10 Things to Keep In Mind During eCommerce Website Development

Are you planning to build your own online store?

It’s definitely exciting, but eCommerce website development requires considering numerous factors.

From creating an appealing design to optimizing for search engines, the process can be overwhelming, especially considering that up to 90% of eCommerce businesses fail.

Don’t worry!

This article can be your perfect guide during the site development process.

We’ll explore 10 key things to keep in mind during eCommerce website development, providing insights and strategies to help you build a user-friendly online shopping platform that generates tons of revenue.

Let’s jump right in!

eCommerce Website Development: 10 Things You Need to Prepare

1. Scalability

Building a scalable website is crucial for ensuring that your online store can handle increased traffic and transactions as your business grows.

Without thinking about scalability, your website may experience performance issues, downtime, and ultimately, loss of customers further down the line.

To address this issue, design a flexible architecture that can seamlessly scale with your business needs.

Here are some best practices for ensuring website scalability:

• Use a cloud hosting service. This option offers a scalable infrastructure that can automatically adjust resources based on demand.
• Implement microservices architecture. Break down your website into smaller, independent services that can be developed, deployed, and scaled individually for more flexibility and agility.
• Consider caching. Use caching mechanisms for static assets, database queries, and frequently accessed content to reduce server load and improve response times.
• Perform database optimization. Optimize database queries, indexes, and storage to ensure efficient data retrieval and processing, especially during peak traffic periods.

Scaling up your eCommerce business isn’t limited to the website alone; it can also involve optimizing your software infrastructure to support growth.

Do you plan to enhance your existing platform’s performance, integrate new features, or build a completely new solution from scratch?

Consider talking to an eCommerce software development agency to help find custom-tailored solutions that meet your business needs.

2. User Experience

User experience (UX) in your eCommerce website plays an important role in your business success.

An intuitive browsing experience can lead to higher conversion rates since users are more likely to find what they’re looking for and complete their purchases.

When products are organized into clear and logical categories, users can navigate directly to the section or category that interests them.

It helps:

• Reduce the time it takes to find relevant products.
• Speed up the product discovery process.
• Increase the likelihood of users finding items they want to purchase.

To make your navigation intuitive, limit the number of main navigation items.

You can also group similar products into relevant categories based on attributes like type, brand, or use case.

For a faster product discovery process, offer a robust search feature that allows users to search for products by keyword, category, or attribute.

Urban Outfitters has a site search best practice you can implement.

It provides relevant suggestions and image results related to the keyword, even when users haven’t typed it out in full.

If you’re in doubt about how to make a seamless UX, consider hiring a reputable custom eCommerce website development company like Intelivita.

With our expertise, we can help you implement best practices for UX design to drive conversions.

3. Website Security

Implementing website security measures will not only safeguard sensitive information but also build trust and confidence among customers.

One of the fundamental security practices is using of SSL certificates.

SSL certificates help encrypt data transmitted between a user’s browser and the website server, ensuring that sensitive information such as payment details remains private and secure.

Additionally, consider integrating secure authentication mechanisms, such as multi-factor authentication (MFA) or biometric authentication.

This practice adds an extra layer of security to user accounts and reduces the risk of unauthorized access.

Also, ensure your eCommerce business adheres to industry regulations and standards, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) or the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS).

Compliance ensures the eCommerce website meets legal obligations, avoiding potential fines, penalties, or legal actions.

It also demonstrates a commitment to ethical business practices and customer privacy, helping you build a positive reputation.

If you have employees, it’s also important to provide security training to prevent internal security breaches.

4. Speed

Fast-loading pages provide a better experience for visitors, leading to higher engagement.

In fact, more than 80% of online users expect websites to load in three seconds or less.

More importantly, search engines like Google consider page speed as a ranking factor in their algorithms.

Websites with faster loading times are more likely to rank higher in search results, leading to increased visibility and organic traffic.

To improve page speed and website performance, business owners can implement these techniques on their eCommerce website:

• Optimize images. Compressing images, using the correct file formats, and implementing lazy loading techniques can significantly reduce page load times without sacrificing image quality.
• Use Content Delivery Networks (CDNs). CDNs distribute website content across multiple servers worldwide, delivering content to users from the nearest server location. This reduces latency and improves loading times, especially for users located far from the website’s origin server.
• Optimize code. Minify CSS, JavaScript, and HTML files to remove unnecessary characters, comments, and whitespace, reducing file sizes and improving loading times.

You can check your website’s speed and performance for free using Google PageSpeed Insights.

Simply enter your website’s URL on the tool, and it will evaluate both desktop and mobile versions of your website and offer actionable insights to optimize performance.

5. Attractive and Responsive Web Design

Besides speed, web design also plays a key part in building a good first impression.

In fact, over 90% of first impressions are design-related.

Therefore, making your online store attractive is crucial to engage users and keep them longer on the site.

