10 Things to Consider Before Building an eCommerce Solution
So you’ve decided to build your eCommerce solution. What next? Are you relying solely upon your eCommerce development company to build the next Amazon or eBay for you? Or is there something you need before you hand the reins over to your development partner? No doubt opening an online store or building a large scale eCommerce solution is the right choice, but no eCommerce plan works like a magic wand that will multiply your revenues overnight. It takes various strategic measures to achieve substantial business growth, even with the best eCommerce solutions available in the market.
Building a Robust eCommerce Solution: Focus Areas What are the main factors to consider when developing an eCommerce presence? With continuous changes in buying habits, online shopping is seeing a huge growth. Before you start selling your products to your consumers, there are several factors that can decide the fate of your business. Therefore, as you initiate the process of creating your eCommerce solution, consider the following things to make your project a success.
1. Alignment with Business Goals Before you hop on to the eCommerce bandwagon, you need to have a clear understanding of your business goals. At this stage, you should have a detailed outline of the following attributes of your business so that the development of you eCommerce solution aligns with your business goals:
Understand Your Target Market Having an eCommerce site opens up endless opportunities for retailers. They can capture global markets with the help of an up and running eCommerce website. The prospect of being able to sell across the world is quite enticing. However, you must explore your target market well before selling overseas. The key things to consider are:
The applicable taxes
Excise duties
Shipping costs
Compliance to international trade practices
Know Your Target Customers The importance of conducting detailed customer profiling before you plan to sell either offline or online is mandatory and necessary. You need to segment customers based on their demographics, likes, dislikes, shopping habits, spending power, digital footprint, and more. Knowing your target customers will help you identify what features, functionality, promotions, etc. you need to provide them to meet their needs.
Features and Customizations If you are building an eCommerce presence from scratch, you would want to create a detailed features list. This can be achieved by conducting stakeholder meetings, user reviews, free trials, surveys, and several brainstorming sessions with different departments in your organization. Having a detailed list of features and functionality at hand will give a direction to your eCommerce website development project.
2. Beat the Competition Competitive analysis is one of the important factors most businesses overlook while building a new solution or migrating to a different one. You can get useful insights from a competitive analysis that will help you make strategic business and technology decisions.
Identify Your Key Competitors The first logical step is to identify who your real competitors are. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the company operating in your geographic location, selling the
same
products
and
services,
is
your
top
competitor.
You should use some of your keywords on popular search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing to find out who all are ranking well against you. And you need to do this exercise on a regular basis to keep track of your competitors.
Determine What Technology They are Using Find out which web hosting and other technologies your competitors are using on their sites. Several online tools can give you various statistics about the technologies used on a website (e.g., Wappalyzer and Builtwith). During this exercise, you might come across certain useful techniques that you are not currently using on your site, or you didn’t make up your mind about those techniques in the past. It is also important to get a SSL certificate to secure your content & site, protect users, rank higher, and eventually build the customers’ confidence in your solution.
Feature Comparison The next thing you can compare is the features and functionality your competitors are offering on their sites. This exercise is specifically useful in scenarios when you are new to eCommerce, though it can also come in handy if you are transitioning to a new solution or re-developing your website.
The idea behind competitive analysis is to make informed decisions based on what’s going on in the market and what your competitors are doing so that you can step ahead of your competition.
3. Address the Project Requirements Now it’s time to define your project requirements. In this step, you’ll have to determine what exactly needs to be done in the development phase. Things like what features and functionality need to be implemented, which third-party integrations need to be done, what customizations are required, and what will be the roles and responsibilities of your internal project team.
Document Your Features List Based on all the analysis and competitive research you’ve done in the earlier steps, list down the final features and functionalities to implement when you design an eCommerce solution. You also need to prioritize features that need to be implemented in phase 1, phase 2, and so forth. You can also list the must-have features and nice-to-have features that will determine the overall project scope.
Third-party Integrations Also, list down the third-party integrations you want to do on your site and inform the vendors well in advance about your requirements to avoid any functionality or compatibility issues later on.
Extensions and Customizations The next step is to identify what extensions you require and what kind of customizations needs to be done to build a reliable and effective solution. Having said that, customizations are always time-consuming and challenging, so you need to figure out your requirements well in advance to avoid the common eCommerce mistakes when selling online.
Document Your SEO Transition Plan Determining your SEO transition plan is also an essential step in defining your project requirements, and it’s relevant to the projects where you are migrating to a new platform.
