What You Should Know When Building an Ecommerce Solution

The way we shop has drastically changed ever since the Internet came into our lives. We want things to be accessible with just a click, we want to shop without leaving our houses, and that’s what eCommerce is all about.

What is Ecommerce?

Ecommerce, also known as electronic commerce, is just that. It is a relatively new way to shop for all kinds of products and services online, via a website or application, through your computer, smartphone or tablet. Electronic commerce is based on the idea of automating the whole shopping process, meaning payments are also made through an online, secure platform.

Ecommerce: Online vs. Offline businesses

The need for an online business keeps growing as we keep integrating the use of the internet more and more into our daily lives. Building an online business will help existing offline stores gain an online presence, ultimately reaching up an even wider public, resulting in bigger sales. However, you don’t have to own an offline business to have an online store. If anything, the beauty of ecommerce resides in it being an accessible option for anyone who wants to build an online business, just as long as you keep in mind all the essential factors that go behind the building and creating this type of commerce.

Things to consider The first thing you should know is that eCommerce isn’t solely based on offering an electronic payment method to acquire different services or products. Yes, that’s a vital part of the ecommerce world, but not it's core. Payment is essential, but if you want to build an ecommerce solution that will last through the years, you have to focus on three core aspects, which are:

1. Recognize which are the most viable and suitable business opportunities for your type of business.
2. Recognize the strengths and weaknesses of your business and the product or products you’re selling.
3. Create unique and seamless experiences for your customers (online and offline). Think about these three aspects as the starting points of creating an e-commerce solution. However, these are not the only factors you should keep in mind. Let’s talk about other important ones like:

User experience in an Ecommerce website

You need to consider how the user experiences and moves through your ecommerce solution. Think about this from their perspective and explore your platform as if you were a regular buyer or customer. The idea is to offer such a good experience the user doesn’t feel confused at any moment. Your ecommerce solution should be built in a way any potential customer can easily navigate, find what they want, and ultimately make their purchase.

Meet the client’s expectations

In an ecommerce solution, your relationship with the customer doesn’t end when they have made a purchase, if anything, it’s just starting. As an online store, you have to make sure you’re meeting your client’s expectations regarding overall costs, delivery time, and more. This means setting and paying attention to proper shipping or delivery methods, regulating your costs to be accessible, and making sure you’re a viable option and a real competitor to the other e-commerces out there.

Make everything easier

An excellent ecommerce solution should offer various options to make the purchase more appealing, and the overall user experience a lot more pleasant. Always strive towards making everything more straightforward and more efficient for your public. Offer viable solutions for the shopping journey, solutions they can spot on the moment, and easy access. A couple of things you might want to implement to make things a lot easier are:

1. Fast loading pages: Users want easy navigation, fast-loading pages that don’t keep them waiting longer than three seconds. Otherwise, they’ll just hop off your websites. 2. Visible products: Orientate your ecommerce site so users can quickly look for and find specific items or services they might be looking for. The easier they can search through your page, the better. 3. Create an aesthetic layout: Create a design that is both clean and aesthetically pleasing. Don’t overdo it with ads or include too many features at once. 4. Assist them as much as possible: The possibility of offering virtual assistance to your customers or users is a considerable improvement you should strike towards. Not only you’re offering them a great solution, but building up their trust towards your brand.

Have backup-plans

Much like it happens in real offline stores, online stores can also fail at some points or present you with challenging difficulties you’ll have to solve quickly, which is why you need to have backup plans ready to go. This means having migration plans for core things that could go potentially wrong such as inventory, payments, and other vital features your online store should always have. For example, what kind of backup plan would you have if the client purchases a sold-out item? Or what if the platform charges twice for the same thing? You need to create channels that are accessible to your client if any of these things go wrong.

Understand your client’s journey

This concept isn’t new for anyone since everyone knows there’s a “journey” each client has when they first contact your store, which makes them go from regular users to clients to potentially regular customers. When building your ecommerce solution, you have to cover all the aspects of this journey, thinking about what platform is your customer using? (A smartphone, a laptop, a PC?). Also, think about if your store has everything, inventory, proper payment methods and suitable shipping method to fulfill each client’s user experience. Ecommerce is about offering your future clients an easy way to shop for things, which is why you need to keep all of these major points into consideration and apply them when building your e-commerce solution.

Cost related factors There are cost-related factors you have to think of when building this type of online solutions. Usually, the client doesn't get to see this part, but it indirectly affects the way your store is built. That being said, here are the factors you need to consider:

1. Infrastructure: This refers to the architecture of the ecommerce site, touching on subjects such as, the inventory system, the payment method, the CMS that will support the platform, the shipping method, analytics and more.
2. Maintenance of the platform costs.
3. Transaction costs.
4. Shipping costs.
5. Work-force costs.
6. Overall costs of the ecommerce platform.

Technologies involved Finally, you have to consider which type of technology you’ll be implementing to build and run your ecommerce site. It will be up to you to choose the option that better suits your company’s necessities and unique goals. The three main ones are:

1. SaaS solutions: These platforms are great for startups or small e-commerce stores since they’re low-cost, easy to install and maintain. However, they charge you for every transaction made and most of them don’t offer customer support in languages other than English.
2. Plugins and platforms solutions: Although they have much higher costs, they offer a much more trustful security system that is easy to access and install. You can also customize your expenses. You should also keep in mind that you will have to be continually updating the platform via a third party.
3. Tailormade solutions: These are perfect since they are tailor-made to meet your necessities. They offer a personalized experience and can be easily integrated with other systems. In the long run, this is definitely one of the best choices you have.

Final words It comes as no surprise that ecommerce solutions have many benefits, including:

1. The selling and shopping process is way faster.
2. You can sell or buy things any day, any time of the day.
3. You get to build a bigger audience and reach out to more potential customers since there are no real barriers in an e-commerce solution.
4. Low operational costs.
5. Better quality services.
6. Easy to implement and manage.

You can get to know the Top eCommerce Web Design Companies Of 2020 according to DesignRush. Always keep in mind that it is crucial to work with a qualified and experienced partner like Rootstack that has A+ teams of software engineers ready to lead your business in a high-performing digital journey.

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