ecommerce development company Archives - Web and Mobile App Development

How to Start an eCommerce Store for Your Brick and Mortar Shop?

Posted on May 1, 2023 by Jay

Running a brick and mortar shop is challenging enough; operating a physical store requires in-person customer interaction, staff management, security expenses, online store maintenance, and vulnerability to sales loss during a pandemic. Which gives you all the more reasons to start an ecommerce online store.

Expand profits by taking your brick-and-mortar business online and targeting local customers. Setting up and managing an online store is cost-effective; reaching your target customers is easy; running marketing campaigns, accepting payments and managing your inventory is more effortless than it was for running a physical store.

In this article you will learn how to set up your own ecommerce store and our suggestions on the top ecommerce platforms and technologies to choose. I will explain in detail the steps to follow while taking your business online.

How To Start Your eCommerce Business?

We have written this blog assuming that you have a brick-and-mortar store and are well aware of your target customers. This blog help you to take your business online using industry best practices that many successful business owners followed.

Step 1: Determine the products you want to sell
Step 2: Run a competitor research to know what you’re up against
Step 3: Register a domain and choose an ecommerce development platform
Step 4: Upload and publish the products you want to sell online
Step 5: Create a maintenance plan for your online store

Determine the Products You Want to Sell Online

If you have a brick and mortar store you are already clear about what you will be selling online on your ecommerce store. But ecommerce is a vast space where your competitors will be selling a lot more variations of the products you are selling. Moreover you have to look into the possibility that selling the products you want to sell online is a viable option?

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For example: if you sell low-cost items, you have to attract customers who will purchase in bulk so that you can reduce the shipping charges; otherwise it will become an unprofitable business.

Another example: if you want to sell ceramic items, which are expensive and fragile, you will have to find logistic partners who can guarantee secure shipping of your products without mishandling the items.

Which is why it becomes essential that you determine the products you want to sell online and ensure that you can fulfill your customers’ orders without fail.

Run a Competitor Research to Know What You’re Up Against

When you have already figured-out the products you will be selling online, the next step would be to run a thorough competitor analysis and find out ways they run their online store.

Starting from your local businesses to global stores, you can derive a ton of insights into how they run their online business.

Here are a few pointers to look into when researching your competitors:

What products they are selling online
Learn about their shipping partners and how they fulfill their orders
Payment gateways they employ to accept payments
Technologies your competitors are using to run their store
Figure-out their marketing strategies and ways they engage with their competitors
Most importantly, find out your unique selling point and how you can compete in the market to win

You may already know how to run a brick-and-mortar store; however, running an ecommerce store is a completely different business model. Researching your competitors’ business will guide you into figuring out the right approach you can follow to make your ecommerce business a success.

Register a Domain and Choose an eCommerce Development Platform

At this stage you need a hosting provider who can host your website as well as store and manage your online store data. There are over 300,000 hosting providers in the world to choose from but there are some hosting services who are ecommerce friendly.

Here are top 5 ecommerce hosting providers:

GoDaddy Hosting
DreamHost
SiteGround
Hostinger
InMotion
Bluehost

Top Factors to consider when choosing your hosting provider

Scalability

Ensure that your ecommerce hosting provider offers a higher scalability option so that you can keep your store up and running 24/7 with little to no downtime. You don’t want your store to crash during peak shopping seasons!

Data security

On top of server scalability you will also need rock-solid security on your store. You will be handling thousands if not millions of customer data and payment details which you need to ensure never gets stolen. Opt for PCI compliant hosting providers who follow industry best practices to store and process customer credit cards data.

Faster page loading

eCommerce stores typically have a heavy font-end where a single page contains hundreds of images and integrated apps that need to load faster. This makes it essential for ecommerce stores to opt for hosting providers that can facilitate faster page loading.

The next step is to hire the right ecommerce development company, who can guide you to choose the best ecommerce platform for your online store.

Are you looking for a eCommerce developer

We suggest opting for CMS (content management systems) platforms which enables store owners to create their online store without having any coding skills, they can use their content management systems to upload product items and publish their store in 24 hours, literally!

Here are a few eCommerce platforms to choose from:

BigCommerce
WooCommerce
Drupal
Joomla
Magneto
Shopify
Wix

Upload and Publish the Products You Want to Sell Online

After selecting the ecommerce development platform for your online store, you can upload and publish your products with ease using the content management system.

At this phase you will need to opt for a professional eCommerce development company who can upload, populate and publish your products to make your ecommerce site live.

An ecommerce development agency can prepare upload files with all product details which can be employed to bulk upload products.