Inspect the following things in your SEO transition:
301 redirects
Appropriate tagging
URL optimization
Navigational hierarchy
Internal linking
Keyword analysis
Define Internal Roles & Responsibilities Defining internal roles and responsibilities is also a key part of determining your project requirements. This includes:
Assigning internal champion or point of
contact for taking
technical
decisions
Who will conduct the design review
Who will conduct the development and QA review
Who’ll be responsible for data import
And who’ll have the final sign-off authority on the project
Define a Realistic Timeline Don’t expect exceptional results in a short time. The ideal thing to do is to divide the project into different phases and make incremental progress through the project. Follow the time vs. quality approach, which means putting more time into development will ensure higher quality. That obviously doesn’t mean that you let
things get delayed. Just assign a realistic timeline and make sure the project sticks to it.
Define a Realistic Budget Remember that your budget decides your eCommerce capabilities and is directly related to the types of features, functionalities, customizations you want to implement on your eCommerce platform. So if you have a $5000 to $10,000 budget, you really can’t expect your eCommerce solution development partner to build Amazon for you. However, you can think about how you can cut costs by using your internal resources in activities such as QA and data migration if you already have such resources within your organization.
4. Decide on Data Migration Needs This applies to the businesses that already have an eCommerce platform, and want to migrate to a different one. Data migration can get incredibly complex and challenging, so getting it right is critical to ensuring success in your migration strategy.
Identify What Needs to be Migrated
You might want to look at the following elements that need to be migrated:
Catalog data migration
Customer customer
accounts, data,
passwords,
including usernames,
addresses,
addresses
Order history
Product review
Promotions/ coupons
5. Review Existing Solutions This is specifically relevant to businesses that are transitioning to a different eCommerce solution. The existing site or solution review should be focused mainly on SEO and site structure. The reason for doing this is to figure out where you stand at the moment so that when the new solution is implemented, you can clearly distinguish between new issues, if any, and the old issues that were present in the previous solution. This way, you’ll be more aware of how much you’ve improved or if there’s room for improvement.
SEO Analysis The first thing to analyze is the search engine optimization status of your existing site. Especially after the recent updates by Google, you might want to analyze things such as:
Your current keywords list and how you can improve it
Your
top
revenue-generating
keywords and landing pages
How your existing site ranks at the moment and what you want to achieve through the new platform
Link analysis to keep an inventory of all links you have
Setup Google Webmaster for your site to keep track of the progress you are making
Navigation and Sitemap Review Conduct a review of your site’s existing navigation structure and sitemap, and the overall information architecture of your website. Document things such as categories, sub-categories, content pages, blog pages, sitemaps, layout, and more. Again, all this is required to help you understand what your site is and what you want to make it, and ensure you don’t make any complex changes that repel your
visitors. For example, if you realize that your site users are comfortable with left navigation, then it makes no sense to change it to top navigation or mega menu. In the end, knowing your website well, you are the best person to make these decisions.
Third-party Integrations List down the third-party integrations you already have in your existing solution. It would be good to ensure that these integrations work well with the eCommerce solution you select. These can include shipping partners, sales tax data partners, and other kinds of third-party integrations. Besides, determine if you need to calculate taxes, and on what basis – city, state, country.
Identify how much you Should Change This is the tricky one. Most business owners would like to make big changes in their existing eCommerce sites. However, that would be a recipe for disaster. eCommerce sites usually have far higher traffic than non-eCommerce sites, and most of the time, online shoppers get used to the order processing system or any other process on your site. Changing too much in the first go could bring drastic changes in customer behavior and buying patterns, and since the volume of shoppers is high, the impact will also be big.
Therefore, it’s advisable to outline the minimal changes that you want to make in phase 1 and take it from there. Making incremental changes will help users adapt easily without affecting their user experience.
6. Hosted or Custom eCommerce Solutions The next most logical step would be to select an eCommerce platform that’s the right fit for your business processes and requirements. You need to choose between a hosted solution and a custom/open source solution. It all depends on your business volume and budget requirements to choose between these two. Let’s see how hosted eCommerce solutions are different from open source solutions.
Hosted eCommerce Solution Hosted eCommerce solutions like Shopify are probably the fastest and economical way to build an eCommerce site. Hosted solutions are the off-the-shelf solutions that are not owned by you. Some of the key characteristics of a hosted solution are:
Low setup costs
Easy to implement and maintain
Cost
includes
hosting,
and
downgrades/upgrades are easy
Limited flexibility
Full support from the
solution
developers
Automatic bug fixes, upgrades, and new feature implementation
Third-party integration with limited vendors
Custom/Open Source Solution Open source solutions like Magento are highly customizable solutions and require specialized developers to implement and maintain.
