Building an eCommerce Store? Everything you need to choose the right eCommerce platform to build your store on
What is the one thing preventing business owners from taking the leap into eCommerce? Simple, most don’t know where to even start! “Should I hire a developer? How do I get paid online? How do I manage my orders?” The internet is full of so much information and many offers to do this and not that. But instead of giving a straight answer and simplifying things, most information out there is very confusing, but that’s why we’re here. We compiled a list of important features you need to look for when choosing the right platform for an online store.
Ready-Made Themes and Templates To Get You Started
If you are reading this, chances are you aren’t a designer or a developer, most of us aren’t. But that’s not a problem since most platforms come with different types of custom or community-made templates. Think of these templates as ready-made websites that only need your touch. You will find something that directly matches your business’s theme. It’ll save you time and money because you no longer need a developer. If you know how to upload pictures to Facebook, you’ll know how to update these templates.
Another great thing about templates – at least the high-quality ones – is that they are designed with easy-to-understand layouts so that your customers can actually make a purchase from you and not get lost in a maze. You’d be frustrated when you see something on a website you like but it’s taking forever to actually place an order and after wasting a good 20 minutes, you just give up. Customers wouldn’t like that either. If they see something they like, they’d want to place an order right away so make sure to choose a platform that’s easy to use and isn’t complex.
Mobile-Friendly
Mobile friendliness is simply your website’s ability to change shape and layout to adapt to a user’s phone screen. It should also take into account performance on mobile devices where the site is optimized to load fast on these devices. This is important because smartphone users are normally connected to 3G/4G services which are slower than Wi-Fi.
Consumer behavior is shifting towards shopping on smartphones. Especially on the lower end of the market where the only available internet device is a phone at most times. This means that one essential feature you strongly need to consider when deciding on an ecommerce platform is its mobile-friendliness. Research also shows that the US, UK, and Germany will have a 33.3% of sales coming in from mobiles this year alone. To give you even a stronger reason to go with a platform that’s mobile-friendly is the fact that in 2019 smartphones accounted for 65% of retail website visits. Want more sales? Make interactions easier for your customers through their mobile devices.
SEO: Search Engine Optimization
What is the first step most people take when they want to get something online? They Google it. This happens even if people know the site they are looking for. How many times have you seen people googling Facebook? In order to adapt to this behavior, your website needs to be easily visible to search engines (all search engines, not just Google).
When exploring different eCommerce platforms, you need to account for how it’ll help with your SEO. There are so many platforms that come with advanced features and if you’re reading this, you already know how vital of role SEO has towards your business – you probably got here through a search engine. So make sure to look up how your platform of choice adapts for SEO.
Conversion Rate Optimization
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is the process of optimizing your site towards certain actions. These “conversions” are high-value actions like lead submissions or purchases.
Getting a platform with high conversion rates will be the difference between a successful business and just another online failure. significantly grow your business. Optimizing conversion rates will help you lower your customer acquisition costs since more of your existing visitors buy your products. You’ll increase your revenue per visitor and move towards sustainable growth. Your platform of choice should give you the flexibility to test different layouts and images and give you clarity on the impact of such changes. After all, conversion rate optimization is all about trying different things. You don’t want to be stuck going to a developer every time you want to make a small change.
Analytics
When you know what your numbers are, you tend to make better decisions. Think about it, would you be comfortable making decisions based on facts and figures, or based on some numbers you just guessed? The latter right? These analytics will give you figures on number of daily views on your website, average time spent on the website by users, etc. A good eCommerce platform will give you the ability to view the performance of your site and highlight any problems you may have.
Payment options
If you make paying online easier for your customers, you’ll get more and more sales. Do you want them to pay cash on delivery? Debit Card? Or something else? There are so many options you can provide your customers and your business needs to be able to support as many as possible to be deemed as the ideal platform for an online store.
Now we understand that payment is a complex topic that involves payment gateways and banks and processes. But there are providers out there (like ours for example) that come with a payment gateway built-in. Making the process of selling online that much easier!
Integrations
Any business will need to use a plethora of tools to run efficiently. Accounting, order management, CRM, marketing, delivery management, shipping providers, payment gateways… There are a lot. Your chosen eCommerce platform needs to be able to play nice with all these tools and seamlessly integrate with them. Having a website that’s static will cause you multiple headaches down the line that you really need to avoid. Choosing the right platform for your online store will help you stay focused and achieve your goals quicker.
Go through these factors and really focus on your goal. You’ll be quick to make the right decisions once you’ve really thought about each of the factors we’ve mentioned above. Choosing the platform that suits you best may take a lot of time but once you’ve chosen the ideal platform, you’ll be able to expand your operations, manage your store more effectively, and definitely increase your sales.
You really don’t have to be some sort of a genius to start your online store, just put in the right amount of time and effort and you’ll see the results you want!
Sign up with us at enable.tech to choose the ideal platform for an online store and build an unbeatable online Business!
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