Building an ecommerce site

It's time to take your business to the next level by selling products online through an online store. Building an e-commerce site is definitely an important step and a good way to increase sales and promote the brand, but of course it has to be done properly. What exactly does that mean? This is exactly what we want to talk about now. Let's talk about the main stages of building an eCommerce site and planning its design and final appearance.

Main steps for building an ecommerce site

From the moment you decide to set up an e-commerce site to the point when the site is live and actually starts selling products, several important steps must happen behind the scenes, and usually with the professional guidance of professionals who are experts in the field of setting up these sites:

Characterization of the customer and the target audience

In the first step, it is very important to precisely define the customer and the target audience. The customer is you and your business: what is your story? In what language style do you address the audience? Who are you trying to reach? What problems are your products or services able to solve? Customer characterization is an important part of the branding process and building the foundation of the website. Hence, it is also very important to accurately characterize the potential target audience - to whom you are aiming in the sale itself and in all the processes leading to it. Once you and the developers of the website are clear about who the potential target audience is and who is actually interested in using your services or needs to know them, it will be much easier to build a website that is suitable for and speaks to this audience. This is a very important part and you should make sure you don't skip it.

Website design concepts

After the initial definition, you can start talking about the design concept of the site, that is, how your site is actually going to look. This is a matter that is also important to do from a process of thought and preliminary planning. Please note that the design must be original and respond well to the characterization and your requirements from the site in general. In this aspect, building a Shopify store is a recommended topic, because this platform offers a very wide variety of templates on the basis of which you can easily create convenient and practical designs, as well as quite a few design tools that allow developers to set up a unique website with an original look and an eye-catching style.

The development stages of the site

The next step is the actual development of the website. After the design phase comes the turn of the website developers, who implement your requirements to create the website you theoretically built in the design. Here we are talking about a relatively complex craft with various and important actions such as embedding pixels, testing the browsing experience, compatibility with different computers and browsing the site through phones and so on. Please note that the development of Shopify stores in particular and in general the professional construction of e-commerce sites include all these matters from the first moment and without compromise.

Connecting the clearing system to the online store system

Finally, after the design is in place, the development task is finished and the site is up and ready to use, all that remains is to connect it to a clearing system so that customers can complete their purchases on the site. Please note that the clearing system you choose (or that is offered to you) is indeed suitable for the platform on which the website was built, that it meets strict security standards and that it offers a variety of clearing options such as payment by credit and working with all credit providers. It is recommended to compare offers and pay attention to the pricing model. In most cases, you pay an appointment fee along with a certain percentage of all transactions, and here you should do some calculations to find the option that suits you best.

Planning the visibility of an ecommerce site

So how do you actually plan the appearance of online stores? Here are some important highlights:

Category hierarchy and product pages

In any e-commerce site it is very important to take care of different categories of products in an orderly manner, so that it will be easy for surfers to navigate and find the products they are looking for. If there are many products in your catalog, it is also very important to take care of sub-categories to create a clear and orderly hierarchy of all products. This important action will significantly improve the browsing experience and reduce the abandonment rate of frustrated surfers who leave the site simply because they cannot find what they need. For example, in an electronics store you can create a gaming category and it will have several subcategories such as consoles, peripherals for gaming, computer monitors for gaming and more.

Recommended products of the store

In any online store and in stores in general, you can always find the most popular products, the ones that sell the most and that the customers come back for again and again. These products can be a sales promotion tool that you want to utilize its power and ability on your website. The recommended products are important and should be highlighted as much as possible in several different points on the site. It is advisable to highlight them first of all on the home page and then also at other points in the purchase process. You can do this, for example, at the checkout stage and offer them to surfers just before they go to the payment screen. It is also possible to offer them additional products according to the products they chose to purchase to complete their user experience. All of these are excellent tools for increasing sales and in general for improving the user experience of surfers.

Content that will be integrated into the website

Pay attention - this is a warm recommendation and a step that you should definitely not give up. You can invest in quality and original content on all pages in the store, especially on the home page, the product pages and the blog, where you will share professional knowledge related to the store's content world. Quality content is a tool that will first of all help in the field of organic promotion, and will help surfers find your site on Google and the various search engines. Beyond that, surfers who see a lot of current, clear and original information will consider the site as a very serious source and your business as an authority in the field, which will ultimately lead to increased interest in the site and increased purchases.

Summary

If you are at the point where you are ready to set up your own ecommerce store, it is very important to do it right. The experts of the WeDev company have successfully accompanied hundreds of businesses in Israel for many years, and we offer the establishment of a high-quality customized e-commerce site on the Shopify platform, the best and leading platform in the world for building online stores. Want to know more and start getting an idea about your website and how it's going to look? Contact us as soon as possible to get more important and relevant information that will bring you closer to your goal.