In many of my previous articles, I have talked about some of the reasons why you need to have a concrete plan before you create your e-commerce website. You should know that having a concrete plan before you begin the creation of your e-commerce website will allow you to avoid some of the pitfalls that come with e-commerce website creation. In this article, I want to talk about some of the reasons to buy an e-commerce website theme. Follow me as we are going to look at that in this article.
Before I will delve into what I have in mind to discuss in this article, I want to talk about some of the features that you should look out for when you need to buy an e-commerce website. I believe if you can follow this guideline, It will help you to avoid a situation where you actually purchased a website and you are no longer interested in it because of inadequate or poor features.
Here are some of the features that might interest you.
#1 Basic Layout
Most times, there are some features that a good e-commerce website should have. You should be able to add products, display the price for the product, and add a few descriptions to let others know about the features of the products. There should also be a way of displaying testimonials of what others have to say about that product as well.
#2 Framework
There is a need for you to consider the framework for the entire website. You need to release consider the Content Management System for the e-commerce website. Which Programming Language is been used to create the website? Do you or someone in your organization have the required skills needed to maintain the website?
If you do not have the necessary skills, you may need to outsource the maintenance of that website to a third party.
#3 Navigational structure
Also, it should be noted that no matter how good a website is, visitors to your website will have no option other than to leave the website if they always find it difficult to find what they are looking for. There is a need for you to make sure that the website is designed in such a way that people can easily find what they are looking for.
You should also include a search box for those that would like to search for a specific article or keyword.
#4 shopping cart software
Another feature that should differentiate a normal website from an e-commerce website is the inclusion of shopping cart software. This software will make it easy for your visitors to purchase products and services from the website. You need to make sure that the products are displayed based on characteristics that they have in common.
You should be able to also suggest new products to your audience based on related products that they have shown interest in as well.
There is a need for you to also include brief descriptions that tell people about the product as well as some of the reasons why they need to show interest in that particular product.
#5 Graphics
It is a well-known fact that online users will always show a keen interest in any content that has images and videos. That is why you need to ensure that you always include related images and videos on your product pages. This will allow your prospects and customers to see some of the unique dimensions of that product(s) or service(s). This will allow them to decide whether they actually wanted that product or not.
Having discussed some of the features of an e-commerce website, here are some of the reasons why you should rather buy your e-commerce website instead of building your own e-commerce website from scratch.
#1 Relatively cheap
I don’t know if you have ever asked a developer to develop an e-commerce website for you, but you need to know that the price that they are going to give you will be higher than the price that you can buy such a website, even with more features.
In essence, it makes a lot of sense to buy a product rather than decide to develop an e-commerce website. Even if you have specific features that you want your e-commerce website to have, you will always find a specific e-commerce template that can satisfy your needs. At times, you just need to do a slight modification for you to have what you need.
#2 Ready-made navigation
Another unique advantage of buying an e-commerce template over creating a new one is that it already has all the features you are looking for embedded in the website. It comes with ready-made navigations that are easy to implement and modify. That means your modification does not include developing a new navigation system for your e-commerce template. This reduces the time it will take for your website to come alive.
#3 Pre-integrated payment system
Also, you need to know that your website also comes with a good payment system integrated into the entire website. This makes it pretty much easier for customers to pay for products and services. Do not forget what I said in one of my articles, that you should not restrict your customers to a particular payment system. They should have more than one method of paying for products and services.
9 Steps For Planning An E-Commerce Website
In my previous article, I discussed some of the factors that you need to consider when it comes to planning an e-commerce website. In this article, I want to look at some of the steps to follow when planning an e-commerce website. Follow me as we are going to look at that in this article.
#1 Define your objective
The very first thing you need to do when it comes to planning your website is to define your website objective. Before you even contract the Developer that will even design your website, you need to know the reasons why you are creating that website. This will allow you to determine the necessary requirements that your website must have before you can have an effective e-commerce website.
