Ecommerce Web Design

,c,Studies of ecommerce web design projects have found a lot of ways that things can go wrong. For instance, let’s consider why an online shopper would give up being able to touch a product. Additionally,to only view the item online is a poor subsistitute. However, a person may feel that there is some cost savings with online shopping.

Another reason may be that people want the shopping experience to be faster and easier. Also, we won’t buy something online if we can’t get or can’t find the information we want. Plus, we will “walk away” from online stores that don’t offer enough product photos. Additionally, in some cases close-up photos and views of all sides of the product are important.

Professional Product Photography

The best ecommerce web design projects will have great design and professional photography. Also, millions of people today have smart phones with built in cameras. However, this does not make us all photographers. Plus, a professional photographer will make the most mundane products look interesting and exciting. Additionally, every business has competition.  If you want an ecommerce web design you already have competitors that have years of experience. Consequently, professional photography is not optional. As a result, it is required to compete online in today’s world.

Abandoned Shopping Carts

Allowing shoppers to make choices with shipping options can help avoid surprises. As a result, surprises may lead to abandoned shopping carts. For example, just imagine that you are in your local grocery store and you walk up to the checkout area and you are informed that if someone carries out your groceries there will be a charge. Also, if you take them out there will be a cart rental fee. Plus, if you carry them without the cart they will sell you the bags. In that case, you might at that point abandon your shopping cart. However, if the manager comes over to question you about the abandoned your cart then you can explain. Additionally, maybe the manager can make those charges go away. Plus, customers love free shipping even when the cost if built into the product price. However, this isn’t always practical and not customary with some products.

E-commerce Shipping Options

Having shipping costs based upon the purchase price can give buyers incentive to spend more. For example, you might pay $5.00 for shipping on purchases up to $25.00 and for purchases up to $50.00 shipping is only $6.50. In that case, you may feel that it is worth it to buy something else because it will cost hardly anything extra in shipping charges. Alternatively, you can simply display the shipping costs directly from UPS, FedEx or USPS. Consequently, the buyers can select the shipping method they prefer. also, one thing people hate is the “Express Shipping” option where they are required to pay extra. However, the website says something like this: “With Express Shipping your package will leave our warehouse in 2-3 days”. Now why would anyone pay extra for that kind of uncertainty?

Abandoned Shopping Cart Viewing

We have seen shopping cart systems that surprise people to the point that the abandon the cart in the checkout process. For that reason, it can be helpful to have abandoned shopping cart viewing capabilities built into the CMS web design. Remember, all ecommerce web design projects are CMS websites with a shopping cart system added on.

When people abandon the shopping cart it is after they have filled out their contact info and then a problem comes up related to payment or shipping. Therefore, the person will have already included all their contact info. For that reason, following up can alert you to problems. For example, sometimes people get confused when they are asked to provide the “CVV” number on their credit card. Naturally, experienced online shoppers know that the CVV code is the last three digits on the back of their VISA and MasterCard.

However, on American Express the numbers are on the front and people that have all three cards may not realize this. After they get a cryptic error message from your ecommerce website they may get frustrated and then you have another abandoned shopping cart. Consequently, the best online stores often show pictures of credit cards with the CVV numbers circled.

These are just a couple of examples of how a great looking e-commerce web design may fail when people run into problems shopping.

Here are some things to consider in e-commerce web design which are explained in the video below.

Responsive Web Design

One thing you’ll want is a responsive web design. Consequently, it automatically reshapes itself to fit the device the user is viewing your website with. Also, smartphone and tablet sales continue to rise each year while desktop and even laptop sales are falling behind. As a result, it seems that many people are giving up computers just as the gave up their land-line telephones for smartphones. For that reason, online stores need to be ready to deal with traffic from mobile devices.

Products can be added to an online store one at a time. However, if you will have hundreds or possibly thousands of products then a spreadsheet can be uploaded. For example, below there are over 6,500 products. Consequently, our client gets spreadsheets from their vendors with all the product info. As a result, this makes the job of adding large numbers of products pretty simple.

Robust e-commerce Web Development

Would it be helpful to you to be able to change the prices of all products in a specific category globally? For instance, in the jewelry business, several things will have an impact on the price of a ring. For example, a ring is available in different sizes and since the metal is expensive the ring size will change the cost. Plus, gold, platinum, and other metals are all sold at different prices.

For that reason, one option is to have custom programming that allows the owner to enter a percentage change. For example, if gold goes up in price by 2% then they can enter “2%” for gold prices. Consequently, it would change the price of all the rings that use gold. Alternatively, you could change them one by one. Lastly, you may want to upload a spreadsheet with all the new prices.

In the example below, we gave the owner all of these options.

E-Commerce Web Development Options

Optionally we can build in inventory tracking so that the system knows your starting amount. Additionally, it would know the amount sold and the amount remaining for each product. Consequently, we can even set alerts so that you’ll receive an email once inventory reaches X amount. Additionally, when an item is sold out then we have other options to consider. For instance, we could show “Out of Stock” or “Out of Stock – email me when more arrive”. Plus, it could show “Out of Stock – here are some others you might like” or we can do a combination of those options.

Would you like people to be able to post product reviews? What if some reviews are negative? Would you want to see all reviews before they become live? How about the Facebook “Like” button next to every product? Maybe you’d prefer other social sharing icons by every product. Do you sell chocolates or other perishable food items? What happens when a next day air order comes in after 4:00pm on a Thursday and you’ve already had your last FedEx or UPS pickup? In that case, we can have the orders that come in after 4:00pm trigger a notice. For example, it could ask the customer if they would like to pay an additional $X for next day air shipping Friday to arrive Saturday or if they would prefer the regularly priced next day air shipping Monday to arrive Tuesday. We have custom programmed that into the example below and others that sell perishables online.

Custom Shipping Options

In the example shown below we have small, lightweight products and people typically buy more than one at a time. Also, when the items cost $14.95 and the shipping is about $10.00 you certainly don’t want to buy three and discover that you are being charged $30.00 for shipping. On the other hand, the owner of this online store doesn’t want to take a loss on shipping either. Consequently, with such inexpensive products he needs to collect for shipping while at the same time being sensitive to the needs of the buyers who don’t want to be overcharged on shipping.

We found that all the products were one of three sizes. Also, the largest size would fit only one in a box. The medium size would fit two in a box. Lastly, the smallest size would fit 10 in a box or 5 in a box with one medium sized item. For that reason, we assigned a size to each item indicating that it is either small, medium or large. Consequently, while the buyers shop the back-end does the calculations and allows purchases to all ship in one box using the USPS Priority Mail “If it fits, it ships for a flat rate” method.

When you shop in almost any online store you will usually not find this type of custom shipping solution. Generally people are required to pay a separate shipping charge for each item they buy. This discourages people from buying multiple items. On our client’s ecommerce store the buyers actually have incentive to buy more because the shipping cost won’t change in most cases.