8 Tips To Start Building User-friendly eCommerce Website Development

eCommerce, a big-time word which we hear every day. Whether, big or a small enterprise, eCommerce website development is an unsaid must for your business if you are into trading.
You must be wondering why do I put compulsion in that? I will tell you.

Well, do I need to tell you that?

With the digitalization, customers now prefer to shop online more than they do for offline. Thus, it is the mandatory stand for business now to consider going online and be available there where their customers prefer to go.

ECommerce Website development asks you a sort of investment and being a business owner; you want some numbers to justify that need.

Well, here we are with some statistics. A survey on eCommerce anticipates an increase of 246.15% in the global eCommerce sales, from the US $1.3 Trillion in 2014 to $4.5 trillion in 2021. That is a vast number to turn the tables.

You have got the statistics now; however, I would like to share some tips before you start building your online store with eCommerce Website Development with some of the top eCommerce development services.

1. START AUTHORIZED AND STEADY

You involve your business into commerce, where it very much necessary to have the legal authority of trading those particulars products and services.

Understand thoroughly and pin down the rules and regulations about trading certain products whether online or offline.

Also, you need to register yourself with the authorities to trade as all the banking transactions will occur from legal bank accounts and it is horrible if it makes unreliable to transact.

Register with the authorities. Make sure you get the relevant certificates from them and make it accessible on your online store as well if the customers want they can review your credibility.

You have got the authorities but wait; don’t hurry your launch yet.

Your eCommerce website is the online store of your business.

Treat its opening as cherishable as you would do for your physical store.

Make necessary advertisements online. Create the buzz, tell people that something grand is coming. Delay the launch if possible, but make sure it is worth the delay.

2. PERFECT AND ROBUST PARTNERS

Getting the functioning and dynamic eCommerce website solutions are not enough to run the eCommerce store effectively.

You need to have some perfect and robust partners by your side.

First of all, you need to partner with an eCommerce development company who is proficient in providing eCommerce website development services as per the business requirements and niche.

A best eCommerce website design company can help you get the best eCommerce store developed and designed for your business because they understand what having and being the best means.

Browse through the top eCommerce development companies and then hire eCommerce Development services suitable to your business requirements.

Secondly, for an eCommerce store, it is highly necessary to have a shipping partner who is reliable and active.

You need to maintain specific promises with your customers. A customer while placing an order online, checks how soon they can get the delivery in their hands.

You need to mention on your store the specific number of days it may take to reach the delivery.

Making the promises to customers means you need to stand by your words. Thus, you need to have a promising shipping agent by your side, which takes care of your deliveries to the customers in time and with perfection.

3. FOCUS ON CUSTOMERS’ CHOICE

eCommerce is sheerly focusing on customer requirements.

Smart business owners know what their customers want and accommodate their services according to the customer requirements and likings.

Keep the trend maintaining in all your products. Check if it is matching your niche.

Assure customers of full comfort from your products and show them that you stand by your words, while they surf on your store and while they receive their package.

Along with products, focus on the design of your store.

Get the most compelling eCommerce website design services for your online store as it is a branch of your business in itself.

Check that it is easy to navigate through the pages, products, and services.

A user will turn into a customer only when he finds what he wants on your online store.

4. MAKE YOUR STORE MOBILE AS WELL

You are a smart entrepreneur and aware of the fact that mobile has become an all-time tool in every other person’s hand around us.

Well, if you keep a step back while eCommerce development of your store for your mobile, I am sure you are losing thousands of customers.

However, I know that you are smart and would not make such a mistake.

Make your online store mobile responsive and friendly.

Develop it as easy to use on the mobile phones as well. Take assistance from a mobile app development company who is proficiently an eCommerce website development company as well. Check the same aspects as you checked on the desktop version of your online store. Customers love mobiles; remember, to trade you should consider what the customers like.

5. SUPPORT AND POLICIES

When you hire eCommerce Development service, you need to make sure that you cover all the aspects for your online store.

Don’t skip out the essential things such as the –

“About Us” page – It seems quite creepy to not know the people you are trading with. Update the page with all the necessary information about your company and the dealings.

Active Support system – you expect your customer to be online on your store any and every time of the day; so you need to make sure that you provide them the active support at any hour of the day.

Refund and Return policies – It is not necessary always that the product will look the same way as it looked online and whether the customer will like it the same way as they did online

Keep friendly return and refund policies. It is okay if they returned once but open the doors wide enough for them to come and shop again.

Payment Options – With the variety of products, customers prefer a variety of payment options as well. Try to keep as many payment options as possible for your business to handle. Also, don’t forget to allow the choice of cash on delivery.

6. ANALYZE AND ENHANCE

Like the way you analyze in your business about the possible profits and losses; you need to examine your online store as well.

Collect essential data and researches. Check the traffic and conversions.