Some of the examples of your objectives can include: generating income from the website, creating a national and global market for your product, increasing customer engagement, promoting good quality and valued customers as well as supporting socio-economic causes through the website.
#2 Define and segment your target audience
As part of the steps that you need to take when you are planning your website, you need to define and segment your target audience. There is a need for you to know the kind of audience that you are expecting on your website. When you have now analysed the specific type of audience that you are expecting on your website, you need to now segment them so that you can now divide the audience based on what your audience has in common.
Here are some of the criteria for segmenting your audience as Demographics, Age, gender, income groups, professional status, education, psychographics, brand consciousness, shopaholics, cosmopolitan, conservative spender, and values quality among others criteria.
#3 Do a competitive analysis
As part of your efforts towards planning your website, you need to do a competitive analysis of the audience on your website. You have to know what they lacked that you can leverage. What are they doing that you can easily do better? This will help you to develop and target an audience from that perspective.
There is a need for you to understand your market in order for you to function well in your marketplace. You also need to take time and check your competitor’s website and understand the key strategies that your competitors are using to drive the audience to their website. You have to understand methods that they are using that you can leverage. This will help you to plan how you can also drive key audiences to your website.
#4 Perform Situational Analysis
Also, as part of your key strategies toward driving a key audience to your website, you need to perform a situational analysis of your key audience. This will allow you to know the method for selling your product. You need to identify your best products that can create wonders in the marketplace. What are the key products and offers that you have that your major audience will likely be interested in?
You also need to identify your advertising and promotional opportunities. What methods can you adopt in order to ensure that you send words out about products and services that you have to offer? This will ensure that you are using the right platform to promote your products and services.
Also, as you are identifying some of your products that can create wonders in the marketplace, you also need to identify some of your products that need attention. This will allow you to create a blueprint on how you can repackage such products in order to make them more acceptable to your target audience.
#5 Create Budget
Definitely, the next major step that you need to do is to create a budget for the entire project. There is a need for you to allocate your budget for building the entire website. You also need to distribute your budget along with different areas such as search engine optimization, promoting and designing of the website, and applicable technologies among others.
You can also find pricing of freelancing services offered on the internet as well as decide on whether the website will be created in-house or through freelancing services.
#6 Create Content Marketing Strategies
There are many people that start an online business but they are not paying much attention to content creation. If you have a website or a blog, there is no way you can succeed if you do not have effective content marketing strategies. You need to make sure that you align your content marketing strategies so that everything can work as a whole. You need to support your owned media with paid and earned media in order to make sense of your content marketing strategies.
You also need to create a business profile for all your social media platforms. When you are doing this, you have to make sure that all the strategies are aligned to work as one. For example, if you are creating a social media profile, you have to use a common name so that it will be easily recognizable to your target audience. They will be able to recall the names without any hindrances.
#7 Hire your team
Also, the job of managing a website is always multi-disciplinary in nature. You need to make sure that you gather an excellent team that can manage different aspects of the website. You have to make sure that you also outsource skills that you know that your internal team will not be able to effectively handle.
Also, you need to define the roles and responsibilities of each of your team members. The main reason for doing that is to ensure that there is no duplication of efforts as far as the roles that members of your team are expected to play is concerned. The roles should not only include the skill sets that you need to create, it should also cover skills that are needed to maintain the site as well.
#8 Define metrics for evaluating results
There is a need for you to also define some of the metrics that you will use in evaluating your results. This will help you to determine whether your business strategy is succeeding or not. It will also allow you to make necessary amendments so that you can improve on what you have achieved already.
Here are some of the metrics that you need to consider which include: website traffic, customer engagement, conversion rates, as well as customer loyalty among others.
#9 Create e-commerce requirements
There is a need for you to also create e-commerce requirements specifications for different tasks. You need to define user and functional requirements, search and content requirements, technical requirements, as well as SEO requirements among others.
This will define what must be achieved for every assignment that has been defined for your project. This can also the management define what should be achieved as the project moves from one stage of achievement to another stage.
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