The interaction between any ecommerce company and its customers is through its website. A good website with a great UI (User Interface) represents the brand value that the company has to offer. People generally judge the quality of the products of a company with its online presence. It is necessary to hire the right ecommerce developer or an ecommerce website agency to put your best foot forward. It signifies  how good the company is as a seller and the company must not leave any stones unturned to bring out an excellent ecommerce website.

This decade has seen a high rise in digital transactions which has boosted the eCommerce diaspora. A powerful and feature-rich online store is thus extremely necessary. The website must certainly show the taste, products, personality, and services of a company in the best possible manner. The website must be secure and safe. Assurance of safe browsing is important to make the customers feel comfortable and secure while shopping .

Various nuances must be addressed. Some of them are listed below.

FACTORS TO BE CONSIDERED BEFORE HIRING THE ECOMMERCE WEBSITE DEVELOPER

RESEARCH WHAT YOU NEED

Before confirming the details that you want to add, make sure extensive research is done on the current eCommerce trends to deal with the competition in the digital marketplace. Analyzing the market and its trends is important to attract a large crowd. One must also know the platform to be used for the website. Various back-end requirements need a solid platform. Not all are manageable and pocket-friendly. Analyze what suits best to your requirements. It must have built in features that are easy to manage and must be powerful enough to handle the load.

PREPARE A LIST

Prepare a list having all the requirements of the business that must be added on the website. For example if your business requires a process to be followed on the website, be sure to discuss that with your developer later on. For example a website selling medicines will require a prescription to be uploaded before the medicine is ordered.  This ensures that you don’t miss anything and get the perfect website when you hire the ecommerce developer.

ASK FOR THE TECHNOLOGIES THEY CAN PUT IN

A website has many back-end components and database requirements. New technologies and frameworks have come in the picture that offer speed and stability, it is important to incorporate the features into your website. But all this will be added by the developer and it is important to know whether the developer will be able to add all these on your desired website. Let the website developer know the things you need on your website and ask if it is 100 percent possible to get it on the website by them.

GET A BACKGROUND CHECK ON THE WEBSITE DEVELOPER

A great portfolio would show greater exposure in this field. It will show the skill-sets the company has and their work. Hire only those ecommerce development companies who have prior and impressive experience. Ask for real-life problems that the company has addressed. When shown, make sure you notice the user experience quality, design, and features involved in the portfolio. This ensures that your you will be pleased with the final outcome of the project.

CHECKOUT USER REVIEWS

There are various online platforms to view the reviews of the actual customer. Though a lot of companies have posted fake reviews but you can get a general idea from genuine feedback of the customers. Also look at employee reviews, because they give the most honest reviews of the work culture. A good work culture fosters positivity and productivity.

CHECK THE PRICING

India is a very price sensitive market. Make sure the ecommerce developer fits your budget and timeline. When you negotiate prices, be sure to discuss ecommerce maintenance services and also content maintenance involve.  Also discuss the server costs, scalability costs and how that would structure into the payment cycles.

DEADLINES

The agency you hire will be working on other projects. Make sure that you take definitive deadlines from them. If there are no deadlines, there will be waste of time and efforts. Also plan your marketing efforts accordingly. Make sure your website is in place before you start your advertising campaigns. If you provide your ecommerce website developer with a clear scope of work, you will get exact deadlines. That is why it is always better to freeze the scope of work. The deadlines should also include the time you will take to arrange resources at your end. For example, you should be ready with the product images and policies that will go on the website. Similarly, apply for a payment gateway ahead of website development process.

ALL THE eCOMMERCE FEATURES MUST BE INCLUDED

Your website can have as many features or none at all. The only thing that is important is that it should serve a purpose and should be conducive of your business process. Take a note of general ecommerce features and see if they are important to your business or not. For example, your website needs persistent shopping cart, quantity increments, filters.  Look out for some special features that are required for example does your website needs availability filter.

ECOMMERCE TRENDS

Everyday new trends are introduced in the market. If you remember, a lot of companies started with turntable videos of the product. So keep up with the trend and analyze cost benefit analysis. Another thing to look out is mobile compatibility. The whole world has a mobile phone in their hands. Everything is now done by using our mobile phones. Thus, your website or portal must also provide a great experience in the user’s mobile. This ensures a wide reach to your customers and faster selling of your goods. Here are some trends followed by ecommerce website design companies. It is important to ensure that the website provides all the elements on the mobile phone as it does on the original website. SEO fundamentals must also be taken care of. Great speed, interlinking, site design, functionality must work smoothly and effectively to get maximum benefit.

ASK FOR SUGGESTIONS

Many people must be in the same business as yours. Moreover, another competitor must have built his website, hence a lot of references can be obtained. Go for all the options and choose the best from them according to your business requirements.

ENSURE TO GET A GOOD SECURITY NETWORK

Be sure to include SSL in your development cost. SSL provides a secure way to interact with server. They prevent man in the middle attacks and a green padlock surely makes your website look better and secure. There are multiple security threats around the world. Major ecommerce platforms such as woocommerce, shopify, magento, prestashop, drupal have a mechanism to patch loopholes in the next version releases. Make sure to discuss this point with your ecommerce developer. There is one more aspect to consider when it comes to security. Since its an ecommerce website, you will have to take care of the financial data that the customer fills on the checkout page. Make sure your website is PCI compliant. If not, you can choose not to store any sensitive details such as CREDIT CARD numbers, CVVs etc on your website. Let the payment gateway handle that and you work with request and response cycles. Here are some tips to keep your website secure.