Create a Maintenance Plan for Your Online Store

To keep your online store running smoothly, create a maintenance plan now that it’s up and running. Stay current with market trends to thrive in eCommerce.

A maintenance plan for your online store is to ensure that you stay ahead in the market and your customers derive a better shopping experience:

The benefit of site maintenance includes:

Update store security features to keep it secure from trespassers
Give your customers a better user experience
Update store UI and UX to give your customers a better shopping experience.
Make your online store search engine friendly

Top ways to maintain your eCommerce site:

Update CMS version and themes
Update site plugins
Back up your store regularly
Monitor store analytics to find ways to improve customer experience
Maintain site security
Monitor server performance to prevent server downtime
Optimize website speed
Update and optimize store contents
Update product SKUs and descriptions
Keep and follow a maintenance schedule

Wrapping Up!

Setting up an online store is basically the same everywhere in the world. You have to stock-up your inventory, buy a domain name, choose a hosting provider, choose an ecommerce platform, upload product details and publish.
To accomplish all the above actions efficiently you should hire an eCommerce development agency who can set-it-up for you at a fraction of the cost.

If you can do all that as well as manage to sell your products, your ecommerce store business will take care of its own; you only have to take care of maintaining the site and implementing marketing strategies to keep your store going.

How To Develop An Ecommerce App That Customers Would Love

Posted on May 31, 2021 by Jay

So, as time grew tough and people are expected to stay indoors longer than ever, don’t you consider taking your business to your customer’s home?

The mobile revolution is here affecting lives stronger than ever before.

Having a mobile eCommerce app is the trend today. It is the easiest way to reach your audience and provide them the services. Apps have become an indispensable part of our lives.

With the scope of the Internet expanding so well, apps seem to be a cheap solution for targeting a wider audience ensuring connectivity, across boundaries, across regions, across districts, and domains.

With the outbreak of the pandemic, online delivery of essential goods and services are no more a choice but has become a government priority. The scope has expanded to the regions where it was unheard of.

The capacity is being extended and explored. This is a high time to leverage on an eCommerce app and help push your sales and profits in the upward direction.

Before you hire website developers at A3logics to enter the digital domain, let’s talk about the success principles of an eCommerce app.

Principles of a Successful and High Returning Ecommerce App

Before you plan to take your business online, let’s talk about the basic principles of a successful and high returning eCommerce app that would help your audience enjoy your services from the comforts of their bedrooms.

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Principle 1: Assessment for Customers

When you decide to take your business to your audiences’ devices make sure it has everything that they would need.

All the services, products, and variations should be mentioned clearly and easy to navigate. The ability to bring on-screen what your customer wants is the key here.

Principle 2: Life Is Easy for Customers

It is important that the app you are about to launch serves its purpose well. It should be designed and developed in a way that the user can easily navigate through it and make payments.

If your users get what they want in the shortest navigation, your app is going to slay the market, surely.

Principle 3: Element of Surprise for Your Customers

This is one thing that is going to earn you great ROI. Surprises are something that everyone loves!

Add some interesting elements, offers, and discounts for your customers that would make them stay connected with your business. And if you have something interesting that your customers need to know about then just a few notifications. Interesting way to market, isn’t it?

Principle 4: Space for Your Customers

Give your customers some space for themselves. They need to express their gratitude, complaints, and reviews.

This is a great way to see if your customers love your product or not. Also, this would increase their engagement with the app. You can click here to hire Salesforce consulting services to come up with a CRM your customers can engage with easily.

Done!

These are the four principles on which the foundation of an eCommerce app is built. It is important that your eCommerce app developer sticks to these principles before bringing something else on the stage.

Now that we know the principles let’s further move ahead and see how to develop an eCommerce app your customers would love.

Develop an Ecommerce App That Sells!

When speaking of Ecommerce app development a lot of organizations have sailed through the turn of tides in the app market.

They all excel in building applications that are unique for each customer. Here’s a detail of the process of building an eCommerce app that succeeds in today’s market scenario.

Define the Niche

The first thing before you set a store is to know what you are going to sell. This is the first step. Identify your niche and enlist the products and the variations that you plan to sell.

Studying your audience and the targeted area is a great move. When your niche is decided, the buying tendencies, popular items, importing certain stuff, etc. can be explored better.

Knowing the niche would help you determine the design and style of your app.

List Essential Features

When the product engineer plans your app, it is important they enlist the features that need to include in your app.

