Online stores have become a very essential part of today’s sales strategy, no matter whether you are selling software/hardware or handicrafts. In fact, the indigenous handicrafts are looking for a market area to sell their products in the country or outside. This can only be done by setting up online stores so that people can visit them online and place orders there.
Indigenous products have always been in high demand in a large section of the upwardly mobile urban populace. However, most of them have to shell out large amount of money to buy them from some of the most renowned ethnic brands. However, this market can be reached by many small artifact sellers just by starting an eCommerce store. Therefore, these small sellers can not only cater to the local market but also reach a customer base beyond the geographical peripheries. More and more people are using eCommerce for expanding their business. You may have a brick and mortar shop. However, this will only have a localized presence. To expand your reach and customer base, online stores play a very important role.
If you are planning to launch an eCommerce website, you should know about a few things –
- Finding the Right Development and Design Company or Freelancer – The first thing that you need to look at is the company that can provide you the perfect design and developmental aspects. That’s why the first step for any person or company to set up an eCommerce site is to find out a service provider that can create a fully functioning site that is also search engine optimized. It is extremely important as an initial step because it will pay in the long run because you can manage all the important elements together from a single place.
- Selecting the Right E commerce Platform is Very Important – Choosing the right eCommerce platform is extremely important. When it comes to development and design, Magento hosting, development, and design platform is the most important one. Facts and figures show that around quarter of the entire eCommerce market is being covered by the Magento eCommerce development platform, the leading platform in the eCommerce space.
Highly functional, intuitive, and highly customer-friendly stores can be designed and developed with the inherent features of Magento. Some of these features that place Magento platform before most of the other platforms are detailed sales metrics and analytics, shipping options, payment gateway, inventory portfolios, and wide array of add-on and view items. - Selecting the System in a Careful manner is very Important – There are many specialized as well as customized solutions that are built around old as well as obscure codes. Choosing a system that is popular is a very important thing. It is always preferable to choose a system that is not only popular but also a well supported one. In addition, look out for a system that comes with the support of a good community. All these aspects should be able to produce such a shop that looks stunning.
There can be few steps that can be looked into and they are –
- If you are just starting out and don’t have the means, resources, and knowledge of having fully owned site, hosted platforms such as Shopify can work wonder. With a nominal monthly fee for hundred products can get you started.
- If you are looking for full control of your own eCommerce site, WordPress is a very good choice as it comes with some interesting plugins. One such plugin is Jigoshop which is a very popular plugin among the eCommerce sites. There is another eCommerce open source solution that is not only effective but also popular. It is called OpenCart.
#4 Optimization is Extremely Important
When you are starting with an eCommerce Online Store, the first thing you need to check after development and design is the optimization aspect. Optimizing a site is very important because that will help your site to get discovered fast.
One of the most common problems by the eCommerce sites is the slow loading time. If a site takes lots of time to open, the viewers or customers will move to other eCommerce sites and your business will therefore be at a loss. There are certain techniques that can decrease your site’s loading time.
- If you are starting out with a hosted eCommerce solution, there’s nothing much you can do as the control of the system is with the service provider such as Shopify. If you are getting such a service, always choose the provider carefully as it will decide whether you are going to improve or break.
- In case you are opting for a self hosted system such as WordPress, page load speed optimization is very important. Always optimize the HTML code as well as other codes for speeding up the WordPress based ecommerce site’s loading time.
Incase you also want to launch your own ecommerce shop, we can be a great help right from ecommerce hosting to design & development to online marketing. All you have to do is pick up a phone and call : 1800-212-2022 or mail us your requirement at [email protected]