2021 Ecommerce Website Development Checklist

Create and Develop Your Business

The modern world is revolving around digital trends – social media , online businesses, even Medical Doctors are using digital to treat patients nationwide. The novel coronavirus gave a significant push to this trend making the digital landscape more valuable than ever before.

Digital for Businesses

For businesses, this meant greater competition since startups find it within their budget to set up an online shop or ecommerce store. Penetration rates in different industries have peaked during the past two years. Both SMEs and larger enterprises are in a race to create an ecommerce website that attracts greater traffic and converts a maximum number of leads into customers.

The bottom line here is that winning businesses today require a top-notch ecommerce website to enjoy a greater market share and an edge over the competition. Established enterprises have enough capital to hire top experts of the industry to set up a winning ecommerce website.

On the other hand, entrants have to learn how to build an ecommerce website from scratch that can compete well in the market. Robust ecommerce website development is critical to enjoying a winning stature in the industry.

The question is, how do you ensure the development of a winning ecommerce website?

This is where this article will help you out.

Ecommerce Website Development Checklist

Here are five steps that will help you create an impactful ecommerce website.

Opt For a Reliable Hosting Service

You build a great website. You have the pages up and running. Everything looks smooth at your end, yet the traffic is not increasing on your website – this usually happens if you have an unreliable hosting service (other factors could lead to limited traffic as well, but bad hosting is usually among the common ones).

Before you develop a great website, start your search for a good host that provides your security certificates, so your audience is not hesitant to attend your website. A good hosting service will also provide scalable services for a time when you need to expand your online store.

Hosting also plays a significant role in the loading speeds of your website. If it takes more than two seconds to load, the user is likely to bounce and would not consider revisiting your website in the future unless you fix the issue and run a strong marketing campaign to regain traffic.

Another critical reason to get top-notch hosting services is that they have little to no downtime. These downtimes may not seem significant in the beginning, but once your ecommerce business scales, a minute of downtime can translate into a massive drop in revenue. For instance, a minute’s downtime for Amazon would cost the ecommerce giant $220,318.80.

UI/UX Design

No matter how great your products are, you are bound to lose potential customers if your website is not user-friendly and quick. Fast internet speeds and access to everything at your fingertips have come at the cost of patience. Modern users will not wait more than a mere few seconds before deciding that your website is not worth their time.

Before you begin your development phase, create an ecommerce website design that will speak to the users. Start off with a wireframe, then build pages within those tabs – in short, streamline the flow of your entire website.

The aesthetics and layout of your website are also critical parts of website. You need to determine how your website will look and where each part of the website will fall. User convenience is of prime importance here. Think how a user would navigate from one page to another while moving down the sales funnel.

Website Content

Who are you? What are you selling? How is your ecommerce store different from the countless others on the market?

When users land on your website, you need to feed them content that communicates who you are how your products or services can benefit them. Content is critical for introducing yourself and your offerings to online users.

You need to create compelling content for headers, banners, products (we have also covered this separately). While developing content for your website, make sure it is readable, comprehendible, and accurate. Avoid creating lumps of text as it will shun users away.

Furthermore, make sure that all ages and groups of people you cater to can easily understand the content on your website. Developing content goes hand-in-hand with design since both should complement the overall vibe of the website.

Inventorying

If your product pages don’t have content, or if the content is not persuasive enough, you will not be able to convert users into customers. It is why we particularly addressed the importance of content on a landing page.

Your ecommerce website does not have a salesperson like in a brick-and-mortar store. There is no one there to explain the USP of a certain product or convince a reader just enough to leap. On a website, ecommerce writing plays the role of the salesperson.

Your product description will compel a reader to add the items to the cart and checkout. Therefore, experts believe that product descriptions are among the most crucial aspects of an ecommerce website.

Users who land on a product page are often a step away from checkout. They are at a point of taking a decision, and your content should propel them towards adding that product into the cart.

Wondering how to write compelling products description for your ecommerce website? Here is how you can do that:

  • Write about the technical aspects of the products
  • Tell readers how they can benefit from it
  • Share the value it will add to a user’s life
  • Provide comparison of similar products
  • Be very clear and precise with your communication

The goal here is to provide as much useful information to the users as possible to help them make an informed decision. Here’s a pro tip: cover all aspects of the product on the product page from specifications, uses, benefits, comparison, reviews, visuals from different angles, and a lot more.

Follow these details with a strong call to action. With all the information well-presented in a single window, making a decision will be easier for users, enabling a better conversion rate.

Individual Page Performance

This is another parameter that determines the quality of your ecommerce website. Once your page is equipped with all the relevant data, you have to optimize it for Google crawlers to index higher on SERPs and make presence notable online.

WordPress for ecommerce website is a platform that can help you in optimization. You can add relevant keywords to your ecommerce writing – Google will determine if your content is valuable to the reader searching for similar keywords, and then rank your website accordingly.

Navigation within the website also plays a factor in your Google ranking. You can build a detailed sitemap to determine the flow from a product page to the cart. The more organized your sitemap is, the easier it would be for users to browse through it. It is why checking individual page performances, particularly of your product pages (since they trigger action) is critical in developing a successful ecommerce website.

In Conclusion

Building a winning ecommerce website can be a tedious task, which is where most online businesses tend to suffer – often due to lack of experience or expertise. However, following the abovementioned checklist will help you set up a competitive ecommerce website.

Most modern businesses are outsourcing web design and development to industry experts, while they themselves focus on developing core business strategies. If you want to outsource your web development and digital marketing services, Writing Services Hub has got you covered.

We house a team of experts who can build a top-tier ecommerce website for your business. For more information on how we can help you gain an edge in the market, talk to one of our experts at (786) 672 1123. You can also leave a query here, and we will get back to you with a solution as soon as possible.

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