How to Design the Best Ecommerce Website

Building a first class eCommerce website is not only possible, it’s achievable too! But you need all the help you can get on how to design the best eCommerce website  that will give credibility for your brand and increase products sales also.

Of course, if you are doing this on your own, you can make it happen; all you need is dedication, perseverance and the willingness to learn everything about eCommerce web development.

You can hire the best web design company in Lagos Nigeria to develop responsive eCommerce website that will increase conversion rates and reduce shopping cart abandonment.

So your customers can shop seamlessly on your online store, checkout easily, and then conveniently have their ordered products shipped directly to their doorsteps 🙂

Now, lets give you the best tips on how to make that dream a reality. You can follow the steps below to create the best eCommerce website for your business. We design b2b eCommerce websites with sales optimization in mind.

 

How to Design the Best Ecommerce Website for Your Products

 

#1. Define Your Ecommerce Business Niche or Goal

To make sure you understand your industry well, you need to decide the niche your products will service.

This is similar to deciding your target customers, their location, their unique needs and problems your product will solve.

For example:

• Does your ecommerce business have a vision?

• Who are your customers and where do they hang around online and offline?

• What do you want potential customers to think about your online marketplace?

• How can you make a different and stand out from your competitors?

• What products do you intend to offer and how will this meet the customers’ specific needs?

• What standards do you want customers to associate with your brand?

• How will you describe your online shoppers and the products they will like to buy?

• Are you going to produce or manufacture your products yourself or import the unfinished raw materials?

 

After creating your buyer personas with answers to these questions at the back of your mind, you can then go ahead to invest on building the right shop for your online business.

It’s even better if you’re able to conduct a market research on your industry, and plan for how to get the supply of the products you want to sell, including the best way to reach out to your target audience.

Remember to choose the best seller products and start with fewer products samples at first. You can always increase your products categories or catalogue as your business starts to grow.

These are important decisions you will have to make and cover in your eCommerce business plan.

 

#2. Choose Best Web Hosting and Domain Name Registration

This is pretty straightforward.

Before your ecommerce business can go online, you will definitely need to register a suitable domain name that will perfectly identify your brand online.

Choose and registering an excellent domain name that is simple, easy to remembered, and is related to you product or industry.

As one of the best Website Hosting and Domain name Registration Company in Nigeria that specialized in search engine optimization, we consider a domain name that is SEO friendly too.

Using a web search tools and domain registration sites liked GoDaddy or Namecheap can help you check name availability, and register your domain.

Also; in a case that your domain name is available (and not used by other people online), you still have to host your site on a secure server.

So this is the time to find a web-hosting company that understands the nature of your business, especially one with a good eCommerce solutions. We offer a free domain name registration, when you purchase our website design and hosting services. This can save you some free cash.

Our web-host solution provides maximum up-time, server side caching enable, fast response time, server security, alongside domain name registration and e-mail accounts integration. We offer cost effective hosting services, and prompt direct contact when your site has any outage or downtime.

 

#3. Hire Professional Web Designers to Build your Ecommerce Website

This is a very important component in launching your best eCommerce website. Of course you don’t intend to do it all yourself if you are having limited capacities in web design technologies.

Since you want to launch your ecommerce site in a professional way, make sure to hire a professional web developers or ecommerce website builders who have the experience.

Your ecommerce website should appeal to your customers, loads faster and be able to display clearly on desktops, laptops, tablets and mobile phones.

Most web users surf the internet via their mobile phone. With over 65% of online shopper now making their purchases using their smartphones, you must have a responsive eCommerce web design with mobile optimization.

Put your ecommerce business at a competitive advantage by starting with a “mobile first” approach, this will boost your customers’ shopping experience.

This is very important, so ensure that your new ecommerce website is optimized for mobile users. As a digital marketing agency, we think about the uniqueness of your products and their benefits and promote these messages also on your store.

By including a service page to show your brand’s message, a customer review page to show what happy customers think of your products; and a return policy to show how you mange returns and order cancellations.

 

#4. Consider Popular eCommerce Platforms that suites your Budge

Obviously, you can design a full-featured eCommerce website from scratch using web programing languages. But you can always select from popular eCommerce platforms that suites your budget.

Some of the top Companies in Global eCommerce Platform Market include Shopify, Magento, Prestashop, Squarespace, BigCommerce and Woocommerce.

Some of these platforms are open source and are free, while other are hosted and managed for fees. These platforms continue to evolve to meet the growing requirements of online stores.

For example; Shopify hosts over 325,000 active online eCommerce shops and its focus on social commerce and mobile shopping.

