Testing phase: After development before it goes on air, it is very much important to do a testing on different scenarios. Testing is usually done in various browsers, across platforms, and across devices. Testing includes usability, customer convenience, bugs, appearance and is to ensuring a good shopping experience.
  Som   e of the points which need to check at the time of testing – Website loading, compatability, navigation, broken links, security. 
   
• Online marketing: After the site is ready, the next immediate step is to do marketing and promotional activities. A well-planned promotional strategy that reaches out to the right audience at the right time and across the right channels will help spreading the brand awareness and sale conversion. Some of the marketing methods used for an online business is as follows.
  • Email    marketing
  • SEO – Search engine marketing
  • SEM - Social media marketing
  • Google addwords (Pay per click)