As an entrepreneur, you might be aiming to grow your business and increase revenues. There are many ways to expand your business, and nowadays, the most obvious answer is to put your business out there on the Internet.
Now, the Internet is a vast place. To successfully grow your business in it, you have to build an eCommerce website. A website enables you to connect with target customers globally. It also ensures your store remains open 24/7. That not only ensures you increase your sales but also helps strengthen your brand. All these help your company overcome the market competition and take off the ground in no time.
Before you start creating an eCommerce site, there are certain dos and don'ts you must consider to ensure company growth and success. All these will be discussed in the article:
Below are some best practices for building an eCommerce website that is worth doing as a business owner:
Partnering with an expert is important when creating an eCommerce website. Even if you're knowledgeable, you might not have enough time to develop a website and manage your business simultaneously. Therefore, it’s better to hire a web developer to do the work for you.
Aside from that, dedicated web developers know the current trends and strategies, and you can rest assured that they can apply all that when they’re creating your website. For eCommerce websites, you need a developer who is familiar with designing one. Magento enterprise developers can efficiently showcase your online business in a way that is easy for customers to select products and check out the items they like.
Currently, the number of people using smartphones worldwide is slightly higher than 6.6 billion. Likewise, the number of customers using mobile devices to shop online increases daily. So, you'll lose sales if you don't optimize your website for these devices.
Since mobile devices are small, they're easier to carry around than a computer or laptop. Hence, customers can use them from anywhere, anytime. Therefore, building a mobile device user-friendly website will help you connect with more clients.
Optimizing your eCommerce website for mobile devices means that your site should be easy to navigate on small screens. In other words, your website should be responsive and automatically adjust its layout when a user accesses it from a mobile device.
You’re creating an eCommerce website to bring your products and services closer to potential customers. Therefore, it is imperative to make it accessible and easy to navigate. With a search bar, it will be easier for your customers to find the exact product or service they’re looking for.
Without a search bar, visitors will keep scrolling from one page to another to find the product or information they need. This will make their customer journey difficult and they might even be discouraged to continue the purchase.
Another good tip is to optimize your website for voice searches. It works just like a search bar. The difference is that customers will use their voice instead of typing keywords to retrieve information online. This is very useful, especially for customers who may have disabilities or physical difficulties typing words through a keyboard.
Once your eCommerce website is up, you still need to maintain it to make sure it is constantly accessible and secure for your customers. Aside from that, updating your website consistently with quality content keeps it relevant for search engines.
Content helps drive traffic to your eCommerce website. Product pages and descriptions are not enough to optimize your website for certain keywords. So, the solution is to publish lengthy articles that will provide value to your customers. This could be in the form of guides, listicles, and general news updates about your business.
Now, it’s time to discuss the things you must avoid doing when building an eCommerce website:
There might be thousands of businesses in a particular niche, but they're all different in one way or the other. That means your company is unique from the rest, so it requires a customized web design.
A unique website helps differentiate your business from other players on the market. Customers will be able to associate the unique design with your products or services. That enables you to stand out from the competition.
Copying someone else’s web design could put your business in the middle of a copyright lawsuit. Aside from that, the general public will have a negative perception of your brand, since they will see you as a mere copycat.
To make sure your website design is unique, your business must have its own logo. It would also help if your business has a distinguishable color palette since this would help the web developer pick the right shades and color combinations while building your website.
Cybercrimes and online attacks are on the rise, so people are very cautious when engaging with business websites. No customer will want to visit an insecure site, since the safety of their data and device are at stake. That's why you need to invest in cybersecurity when designing your eCommerce website.
You can take various steps to create a secure business website. They include working with a reliable hosting provider, installing an SSL certificate on the site, choosing a secure content management software, etc.
Once the website is done, the job does not stop there. As mentioned above, you need to update your website with fresh and quality content regularly to keep it relevant for customers and search engines.
But aside from that, you need to update your website so it could feature your best products effectively. Just like a physical store, you also have to ‘display’ your best sellers and introduce new products. Customers will also love it if you refresh your website with new deals and freebies every now and then.
Many business owners get too excited at the thought of launching an eCommerce website that they want to put all kinds of elements into it. This includes images, videos, and features that will eventually affect the performance and speed of the website. While these flashy elements might look fun, they will do more harm than good for your website. Customers hate a slow website and they might even find all those extra elements annoying.
Today, having a website is like having the shop itself. It enables you to connect with an enormous audience from all over the world. As such, you can make great sales and profits. While that's the case, creating a website for the sake of it won't take your enterprise anywhere. You need to implement the right strategies for success. Take note of the dos and don'ts in this article to build an effective eCommerce website.