Analyze them. Build up new strategies. You are the captain of the ship to take charge. Enhance with new tactics. Apply new strategies.

If you are falling short of the strategies, take assistance from the top eCommerce development service that you hired for the eCommerce development. They are proficient with these and always up with the market trends.

7. TESTING

Once you have completed the eCommerce website development process, you need to test every aspect of your store.

Take assistance of the eCommerce website development company to apply relevant testing techniques on your application and website to check if there exist any bugs or are there any flaws in the store.

Check it yourself once again; as a user, how does it look like, how it is likely to feel and how it is likely to use and navigate.

Make the amendments whatever necessary to remove the flaws and improve the usability of your online store.

8. SEO AND OTHER SOCIAL ELEMENTS

Optimize your online store efficiently for the search engines.

Create efficient SEO strategies and make sure you apply them in the stipulated timeline before launching the store.

Also, consider marketing on social media as well. The more people know about your services coming, the more traffic you will get after you launch your store.

Further, consider hiring eCommerce development service who are proficient with the SEO part and know how to bring out the results.

Conclusion

Moreover, the above are the prime basics which being a business owner you should not avoid implementing in your online store. Keeping a keen eye on all these aspects can make your online store soar up high in the competition with impressive economic numbers. Also, consider hiring the top eCommerce development services whenever you think of initiating the eCommerce website development.

The E-commerce Trends Gearing Up For Impact in 2019

The online retail industry isn’t one to stand still, and according to industry insiders, 2019 will be no exception.

As 2018 comes to a close and workers across the country are switching off and preparing for a week of feasting and celebrating, we took a moment to talk to a selection of retailers and solution providers to see what they think the next 12-months will hold.

Billy Huynh, Founder and CEO, Interior Secrets

Voice search is an exciting one! We’ve seen the capabilities of Siri, Alexa and Google assistant. I think the voice-centric world is still in its early days, however, the thought of being able to search for the best price for a particular product simply by saying the product name to your phone is probably as convenient as it gets. Online retailers could create content that answers common questions asked through voice assistants.

Small or large, brand value will matter. With smaller retailers, in particular, we are seeing more creative ideas emerge. A clear digital strategy will be critical for retailers to survive in a growing competitive landscape. We’ve overhauled our digital strategy at least six times in the last year, and our new website is set to launch in January 2019.

Retailers with increased store numbers will advance there supply chain making it possible for retailers to capture and fulfil orders quicker. We launched our first experience store in the heart of Southbank directly opposite Crown Casino last year, the second store happening in Sydney next year. When we first opened, we had in-store sale targets and focused heavily on closing the sale with every visitor that walked through the door. Now, we’re centred on providing exceptional customer service. Often, we would assist a customer in the store in the morning, and soon after would see their name pop up in the back end of the sales system.

Phil Suggate, Co-Founder, EasyShed

Retail overall in 2019 will continue to perform strongly. Retailers continuing to ignore the essentiality of integrated e-commerce platforms and the rapidly changing shopping habits and expectations of their customers will continue to struggle and die. However, retailers that are providing a well-integrated and engaging omnichannel experience (both online and offline) will see strong growth and continue to rapidly gain market share.

James Tinsley, Founder, FitMyCar

I really hate seeing the bad news stories about established bricks-and-mortar brands collapsing because they haven’t adopted digital and e-commerce strategies. So my hope for 2019 will be seeing good new stories about iconic brands kicking goals in the digital marketing and e-commerce space, embracing social media and being rewarded for it.

Mike Wilson, Founder, TinyMe

Certainly the big trends such as mobile, social, video, on-site personalisation and relevance, speed and contextual commerce are as big for us as they are for everyone else in e-commerce. We are, however, primarily a design and manufacturing business with core capabilities in software and engineering automation interested in building direct-to-consumer brands. In this sense, the trends affecting us go well beyond e-commerce and are more into areas such as mechatronics, robotics and automation, as well as global logistics, large data wrangling etc.

Dion Appel, Chief Revenue Officer, Openpay

2018 was a big year for e-commerce with a number of changes and developments, and we’re most excited to see how things will continue to grow in 2019 – especially the continued growth of digital payment solutions. Convenience will be key for consumers and there are so many ways this can be achieved, with payment methods at the forefront, allowing e-commerce sites to increase conversions and shopping basket sizes to remain competitive.

We also see the online retail industry continuing to grow and evolve at a rapid pace with payment solution offerings leading the way. The rising popularity of buy now, pay later providers has proven that customers want an online shopping experience that is tailored to their individual preferences. They want to be in control of how they shop and the industry will need to continue to evolve to keep up with that.

How will AI change the web development in future?