Some of the Benefits of Shopify are:

• Over 100 store templates (themes) to choose from
• 1500+ apps (plugins/extensions) to extend the store’s functionality
• Ability to connect your online store with your Facebook page and sell directly on Facebook
• Built in mobile-friendly shopping cart and seller mobile apps
• Shopify also provides a platform to connect store owners with app developers.
• 24/7 support via live chat, phone and tutorials as well as the Shopify community forum

 

#5. Choose the Best Nigerian Online Payment Gateway 

Your ecommerce site will need online payment gateway that allows you to accept credit card payments online. For many small, medium and large scale businesses, accepting payments online offers lots of benefits.

This means that customers can conveniently pay for their products online without thinking about direct bank transfers or other payment options like Cash On Delivery (COD) even though these can also be included.

Having an easy payment methods integrated to your ecommerce site will improve your business transactions significantly.

How?

The best way to do this is to open an internet merchant account from your bank; which connects with credit card processing firms. You can find a variety of online payment processing companies; and also have to decide your primary currency, for example, NGN (₦), USD ($), GBP (£), etc.

An even less expensive way to get started accepting online payments is to use PayPal, an account-based system that lets anyone with an e-mail address securely send and receive online payments using a credit card or bank account.

PayPal is free, but the company charges 2.9 percent or less for every transaction under $3,000. Bellow is top online payment processing platforms in Nigeria you can consider:

 

Top Nigerian Online Payment Platforms

• GTBank GTPay
• Interswitch InternetPay
• Etranzact
• SimplePay
• CashEnvoy
• UBA UCollect
• Zenith Bank GlobalPay
• 2Checkout (2CO)

 

If you’re not sure what Nigerian payment gateway system you need for your online business, we recommend taking a look at some of the above and consulting your banks.

 

How to Design the Best Ecommerce Website for Your Products

 

 

#6. Use Aggressive Strategies too Market Your Ecommerce Site

Your ecommerce site needs the entire boost it can get to reach out to your potential customers.

After identifying who your target customers are and designing your dream web-store, you need to reach out to them through aggressive marketing strategies.

There are lots of marketing promotions you can use and earn online reputation, especially if you understand how digital marketing campaigns work.

Your ecommerce website is an online business, so you can use both paid and earned advertising channels to promote your products online.

Start with search engine discovery techniques and implement full Search Engine Optimizations for your website. Include   Email Marketing, Social Media Marketing  and paid channels like Google’s Adwords Pay Per Click Advertising.

Use effective social media channels like Facebook advertising, Twitter advertising, Instagram advertising, and other social networking websites where you can find your potential retailers customers.

 

Other alternative marketing strategies to consider:

Corporate branding, professional web design services, and social media services go hand in hand if a business is to achieve its online business goals, earn a strong online presence and build a consistent customer base.

Again;

Online PR, Emails and Mobile Marketing like SMS Messaging are also other cheap and effective way for promoting your ecommerce products and increasing websites visitors.

If you have the capital, you can also market your eCommerce business though local business directories and advertising media like newspapers, popular radio stations, television programs, and outdoor advertising that could reach your target customers.

To start your offline print media marketing, you can get outstanding logo designs for your business; design and print quality business cards, flyers, display banners and other advertising materials done by creative experts and experienced branding and printing company.

 

#7. Use Unique Sales Promotion Strategies for your Ecommerce Site

People love free things from their favorite shopping mall; whether it is free gifts, discount on sales, free delivery to their location or a certain percentage cut on goods ordered.

You can use a coupon options to integrate all your discount packages and be able to offer customers the ability to include the coupon code while placing their orders on your website.

Use seasonal discount packages (e.g. 15% Easter Sales), sales promotions (like Black Friday) and other freebies (like buy three and get one free offers) to encourage more existing customers to come back and attract new customers to buy from your ecommerce site.

These kind of sales promotion strategies can also direct lots of traffic to your website and improve your web rankings.

The promotions should not look like one that is meant to get customers by force but it should look like a deliberate act to appreciate your customers’ patronage or entice prospects to try your products.

Sales promotions will drive a lot of traffic to your ecommerce site and generate leads. If you are smart enough and offer exclusive products, you can convert these leads to paying customers.

Not only does this position your brand as being thankful and recognizing the support of your customers, but it’s a surefire way to get customer loyalty for life!

 

Final Words: How to Design the Best Ecommerce Website

Now you have it: how to design the best eCommerce website that will sell your  best products and increase revenues. We hope that utilizing these tips will help you achieve that best ecommerce site you desire.

Irrespective of your niche, you could truly understand the processes and what it takes to launch a first class online store from scratch.

There are various factors that triggers conversion online; like the uniqueness of the product, pricing policy and usability features of the eCommerce portal itself.

Startup businesses or business owners should also invest a considerable sum in re-marketing strategies, so that the business can witness a surge in the conversion process.

Abbakin is a digital marketing agency in Nigeria that has helped a lot of brands grow their sales through bespoke ecommerce web developments and marketing strategies. Tell us about your business now, contact us here if your are having problems growing your business online.

 

Read: Top 20 Nigeria Ecommerce Stores to look out for

 

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