Building online sales sites

Many businesses in various fields of industry have already realized that an online presence is of the utmost importance in the modern consumer world, and in recent years many businesses that we know from physically visiting their branches have opened an online store and improved it to make it an efficient and attractive shopping center for customers from Israel, and in some cases from all over the world. On the face of it, the process for setting up an online sales site is very easy, but in practice there are many matters behind the establishment that need to be taken into account. Let's talk about the establishment process and how to implement it in the best way.

What is the process of setting up a sales site?

Similar to the establishment of a physical branch of any store, the establishment of an internet sales site also has several planning and construction stages that lead to the final product that the customer uses. Here are the main steps of the process:

Characterization of the site

Before approaching the construction and design of the site, you need to characterize its purpose, the actions that surfers can do on it, and more. In your case it is a sales site, but there are cases where the site does not allow you to sell products through it and it is used as a source of information or as a catalog only, so you will not have to implement a clearing system in it but only visual content and texts. In the characterization phase, you and the project manager will plan the general structure of the site, divide its future content into categories and pages and discuss its appearance and the various functions that the client will be able to enjoy while browsing it. This is the time when you conduct research on your target audience to understand what their needs are, what their browsing habits are and how you can build the site so that it attracts them to use your products or services.

Website design process

This is where your creative touch comes to life, and you start designing how the website actually looks - color scheme, images, text placement, themes and everything the customer sees when he enters your website and looks at it. The design should intelligently combine aesthetics with user experience - a beautiful website will be ineffective if it is impossible to understand where the product catalog is or if it is generally very difficult to find your way around it or use it. Here it is important to take into account the preferences of your target audience, imagine how the customer uses the site and design it in a correct way that will make them stay and complete a transaction.

Establishing the products and content on the site

Now that the website's infrastructure is ready, it's time to put in everything you want the customer to see in the first minute of the website being live. This includes all the products you want to buy and all the relevant pieces of text – product descriptions, headlines, basic articles, contact details and more.

Site code and development

If you chose the option of building the website on an online store platform, for example Shopify or Wix, chances are that your engagement with the website code and its development will be minimal. The reason for this is that these platforms have already developed for you all the features you will need and want on your website, and only in rare cases will you have to deal with building a special plugin yourself or hire the services of a professional in the field to do it for you. This system will provide you with the management interface you need to manage on your own, although quite a few people choose to contact companies that specialize in building stores on such platforms - we at WeDev specialize in building a Shopify store as well as independent applications and systems. Many people choose this option because the establishment of the store is almost immediate, although the compromise is made in areas such as website design (there is almost no flexibility in this area and it all depends on the types of designs that the platform allows), which may create a situation of lack of uniqueness compared to other stores on the same platform that appear to have a similar design , at least in terms of visual structure.

Apart from this option, you can build your own website independently, and for that it is recommended that you hire a website building company to help you set up all the infrastructure from scratch, or you can use open source systems that combine an existing system of building online stores with your ability to develop the website code yourself. The most prominent example of such hybrid systems is WooCommerce, which can sometimes be complicated for those who are not familiar with how to operate this interface. The main disadvantage of choosing these options is mainly in terms of information security - on an independent website you will have to take care of it yourself, and although open source systems have a strict information security protocol, they may be a popular target for hackers.

Connection to clearing and online system

Since your website is a store, meaning a place where customers can place orders directly and it doesn't just display information, you need to connect to a clearing system that will allow you to receive payments on the website securely, and provide your customers with an available and convenient purchase channel. There are a variety of clearing companies in Israel that offer these services, and all you have to do is choose the clearing provider according to the volume of purchases, the average amount of each order and other criteria. Here comes your time to conduct a little more market research to get to know the suppliers well, hear their price offers and carefully consider the worthwhile choice - don't forget that these companies take commissions from you in one way or another. In addition, you will also need to connect the site to an online inventory management system, so that you can reliably present your inventory to customers and not encounter orders that you have no way of responding to. It is recommended to choose an orderly and user-friendly system to facilitate the actual management process of all matters behind the scenes - the customer sees a website with a catalog, prices and a system for entering payment, but there are many processes that they do not see and you do, therefore you must have a system that you understand how to operate easily.

The purchase of the domain

Every website on the Internet has a domain (address) through which surfers reach it, whether they type the address themselves or click on a link sent to them. Towards the end of the process, you will need to purchase a domain for the website, so that everyone knows what address they need to enter to reach you and your products or services.

take-off phase

The final step is closing all previous tasks and launching the website for global use. Even if you have done endless tests before uploading, you may encounter bugs and malfunctions in the website's daily operations, and that is why it is important to have a professional by your side who will fix things for you - even if you have chosen to develop Shopify stores or another closed platform and you can use their customer service system. Before the website goes live, you will need to build its page hierarchy, and it is also recommended to research keywords and build a strategy for publishing content in order to know how to promote it in the search engines after publication.

Summary

The process of building an online sales site can be quick, but it requires deep thinking and careful planning to bring your customers the perfect platform to buy your products and services. We at WeDev will be happy to provide you with support and advice all the way until the establishment of the perfect online store for your business.