These features should fulfill the purpose of your app and help the audience reach the desired item in the least number of clicks. Some essential features that the simplest Ecommerce app to the most creative ones should have, are mentioned here:

Authentication feature for app set up
Categories and subcategories to search for the product
Review system to increase user engagement
Integrate payment methods
Interesting and compelling push notifications
24*7 customer support
Features for intuitive analysis

These are just a few features that even the basic Ecommerce app has. You can further add features that would make things easier for you and impress your customers.

1. Design Element Aesthetic

The pinnacle of the success of your app is its visual appeal. The user aiding design makes it easier for the customer to interact with the app.

Coming up with a design that interacts with the user and provides keys and buttons to navigate easily is something that your customers would love. The important points to consider here are:

Placement of essential features
Simplifying check-out process
Ease of order placing
Simple tracking

These are a few things that your product engineer needs to consider before the implementation and development part begins.

2. Find the Right Platform

Now, that we have moved to the development part, it is important to find the right platform for developing your ecommerce app.

It could be android, ios or PWA. Many on-demand app developers make it easier for their clients to select the right platform considering the region of their operation, the economic situation of priority customers are all the determining factors of platform selection.

The right platform makes it easier for you to reach the target market and generate the expected ROI.

3. Test Your Application

As the platform is decided, we next move to eCommerce application development. Often developers ensure the working of functionalities and features with the help of a QA and testing team.

Some of the standard test cases that are considered are:

Execution pattern Ecommerce application
Online payment functionality
Compatibility with web browsers
SEO and mobile responsiveness
Social Media integration

Testing and quality analysis of the app is important. Once the app clears this phase, you can be assured of bringing in the market a flawless app.

4. Launch Your App

Now is the right time to launch your app. In the first phase, you would rather be interested in marketing strategies to make your app popular, before it is brought to the market.

Most companies use traditional techniques like social media promotions, google ads, video ads, and many other techniques like gaming, offers, etc to take the app to the right audience as quickly as possible.

And with this, you are all set to hit the market with your Ecommerce mobile application!

Bonus

One thing that keeps any eCommerce based company moving ahead of its competition is its way of treating the customer and responding to their queries.

One needs to be really creative and think out-of-the-box to reflect their care and affection for the customers.

Find out innovative strategies to engage your customers with the app and you are ready for the long run.

I’ve worked with the team at AndolaSoft on multiple websites. They are professional, responsive, & easy to work with. I’ve had great experiences & would recommend their services to anyone.

Ruthie Miller, Sr. Mktg. Specialist

Salesforce, Houston, Texas

LEARN MORE

Wrapping It Up!

A dexterous study of the steps here would help you come in the market with an app that reflects well. Most developers follow these steps to make sure that their client’s app is unique and innovative and hits the road to success in a matter of weeks.

If you are looking forward to coming up with an eCommerce app like amazon or eBay, all you need is to have a basic plan ready.

Let’s discuss further!

List Of eCommerce Trends To Watch

Posted on May 20, 2021 by Bhavik Soni

E-commerce is an integral part of everyone’s life as each of us is well aware of the advantages of online shopping. Due to this pandemic in 2020, massive growth has been witnessed in eCommerce sales.

Besides this rapid shift in online shopping, it is also found that mobile and digital media consumption has also increased massively.

The e-retail sales in 2019 were $3.53 trillion, which is expected to grow to $6.54 billion by 2022-23.

Measuring the increase in online business, most of the retailers are moving towards this growing industry.

So, it is important for each business to know about the value of eCommerce and the top trends that need to be looked for in 2021.

Let’s have a look at eCommerce trends in this year that are set to outline the marketplace –

The Rise in Voice Commerce

Whether it is searching or buying a product from an online shop, most people are increasingly using voice assistant devices.

Devices like Alexa and Google Assistant are helping people to make their tasks easy and smart by voice search, every retailer needs to use this technology. So start optimizing your store for voice search as more than 70% of U.S. households will have their smart speakers by 2024-25.

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Once you optimize your store with Voice Search, it will fulfill consumer’s demands and you can provide them ease and convenience of shopping.

You will be stunned if we say, “It is expected that the Voice eCommerce is to reach $40 billion in revenue by the end of 2022”.

Omni Channel Selling – A New Normal

In response to a survey by Harvard Business Review, it is found that people are using multiple channels during their online shopping on various platforms. It is expected that the rate of omnichannel customers will rise in 2021 as well.

Many businesses are already aware of the customer’s behavior of using multiple channels like mobiles, tablets, desktops, etc.

To benefit your online business through Omnichannel selling, you need to optimize your website to use it on mobile phones. It will help you to boost your sales.

