Start your business online with custom ecommerce development services. Follow top 5 ways to develop innovative custom ecommerce website.
If you want to start an online business, or want to take your existing business online, there are two options for getting your e-commerce site up and running.
- A custom ecommerce site
- An off-the-shelf open source ecommerce solution
You need to talk to an ecommerce consultant, to know whether a custom or an open source solution will be the right fit for your requirements. In the case of an ecommerce solution that is customized as per your needs, you get the benefit of:
- Seamless database
- Error free, logical, systematic and demand based coding
- Need for no extensions and plugins
If you are actually thinking about going for an ecommerce site that is tailor made to fit in with your needs, expectations and objectives, you will do well to follow this path:
Envision the Nature and Direction of the Site Flow
Research, Strategize and Document
What is the purpose you have in mind, what are the objectives that you want to accomplish, what is your target audience, what is the kind of site you want, how do you want to market the site, what is your competition; these and many more questions need to be answered while conducting research.
Your strategy can only be defined once you know what you want and how you want to go about achieving it. The kind of visual elements, features and functionalities that your site will have on offer will be strategized after thorough research. You will need to clearly define a path to follow and then document everything that you have researched and strategized.
Include High End Functionalities
What are the functionalities that you want in your site? Identify and define them.
Construct on-page architecture
What is your page going to look like? You will need to identify and define the page elements that you are going to use and also the information that you want on the page and the way you are going to present it. You will need to define the user flow of the page.
Choice of technology
You need to zero in on the technology that you are going to use, whether it’s going to corePHP, ASP.NET, Java or some other technology. While doing so, it’s important that you choose a rapid framework that helps you develop a high performance site quickly and efficiently.
SEO Friendly Design
The success of an ecommerce site is determined by the sales it will generate and for this it needs to attract a lot of targeted traffic. This is only possible if it’s SEO friendly. Here are the pointers that you need to keep in mind.
- You need to pick a theme that suits the purpose of your site, which looks good and something that’s SEO friendly to boot. This will allow you to freeze on the way your Home, product, category, sub category and order pages are going to look.
- You also need to be able pick the right combination from HTML-CSS or HTML5- CSS3 or something else. This depends on the kind of investment you want to make, and the features that you want. If you want to make your site mobile ready, then HTML5 will be the best option.
- You must ensure that your HTML coding is of top quality, and without the use of unnecessary JavaScript and CSS coding. This ensures a cleaner code, which is good for SEO.
- Keep an eye on integrating all SEO friendly parameters, like URL, a clear layout and quality content optimized for specific keywords.
Onwards to Development
You now come to the critical aspect of building a custom ecommerce site. The first thing you must do is prepare the database, identify all the entities and define the necessary relationships; and then you must write the code for integrating them with the database. This is also the stage where all the design integration takes place, and product images and descriptions are loaded.
As an online merchant, you must offer your shoppers a complete shopping cycle and this is only possible by configuring a payment gateway, implementing an order funnel and integrating shipping and delivery management modules.
Testing and QA
Verification of all the features and components is an integral part of developing an ecommerce site, where the site is tested on parameters like usability, security and performance in a real time environment.
Can online shoppers find the products that they are looking for? Has your site integrated the stringent security standards that help protect shoppers from identity theft? Does your site perform to expectations in real market conditions? You need to take the site through numerous and varied testing scenarios to know if it meets the highest standards of quality. What testing and QA does is that it ensures that your site offers a superior shopping experience to customers.
Almost done, Deployment
You are almost through now. What you now have to do is choose hosting services that are of top grade, meaning the kind that are reliable, secure and have zero downtime. You don’t want to have a great site on your hands, but hosting services that are not that good. Also, now is the time that you can implement security protocols like SSL and HTTPS, for better security.
Finally, Launch
Your site is now ready for launch. All the Best!