To make it appealing, consider your brand identity.

Consistent use of colors, typography, and visual elements helps reinforce brand identity and evoke specific emotions or associations.

Choose colors that reflect your brand’s personality and values, and use them consistently across your website and marketing materials.

Ketnipz can be a great example of this practice.

It’s an Instagram comic that turns into a merchandise brand.

The designer incorporates the main character’s quirky personality with bright colors and unique fonts on the website.

Although you want the design to be as creative and attractive as possible, let’s not compromise its responsiveness during eCommerce website development.

Nowadays, having a mobile-friendly eCommerce website is hugely important because many people are becoming more mobile-centric.

Therefore, ensure your eCommerce website is optimized for mobile devices to provide a seamless browsing and shopping experience on smartphones and tablets.

6. SEO Optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO) is important to improve the visibility of eCommerce websites and drive organic traffic by optimizing various website elements to align with search engine algorithms.

The optimization involves several strategies, such as:

• Conduct keyword research. Identify relevant keywords and phrases that potential customers use to search for products in your industry.
• Optimize content. Use the targeted keywords on the product descriptions, category pages, and other website content. Also, make descriptive meta titles and descriptions for each page to provide search engines with valuable information about the page’s content.
• Connect the pages on your website. Use internal linking and relevant anchor text. Avoid generic phrases like “click here” and use keywords that accurately describe the linked page instead.
• Opt for clean URLs. Ensure that URLs are clean and concise and, preferably, include relevant keywords.

7. Product Management

Imagine your favorite online store.

It’d be inconvenient when it doesn’t have the product you’re looking for in stock, right?

That’s why, having strategic product management is important.

It ensures your business consistently meets customer demand by adding, editing, and monitoring product availability effectively.

Here are some key aspects of product management for an eCommerce website:

• Product catalog management. This step involves adding new products, updating existing ones, and removing outdated items.

  It also includes categorizing products logically and ensuring accurate product information.

• Inventory management. This ensures that the website accurately reflects product availability in real-time. It involves tracking stock levels, managing backorders, and setting up notifications for low stock levels to avoid overselling or stockouts.
• Product merchandising. It aims to optimize product visibility and presentation to encourage sales, such as featuring best-selling products on the homepage and displaying cross-selling items.
• Product pricing strategy. Developing a competitive pricing approach involves analyzing market trends, competitor pricing, and customer demand to set appropriate prices.
• Product performance analysis. Regularly analyzing product performance metrics, like sales trends, average order value, and product returns to help identify top-performing products, underperforming items, and areas for improvement.

8. Payments and Checkout

Payments and checkout are critical components of an eCommerce website, as they directly impact customer satisfaction and conversion rates.

To optimize this element, provide a variety of payment methods to accommodate different customer preferences.

This may include credit or debit cards, digital wallets, bank transfers, and alternative payment solutions like PayPal or Apple Pay.

Research shows that offering various payment options can speed up the decision-making process for 90% of consumers and even prompt them to shop more.

Besides offering multiple payment methods, streamline the checkout process by minimizing the number of steps required for customers to complete a purchase.

Also, avoid mandatory account creation unless necessary because forcing users to sign up can lead to cart abandonment.

9. Customer Support

Customer support covers the range of services and assistance provided to customers before, during, and after their purchase, including:

• Answering inquiries
• Resolving issues or complaints
• Providing product recommendations
• Offering guidance throughout the shopping process

Responsive and helpful customer support builds trust and confidence in your brand, reassuring customers that assistance is readily available when needed and leading to higher customer satisfaction.

To implement effective customer support, consider providing various communication channels such as live chat, email, phone support, and social media platforms to reach out for assistance.

More importantly, respond promptly to customer inquiries in real-time or near-real-time whenever possible.

To further streamline the process, consider implementing self-service options like FAQs, shipping information, and knowledge bases so that shoppers can troubleshoot issues independently.

10. Marketing Strategy

During your eCommerce website development, don’t forget to start thinking about marketing strategies early in the process.

Planning your marketing approaches helps define the structure of your eCommerce site and decide what features you may need.

For instance, if part of your strategy is to advertise on social media, you may want to integrate social sharing options or display the user-generated content from social media on the website.

Similarly, if your marketing approach focuses on seasonal promotions and discounts, you may require features like dynamic pricing, countdown timers for sales events, and customizable promotional banners to highlight special offers.

Or, do you plan to target a niche audience interested in eco-friendly products?

Then, consider prioritizing relevant features like product filtering by sustainability criteria or educational resources on eco-friendly living.

To plan a marketing strategy for your eCommerce store development, start with identifying your target audience.

Check their demographics, preferences, and behaviors to help tailor your marketing efforts and website features to the audience.

Then, analyze your competitors, industry trends, and customer needs to identify opportunities and gaps in the market.

Use this information to differentiate your brand and offerings.