Artificial Intelligence is present everywhere – from chatbots to virtual assistants, AI is used in day to day activities. Virtual assistants like Siri and Cortana are helping the users by processing their queries on the internet via voice. They are capable of performing the simple task like playing music, setting the alarm, and providing weather reports. Home assistants like Google home and Amazon Echo are also offering the users simple activation of home appliances. AI is slowly but certainly creeping in our daily lives.

The goals of AI are (“Artificial Intelligence Overview”, 2018) to create expert systems and to implement Human intelligence in machines. Machine learning a branch of AI which allows the web applications to adapt by observing and learning from users’ habits, idiosyncrasies and preferences.

Web development is a highly popular field as users are always looking for a rich and personalized content. Nothing is better than hyper-customized user experience. The web development companies are facing challenges to move away from the traditional approaches in web development. Therefore, the need for AI and the related tools is felt. Automating the web development put less stress on the web developers. With the involvement of AI in the process, web developers can leave the cumbersome task on the AI and focus on the value-adding aspects of the web application development like planning rich user experience, formulating the design strategies and other related activities. In-fact Human-machine collaboration can revolutionize the field of web development.

Some companies have already introduced a DIY website platform like The Grid. This is an AI-powered website designer which automatically decides the color, theme, and style of your website. The Grid optimizes, arranges and designs the website according to the preference, theme, and content. Other AI integrated website builders that were highly talked about this year are Firedrop, Molly and Wix’s ADI.

There are so many ways by which modern artificial intelligence solutions can improve the web development:

1. AI virtual assistants simplifying the web development – AI can simplify the tedious task of designing basic layouts and templates of web pages. AI virtual assistants can create personalized content by asking questions from the website owner.

2. We analytics with AI – Many web analytics tools can help you with SEO strategies however only human can interpret this data. AI can analyze and mine the data from the web analytics tools and can generate ideas to eliminate the irregularities in the architecture of the website. It can also highlight the bad content from the SEO point of view.

3. AI web development provides superior end-user experience – Chatbots can take care of the customers’ queries. A chatbot integrated with AI can simulate the real conversations by learning from the past conversation and adopting the responses and actions accordingly. These chatbots can respond to the queries and comment on the blog posts along with providing real-time assistance.

Future of web design with AI

There are so many things that AI can offer to different industries, and web designing is not untouched. AI can do tedious tasks in web designing which will relieve the designers from making a website from scratch. It can analyze the content and user preferences to personalize the website. It can assist the expert and beginner alike, and it can enable a novice to manage their own website without problems.

• Cognitive abilities – Artificial Intelligence machines can create designs with their cognitive abilities. Machines can perceive the surroundings with the help of sensors and IoT which can be helpful in simulating the fantasy and utilizing it to build some attractive and eye-catching graphics. Like a human, it can search the references from the internet to produce some beautiful graphics.

• Context Apprehension – There is one significant difference between a non-efficient program and a smart algorithm which is that first one will do the same sequence of tasks without considering the context. A smart algorithm understands what the user wants, and it does that by considering the context. Because of the cognitive capabilities of the Artificial intelligence, it can pick up the color that will suit the tone of the website and the preference of the user.

• Design inconsistencies – Most of the website fails because of the design inconsistency. The inconsistencies are too low to be recognized by the designers, but it affects the user experience in a very bad manner. Machines are very useful in picking up the inconsistencies and fixing them. Because of the unmatched cognitive abilities AI can quickly pick up the inconsistencies and can fix the issue using the combination of machine learning and context apprehension abilities.

• Structure identification – Modern AI can quickly detect the slightest variations in the images. Images are actually made up of tiny pixels, and each one of them is responsible for creating an ultimate piece of art. AI can read and differentiate each pixel in an image. It can identify the object present in the image by differentiating the pixels in images. Similarly, artificial intelligence programming can train it to identify different structures on similar websites.

AI – A boon or bane debate

AI is generating fear among the people that it will soon replace the human workforce (Beauchamp & Beauchamp, 2018). However, the technology today completely relies on the humans to train them on what they should do. Google’s AI experiment Quick draw shows how AI guesses on the past inputs that were created by other people. No matter where we stand with the technology people still values the human touch. AI cannot work successfully without human intervention.

Statements by Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk have created doubts in the mind of people, and they are forced to think that Artificial Intelligence is going to take away their jobs. We still have a long way to go before we need to start this debate. As for now, AI is a completely safe technology, and it’s making the job of the web developers easy and manageable.

Conclusion

To evolve, we have to accept and embrace the technological changes which surround AI. AI development is one of the doorways to the future which may bring a lot of good.

Top 7 E-commerce Web Design Trends to Adopt In 2019 – WondersMind

E-commerce sales worldwide accounted for $1.915 trillion in sales up to the end of 2016. It is predicted that e-commerce sales will reach $27 trillion by the year 2020. E-commerce is fulfilling some increasingly diverse roles in the world of online selling and has come along way since the days when a little known startup called Amazon began selling books over the internet. The sector now encompasses a vast range of services, and virtually every physical product imaginable, from land to automobiles, is now available for purchase from anywhere in the world.