You can also create a mobile application or a PWA (Progressive web app) to offer a seamless Omnichannel experience to your customers.

Give the option to your customers to purchase the products in various ways like – Buy online, pick up in-store, choose home delivery, get doorstep delivery, etc.

Global Consumer Base

Global eCommerce is selling products across geopolitical borders. As per the recent updates, the cumulative date anticipates a 276.9% increase in worldwide e-commerce sales.

It is found that a large number of online shoppers are looking to buy outside of their country’s borders.

To increase your sales abroad, you have to analyze the outside market through platforms like online advertising or social media abroad. For this, you will need to approach Google Ads, Facebook, Instagram, and Product Listing Ads through geographic targeting.

Through this global nature of the search, the local companies can reach their international audience to sell their products.

Competition in Digital Advertising

Digital advertising has become the leading form of advertising in most of the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries.

The increased use of the internet and mobile phones has raised the level of digital advertising. Due to the developments in artificial intelligence and some other aspects, it is now possible to get the targeted audiences through low-cost digital advertising.

More companies are progressing to continue a large investment in a digital advertisement in 2021.

Mobile Payments

Mobile payments have become an easy and convenient way of digital payments for both retailers and consumers. It is one of the topmost advanced technologies which is gradually increasing the rate of sales in e-commerce. It is now becoming an essential part of any online shopping platform to add their consumers’ online payment method.

At the time of the pandemic, people used to transact using mobile payment methods as there was a risk of getting exposed to the coronavirus.

In 2021, we can expect that more eCommerce businesses are going to accept mobile payment methods.

Videos & Interactive Content

Videos are one of the significant aspects of the online business world. 7 out of 10 people react positively after watching a well informative and appropriate video. Across the world, 80 % of millennials use videos to decide on purchasing an online product.

Interactive videos can be used anywhere in the market like YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, etc.

Shoppable videos are the new frontier in the e-commerce world. Consumers can directly purchase the product through Pop-up or Swipe up features on videos added on various social media platforms.

The shoppable videos can be used by any kind of e-commerce space like fashion, beauty, technology brands.

It Will Be an Influencers’ Era

In 2020 it was expected that the influencer marketing industry would reach $9.7B according to Influencer Marketing Hub. The pandemic had disrupted the influencers’ marketing industry in 2020 but still, 88.5% of marketers consider influencer marketing to be valuable.

Influencers can help you to ensure the success of your product by lending their authority.

If your brand has a content problem, an influencer can market your product worldwide with their content.

In 2021, we will witness a large number of content creators and influencers selling the product and services of all varied kinds. There will be a rise and prominence of commerce-led influencer marketing to drive a relatable conversion.

I’ve worked with the team at Andolasoft on multiple websites. They are professional, responsive, & easy to work with. I’ve had great experiences & would recommend their services to anyone.

Ruthie Miller, Sr. Mktg. Specialist

Salesforce, Houston, Texas

LEARN MORE

So, here’s how to take advantage of an influencer to increase your product sales –

Find out the influencers of your niche and get them to help you out to create content for your e-commerce business.
You can help influencers to increase their audience and in return, they will also help you out in your promotional activities.
Set them free to choose the platforms where they can market your product.

Conclusion

Be ready with all these trends in 2021 to boost your brand’s performance and value.

It will be important to know the potential of your product and add-ons to attract the audience.

Brands need to optimize their website and app as per customer reviews. It will be helpful to build a strong customer relationship with the brand.

How To Make Ecommerce Application More Engaging

Posted on April 6, 2021 by Jay

So, as time grew tough and people are expected to stay indoors longer than ever, don’t you consider taking your business to your customer’s home?

The mobile revolution is here affecting lives stronger than ever before.

Having a mobile eCommerce app is the trend today. It is the easiest way to reach your audience and provide them the services.

Apps have become an indispensable part of our lives. With the scope of the Internet expanding so well, apps seem to be a cheap solution for targeting a wider audience ensuring connectivity, across boundaries, across regions, across districts, and domains.

With the outbreak of the pandemic, online delivery of essential goods and services are no more a choice but has become a government priority.

The scope has expanded to the regions where it was unheard of. The capacity is being extended and explored.

This is a high time to leverage on an eCommerce app and help push your sales and profits in the upward direction.

Before you start wondering about hiring a website developer to make your entrance into the digital domain, let’s talk about the success principles of an eCommerce app.

A Successful and High Engaging Ecommerce App

Before you plan to take your business online, let’s talk about the basic principles of a successful and high-returning eCommerce app that would help your audience enjoy your services from the comforts of their bedrooms.