Developing eCommerce Website

So, you want to have a crack at the world of eCom? You're not alone. After Covid-19 shut down economies and forced brick and mortar to close their doors, eCommerce experienced 10 years of expected growth in just 3 months!

Businesses and consumers alike needed to adapt to the new landscape. While companies get back to 'normal', consumers are more comfortable than ever with shopping on eCommerce websites.

The following list will give you a good overview of what you need to know if you plan on developing an eCommerce website.

Developing eCommerce Website / Platforms

Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, BigCommerce, Wix, Squarespace, Big Cartel, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, and Volusion are the most popular e-commerce platforms.

WooCommerce & Shopify have the most significant market share of eCommerce websites online. Their key differences are:?

Shopify: Offers an all-in-one solution to set up an eCommerce site. Starting with choosing a name and hosting a theme (design) to customise and manage people's orders.

WooCommerce: It is an eCommerce WordPress plugin. You'll first need to arrange a domain name and website hosting before you can craft your Ecom store. Despite this first hurdle, conducting eCommerce on WordPress allows your website to be quite versatile.

Developing eCommerce Website / Payment Gateways

You've taken the first step in setting up your website, and you've got products in stock and ready to sell. But have you thought about the most important thing- how you are going to be paid?

A payment gateway helps merchants accept payments securely from their customers. A good payment gateway will be recognised by your customers and give them the confidence to shop and hand over their payment details. Here are the top payment gateways:

Paypal

King of the castle is PayPal, with a whopping 50% market share of payment processing software technologies worldwide.

Paypal will process transactions on your behalf, charging the funds from the customer's credit/debit card and transferring them to your Paypal account.

While PayPal is the most established and straightforward payment gateway, the high fees are commonly unsustainable for businesses with small profit margins.

Another irritation by merchants is customers are re-directed to a PayPal page that looks completely different from their website. Meaning they can't optimise check-outs for better conversions.

Stripe

Coming in second place for market share in payment processing software is Stripe. Stripe offers payment processing solutions for e-commerce websites and mobile applications.

Stripe makes doing business in foreign markets much easier since it's compatible with various payment methods. These include major credit cards (e.g. American Express, Visa, Discover, Mastercard, Amex), lesser-known banks (e.g. JCB, UnionPay, Diners Club) and other payment providers like Alipay, WeChat, Apple Pay, Google Pay and Microsoft Pay.

Stripes fees are simple: flat fees of 2.9% + 30￠ (for non-European cards) or 1.4% + 30￠ (for European cards) per successful transaction.

Stipe offers a pretty good out-of-the-box solution to those new to the world on eCom. If you want customisation, you'll be playing around in the world of APIs, which will require help from developers.

Custom Shopping Cart

Customising your shopping cart can instantly elevate your e-commerce site from amateur to pro. It is more than a customised experience; it can reassure customers, increase conversion rates, brand your payment process, and lower transactional fees.

Custom shopping carts are great because they can link directly to your bank account. Extra costs are involved as a web developer needs to build the payment processing system into your website from scratch.?

In addition to ensuring the seamless payment process, the web developer needs to ensure the site is both PCI compliant and secure as credit/debit card information is stored on your server.

Merchant Account

If you decide to link business transactions directly to your bank account, you must create a merchant account with your preferred bank.

Merchant accounts are different from standard bank accounts; they allow you to obtain payments online from credit and debit cards. All big banks have their payment gateways to facilitate this process.

The merchant account is a particular account that the banks have to allow you to get payments online from credit and debit cards.?

If you want to get your business up and running now, start with Paypal initially and switch over once your merchant account is approved.

Shipping

Calculating shipping is a straightforward task and can be broken down into the following steps:

1. Decide if you will ship within your state, country or internationally. Many businesses are ambitious and decide to ship worldwide, not realising the complexity of the process.
2. The best way to tackle it is to make a list of where you will ship to rather than over-committing.
3. Research different companies and choose one that is affordable and meets your shipping requirements, including the areas you cover.?

Many businesses have applications where customers can calculate postage information based on weight, size and location.?

Get the most from your shipping; many customers abandon the transaction due to shipping costs. A flat fee may be your best option or free shipping if they spend over a particular amount.

Selling Products

It's essential to plan how your products are organised and displayed on your website. Typically it is best to organise into groups of similar products. Product names also need to be familiar to the target market to search for them quickly.

Hiring an experienced web developer to build your e-commerce website allows you to focus on other critical supporting activities like sales and marketing and your merchant account setup.