Ecommerce Website Development Guide for Beginners

Ecommerce has witnessed a massive boom after the pandemic hit the world. Various small businesses have brought their stores online. If you are just starting out and planning to build an e-store, this blog is a must-read. Here is a detailed guide on eCommerce website development for beginners.

Steps to Build an Ecommerce Website

Focus on Trust & Security

Since the users have to spend their money on something that they are only seeing in images and videos, they are over sceptical. Inspiring trust is the basic thing to do herein. If the site doesn’t feel reliable to them, they will bounce and visit a different website. Especially, with large marketplaces like Amazon around, you cannot lose a brownie point by overlooking the matter of reliability.

Here are a few ways to communicate trustworthiness:

• Give a complete overview of the business:

• General information including vision and mission statement

• Photographs of people involved in the business

• Contact information

• Social media profile links

• FAQ page

• Shipping and return and policy

• Privacy policy that covers shoppers’ personal and financial information

Other than these, pay attention to the following three crucial aspects:

Feature user-generated reviews to make your potential shoppers rely on your products

Add recognized trust seals that verify the security and legitimacy of a site. These may include Norton, McAfee, BBB Accredited Business, VeriSign, etc.

Use a secure server and feature SSL certificate that encrypts sensitive information and authenticates the identity of a site.

Read this blog to get more information on how to inspire trust on your e-store.

A Professional Design

There’s no substitute for a professional design when it comes to the eCommerce website. Here are a few tips to make your site look super professional.

1. Align with your brand identity: Your website is the hub of branding. Choose colours and visuals that reflect your brand. For instance, golden can be a part of a luxe brand, a vegan brand may use green, and so on.

2. Keep enough white space: Use more white space so that people can easily comprehend the elements present on your website. It will make your site easily scannable for the human eye.

3. Stay away from over design: Lots of fonts, different sizes, a rainbow of colours, lots of images - all these make your site look clumsy. Instead, opt for a minimalistic design that highlights the products you sell.

4. Avoid too many popups: While popups are the easiest way to drive the site visitors’ attention, they block their view and irritate. Therefore, restrain yourself from using too many popups on your website and limit it to one that features something really important like a discount offer. Also, let the users easily opt-out by clicking the close button or tapping outside of the popup window.

If you are looking to build a smart e-store with a clutter-free design, we recommend you opt for professional website development services. The experts will reflect your brand aesthetics on your online store.

Frictionless Site Navigation

Your website navigation must be super smooth to let people move around the website and take an action. Make sure to offer a glitch-free shopping experience to the users.

Here are a few aspects to focus on:

• Product search: Put the search box on every page in a visible location. It’s better to place it on the top centre or right side of the page. Keep a provision for autocomplete and autocorrect features so as to enhance the users’ convenience.

• Product categories: The top level of navigation of the site should feature the product categories. Group products in different categories and subcategories for the users to easily find out.

• Sort and Filter: These two features will help the users to narrow down their search. Let them pick results on the basis of various criteria like best sellers, product rating, highest and lowest price, latest arrival, etc.

• Quick View: Include a product quick view option that enables the users to find details of the product. Let them zoom into the product, change colours (if available), get a 36-degree view of the product, and add the item to the cart and wishlist.

• Make sure to taste site navigation time and again to make it more streamlined.

• By the way, only developing an online store is not enough as you need to focus on improving sales. Check out these 5 effective strategies to increase sales on your eCommerce website.

Product Page

The product page should encompass various aspects as follow:

• Product image: Feature a high-quality product image so that people are attracted to buy it. It’s better to use a light or white background so that the product can be properly seen.

• Product video: Go beyond product image and include a short video. It may be a tutorial on how to use the product. It will help the viewers get a practical demonstration of the item.

• Description: Feature product details and include all the important information. It’s better to use bullet points instead of a long passage. Let the users scan through it.

• FAQ: Answer some frequently asked questions about the product right under the product information. This will be specific to every product and offer some additional bit of information.

• CTA: The Add to Wishlist and Add to Cart buttons should be highlighted and easily clickable and tappable. Make sure it is thumb-friendly since most of the users browsing your site from mobile devices will tap on it with their thumb.

Cart & Checkout

Unless it is an essential item, people take a long time before purchasing a product. They may add some products in the shopping cart or wishlist, check out different sites, compare prices, come back to your site, browse some more products, and all these make take more than a single day. Make sure that they can save their cart or the wishlist in the meanwhile so that they don’t have to browse the item and add it to the cart time and again.

The checkout page is the most important part of your online store. Pay attention to offering a seamless checkout to your users. Further, you should keep a provision for guest checkout instead of making signup mandatory.

Well, that’s only the tip of the iceberg. The next step is to equip your website with the most essential features so as to enhance the users’ convenience. Check out this blog on 12 must-have features on your eCommerce website.