Most business and trade are conducted on the internet these days, and you need a good website if you want to succeed in your commercial activity. Here, we will briefly explain what eCommerce website development is, describe the most significant characteristics of a commercially successful site, and suggest how to find the best eCommerce development companies for your needs.
Table of Contents
Functions and Benefits of a Commercial Website
Very simply put, you need a website to promote and sell your services and products on the internet. It can either be your personal site created for your enterprise exclusively or the so-called online marketplace, which multiple vendors will use as a platform for conducting their commercial activities.
| Note: for a website to work successfully, its development must involve both back-end and front-end operations. |
A well-designed site will greatly facilitate your commercial enterprise in the following significant ways:
- It will increase your brand awareness and make positive impressions on your potential and actual customers, serving as an excellent self-marketing strategy this way.
- A user-friendly site will make it a lot easier, as well as more convenient and pleasant, for your customers to browse your commodities, select the ones they like, and purchase them from you without visiting your physical venue or contacting your client service team.
- Apart from that, if your website development is done in accordance with the basic principles of search engine optimization, you will have a much better chance to appear on the first page of search results, which will further strengthen your position in the market.
- Not least of all, it will ease your business activity for you immensely, reduce the amount of time and energy you need to invest in marketing and retail operations, and allow you to focus on other important aspects of your enterprise.
Web Development Process
In most cases, the process of establishing your online trade will involve the following steps in this order:
1. Defining Your Online Enterprise
First of all, you will need to clarify for yourself what exactly you want to do or sell, as well as in which format you will most likely have to do it, namely:
| Customer to business | Business to business |
| Customer to customer | Business to customer |
These are the four most common types of commercial activity. There is no need to explain each of them in detail as their names speak for themselves. But making this choice in the very beginning is very important because it will determine what kind of site you will have to develop in terms of its technical characteristics.
2. Identifying Your Target Audience
Next, you will need to identify your potential clientele so that you can research their specific preferences, as well as their shopping habits and user behavior. This will help you define your commercial aspirations even more precisely and translate them into operational terms.
3. Selecting a Domain Name
Choosing the right name for your website is extremely important because this is what your customers will know you by. The name must be easy to read and remember, make it very clear what kind of service or product you offer, and, ideally, let the user know where you operate geographically.
There are several reputable platforms where you can select and purchase a name for your site. Otherwise, you can get it from your host or a content management software provider.
4. Choosing a Host
Every site needs a platform to be built on, which is what the term refers to. Some hosts merely offer their platforms for you to design your site there on your own, but there are plenty of those who will also help you in the process by providing a variety of building tools and templates.
When you browse the internet for a potential hosting platform, there are four most important aspects you should evaluate, namely:
- Its domain authority score
- Quality of customer support
- Diversity and relevance of its building tools, if there are any
- Level of digital and financial security
5. Creating a Website
Now that you know what you would like to design and build, as well as have a platform to do it on, it is time to get involved in the actual creative work. This is by far the most difficult and time-consuming part of the process. The discussion falls outside the scope of this article, though, and we refer you to our blog for the relevant material on the topic.
6. Establishing Trade and Payment Channels
You should also decide which payment gateways and delivery methods you will rely on in your commercial activity so that you can incorporate their seamless and customer-friendly operations in the overall design of your website. Moreover, these functions must be fully integrated with the other departments of your business and backed up by effective security technology too.
7. Testing and Updating Your Website
Technically, this is not a step in the process, since you will need to do it constantly at every stage. We only mention it here in order to make you aware that the development process will not end once the website has been built.
There will be constant changes in the market, your business, and your target audience, to which your site should be adjusted to. Besides, anything can go wrong at any time, and continuous technical supervision of ongoing operations is indispensable for any successful electronic activity.
Characteristics of a Good Website
In this section, we will provide a list of the most essential features of a commercially successful website. If you want to have any chances in the modern online trade, your site must:
- Have its content optimised for SEO purposes by means of relevant keywords, backlinks, and thorough semantic analysis
- Use the most advanced security technologies, such as 256-bit SSL encryption, for example
- Provide a customer-friendly and intelligent interface to maintain a competitive level of user experience
- Offer mobile apps for both Android and iOS devices
- Create a hassle-free, time-effective, and seamless consumer experience for your clientele, integrated with the popular payment gateways and social media networks
Final Word
Developing a website requires a considerable amount of knowledge and skills, which is why it is always better to invite professional services to do this work for you. And to make sure you land in good hands, you will first need to:
- Identify your particular business needs
- Assess your budget and timeframes, as well as the amount and extent of required assistance
- Evaluate the web developer’s reliability, expertise, responsiveness, and costs
And once you have selected several candidates, you can compare their customer reviews on sites like Trustpilot, before you apply for their services.