High or very high setup costs (for code customization, template integration, testing, and implementation)
Complex
solution,
easily
implemented and maintained by specialized developers
Complicated
upgrades
and
downgrades
Excellent flexibility and customizable features to meet your unique needs
Support must be contracted privately
Manual customization of code for upgrades
Root files are accessible, so any thirdparty software can be integrated
7. Mobile Commerce Capabilities The next thing to consider is the mobile capabilities of the eCommerce solution you are planning to use for your eCommerce website. In order to step ahead of your competitors, you must also be able to sell through mobile devices.
US m-commerce volume is poised to increase from $128.4 billion in 2019 to $418.9 billion through 2024.
In addition, customers are increasingly adopting a mobile lifestyle, and they prefer mobile devices to research a product and make purchases. Therefore, the eCommerce solution you are choosing should be mobile-ready. Having a mobile version or mobile-optimized version of your eCommerce site will help you expand your market reach and bring more traffic to your website.
In addition, make sure that the eCommerce solution has mobile marketing features such as:
Page layouts preview on mobile screens
Workflow notifications to approve and publish site updates on the go from your smartphone
Trigger messages when visitors sign up for special offers or take other action on your site
8. Digital Marketing Features
Your eCommerce solution is incomplete without the marketing capabilities for the audience. Things such as search engine optimization, social media integration, paid search optimization, and affiliate marketing are the techniques that will drive visitors to your website. Therefore, make sure that the eCommerce solution you are building has effective online marketing capabilities such as:
Web Analytics To keep track of the visitors’ behavior, you need to have a strong web analytics integration on your eCommerce website. Without web analytics, you’ll have no idea what’s happening on your website, how the customers are using your site, and what changes you can make to improve their user experience. You can start with tools like Google Analytics and Hotjar to map your conversion rate optimization.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & PPC SEO capabilities will help you increase the online presence of your eCommerce website. Make sure your eCommerce solution integrates seamlessly with SEO activities to drive organic traffic to your website and help you keep ahead of your competitors in search engine rankings.
Similarly, you need to have strong PPC campaigns in place to market and promote your products and sell online. The important thing here is to understand the difference between SEO and PPC. SEO is done to enhance your organic/natural search rankings, and PPC is the paid campaign that you run online to attract visitors. You need to keep the right balance between SEO and PPC marketing techniques to drive relevant traffic to your website.
Social Media Integration Social media is the strongest medium to promote your business online. The eCommerce solution you plan to implement must have social media capabilities so that your products or services get relevant mentions across various social media channels, like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Remember, customers use social media to a great extent for online shopping as well as to talk about products and brands. They write product reviews on various social channels about their shopping experience, recommend products to their contacts, and also add items to their shopping cart based on recommendations made by their social contacts. Therefore, social media tools on your website will make it easier for your customers to talk about your products and services on social channels.
9. eCommerce Development Partner
Whether you choose a hosted eCommerce solution or an open-source one, you’ll need a development partner to implement the ideal eCommerce software and solution. Choosing the right eCommerce solution provider can be a highly taxing job. Therefore, you need to consider the following factors to make the right choice: 
How many implementations the solution provider has done on the
eCommerce
solution
you
have
chosen?
Has
the
solution
provider
implemented the solution in your industry?
What type of clients they have worked for?
Do
they
follow
industry
best
processes and methodologies?
Have they won any awards for the solutions they have developed?
Do they have technically qualified resources?
What
certifications
and
accreditation’s they have relevant to the solution you have chosen? In addition, you can talk directly to a solution provider’s previous customers to know their reviews on the services offered by their eCommerce development partner.
10. Feedback and Continuous Improvement
Once all the implementations are done, and your eCommerce website is live, you’ll actually know how your customers respond to your website. Now is the time to actively monitor what’s happening on your website. You need to drill down deep into the web analytics stats of your website and identify improvement areas based on those insights.
You also need to have a strong feedback mechanism so that users can submit suggestions and feedback easily. All the data that you collect through analytics tools and customer feedback will form the basis of improvements that you need to make. Continuous improvement is the key to keep up with changing customer requirements. It’s an ongoing process, and you need to keep monitoring the data that you get from analytics, SEO, social media, and PPC campaigns to make continuous improvements. It is also essential to keep up with the technological advancements. For instance voice search is all set to transform shopping and eCommerce.
Conclusion Deciding on the best eCommerce platform or building the entire eCommerce solution from scratch is an enormous task. The combination of all the factors mentioned in this article can certainly help businesses of all sizes meet their eCommerce goals. Most organizations have this misconception that once they find the best solution available in the market, the rest will fall in place. On the contrary, no matter how big the solution is, the success depends on how you strategize its implementation. From researching on the top eCommerce trends, the various eCommerce solution services to zeroing in on the ideal eCommerce website development company, the road to building a successful online business is long but worth taking.
Source - https://www.netsolutions.com/insights/10-things-to-consider-before-you-plan-to-build-anew-e-commerce-solution/