For a long time, e-commerce was something conducted from computers and laptops at home, but increasingly we are now making purchases on the go using cell phones and tablets. The increasingly mobile nature of the e-commerce market is set to be one of its defining features over the next few years with a steady rise in the number of apps available for buying and selling online, as well as an increasing number of web based companies offering mobile friendly versions of their site to encourage more users, regardless of their preferred browsing devices.

While brick and mortar stores continue to account for the majority of money spent in retail, there is a clear trend towards e-commerce giants such as Amazon, and it will be quite some time before e-commerce becomes the dominant force it has the potential to be. In the meantime, however, it is still an integral part of the retail landscape and something that all business owners should be keeping a close eye on. Below are some of the emerging trends within the e-commerce sector, which are proving to be a real boon to businesses that adopt them.

1. Mobile Friendly Design:

It’s still possible to find examples online of some of the early e-commerce websites. They are notable for design practices that would make a modern web designer wince. Cluttered designs which try to throw far too much information at the user from the moment the page loads were one of the main problems. That’s assuming pages loaded neatly. In the pre-broadband days of the internet, pages often loaded in stages, and this perhaps goes some way to explaining the different design priorities. While modern e-commerce sites are very much designed with the smooth user experience in mind, the modest demand of running embedded scripts was an obstacle early web designers had to contend with.

Now that our computers and our internet connections are considerably faster, we can do a lot more under the hood of a website than was previously possible, while having a minimal impact on the user experience. Increasingly, websites are designed with mobile in mind and some neat web design tricks allow for the design of a web page that will load in one configuration on a desktop or laptop, and in another for mobile and tablet. Even sites which also offer an app are increasingly looking to make their browser based offerings mobile friendly.

2. Templates:

Many people assume that using a template is a sign of laziness or, at the very least, a lack of creative vision. However, this is not necessarily the case. After all, there is a good reason that the vast majority of smart phones now feature essentially the same design and layout, minus a few individual tweaks depending on the manufacturer; it’s because those designs work well.

In 2014, Google launched what it dubbed its’ ‘Material Design’ motif, which is essentially a template for designing Android applications. As with all things Android, there is plenty of room for customization so using the Material Design motif doesn’t necessarily mean your app will appear identical to others. An increasing number of websites are following the same design principles that Material Design is based on. You should check out the motif for inspiration on designing your own site.

3. Efficient Loading and Layout:

For many mobile users, data usage is still a real concern. While the packages offered by different cell service providers are undoubtedly becoming more generous, savvy website designers should still be looking to maximize efficiency by only loading what is necessary. In the context of e-commerce sites, this is mostly applicable to product listings.

Rather than listing 100 products on a single page, it is much more efficient to load the first 10 and then only load subsequent sets of 10 if the user scrolls to the bottom of the existing list. E-commerce sites that efficiently handle loading times are much more likely to appeal to mobile customers than those that are data hungry.

4. Hamburger Menus:

Hamburger menus have become an increasingly common sight across a variety of website types as they offer a convenient way to hide and reveal a menu as necessary, making the sites much easier to navigate for the user, particularly on smaller screens.

Hamburger menus are identifiable by the three horizontal lines that the user must tap or click on to reveal the underlying menu, pressing the bars again will hide the menu. Hamburger menus are simple, efficient, convenient, and save a considerable amount of space compared to a menu displayed within a frame.

5. Cinemographs:

The GIF used to be the undisputed king of embedded animations on the web, however animated GIFs are prohibitively resource intensive for most mobile users. Individually GIFs aren’t particularly large files, but when there is a whole series of them or different ones on each page, the data requirements start to add up.

Cinemographs represent a midway point between an animated GIF and a still image. They consist of an image, usually a photograph, which either features text animated over it or in some cases, a small section of the image itself is animated.

6. Adaptation:

Websites that adapt to the device they are being viewed on is nothing new. In the future, however, sites might be able to adapt not just to the device but to the user themselves. For example, based on the user’s age and visual acuity, the website could reorder itself to include larger, more prominent elements.

For users who are right or left handed, the site could shift some elements to the other side of the screen, and for colourblind individuals the site could alter its colour palette to compensate. More personalised computing experiences look set to be a big part of future innovation.

7. Grids:

From smartphone operating systems to the Amazon website, grids have proven themselves as one of the simplest yet most effective forms of design. Grids are not only clear and easy to navigate, they use the space available efficiently. A common trend among e-commerce sites now is to adopt the grid layout but to remove borders, allowing the grid to blend in to the rest of the page.

Keeping up with the curve is the next best thing to being ahead of it, and e-commerce site operators should always be on the lookout for new opportunities to show off their design prowess and hopefully pick up loyal customers in the process and some new.