This is a simple business model that’s extremely easy to over think. There are many moving parts that can feel tricky, and even confusing at times. Therefore one must remember,

“Everything is Simple, till you make it complicated.”

Here’s the basic game plan to start an eCommerce Business

1. Select a product to sell
   1. Find a product to sell
   2. Evaluate your product
   3. Conduct market research
   4. Obtain your product
   5. Prepare a business plan
   6. Sell some samples
2. Set up your business
   1. Find a name and create an engaging logo
   2. Structure your website for SEO
   3. Build your store
   4. Select a sales channel
3. Identify KPIs for your business
4. Acquiring Customers
5. Market extensively
6. Collect feedback

STEP 1: Selecting a Product

In this section, we will highlight some key strategies one can apply to get going with your product.
1. Selecting a product to sell
The first step in building an ecommerce business is to know what products you want to sell, and this is generally the place where most entrepreneurs get themselves stuck in.  If you don’t understand what you’re doing, it’s easy to get lost in the Gulf of Product Research.
With so many businesses and sellers looking to one-up the other – It is essential to target a niche market segment, in case your product is mainstream – remember to keep your quality high, and pricing as competitive as possible.
2. Evaluating your product
Once you get a product idea in mind, how do you stipulate it will sell?
Here market research comes to action.

• Brainstorm and research about the different types of products you can sell.
• Take into account every possible anomaly.
• Validate your product idea by asking people to purchase before you start on making or importing them.

Pre-sales is a powerful strategy that could help ensure there’s a real demand for your product. Pre-sales helps reduce assumptions and gets you moving forward quickly with your business.
3. Find the Right Vendors
Once you’ve decided on a product, you will need to source that product from a distinguished supplier. It can take quite some digging to find them, but there are ways to ensure you dodge the scams and increase your odds at finding an awesome supplier.
You’ll have a lot of competition selling products online, so it is in your best interest to obtain the best quality and best prices for the products you wish to sell, or materials you use to create your products. Look around with patience until you find a vendor you want to do business with long-term.
The DON’Ts

• Don’t proceed to buy in bulk from a factory until you have their samples in your hands which you absolutely LOVE.
• Don’t let any supplier tell you that they can’t ship small sample orders; they are just trying to squeeze you.
• Don’t purchase with any other method but Trade Assurance or PayPal for the first few months with your supplier. This eradicates a ton of risk.
• Don’t buy from someone that won’t accept PayPal or Trade Assurance. What it really indicates is that they were closed down due to complaints.
• Never buy counterfeit products. Not that there isn’t money to be made, it’s just a bad business to be in and ILLEGAL.
• Never buy a lot of inventory in the beginning.

STEP 2: Set up your business

Besides from finding an actual product to sell online, another challenging decision is determining your business or brand name and choosing an appropriate and available domain name.
1. Find a name and create an engaging logo
The right name can prove to be a brand’s valuable asset, driving differentiation and speeding acceptance. On the other hand, the wrong name can cost millions in workarounds and lost income over the lifecycle of the brand.
Thus, it is immensely important to find the right name when setting up your online store and help your business stand out from the crowd. Here are a few pointers on how to find that killer name.

• Keep it short & simple
• Be different
• Put on your creative thinking hats
• Be original
• Never lose the essence

2. Structure your website for SEO
To make sales, it is vital for any online venture to rank well on search engines. Therefore you need to understand the basics of search engine optimization so that you can adequately structure your site and pages for Google and other search engines.
Here are a few pointers that can help you rank well on popular search engines like Google:

• Carry out extensive keyword research
  • You can use keywords research tools like Ubersuggest, SEMrush, Moz etc to understand which keywords are trending.
  • Choose the right keyword for your store
• Ensure your site structure is simple, but easy to scale.
• Try keeping every page of your site as few clicks from the homepage as possible.
• Leverage On-page SEO for the product category and product pages
• Take advantage of LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing)

3. Build your store
After having a better understanding of search engines, it is now time to build your store. The two most crucial aspect of delivering the best user experience is – Captivating product descriptions and Beautiful product photography
Recommended Read: 5 Things to Keep in Mind for Building an eCommerce Website
4. Select a sales channel
It is a smart approach to leverage already build sales channel instead of creating new ones. Therefore one of the best ways to target new customers is to choose sales channels where they already shop. The right combination of sales channels will depend on your products and your target customers.

STEP 3: Identify KPIs for your business

Key performance indicators or (KPIs) are like landmarks on the road to online retail success. Examining them will help eCommerce entrepreneurs identify progress toward sales, marketing, and customer service goals.
KPIs should be selected and monitored depending on your unique business goals. Specific KPIs support some goals while they’re irrelevant for others. With the idea that KPIs should be different based on the goal being measured, it’s likely to consider some performance indicators for eCommerce.

For instance, these could be some of the key KPIs for different sectors:
For Marketing

• Site traffic: Site traffic is the total number of visits to your eCommerce website. More site traffic means more users are visiting your store.
• New visitors vs returning visitors – New visitors are the first-time visitors to your site. Returning visitors, on the other hand, are those who have been to your site before.
• Total Time on site: This KPI tells you how much time visitors are spending on your site. Ideally, more time spent signifies they’ve had deeper engagements with your brand. Generally, you’ll want to see more time spent on blog content and landing pages and lesser time spent through the checkout process.
• Bounce rate: The bounce rate denotes how many users exit your site after viewing only one page. If the bounce rate is higher, you’ll want to investigate why visitors are leaving your site instead of sticking around.

For Sales:

• Sales: Ecommerce retailers can examine the total sales by hour, day, week, month, quarter, or year.
• Average order size: Sometimes referred to as the average market basket, the average order size tells you how much a customer is typically going to spend on a single order.
• Gross profit:  This KPI is determined by deducting the total cost of goods sold from total sales.
• Average margin: Average profit margin or average margin is a percentage that represents your profit margin over a specified duration.
• Number of transactions: These are the total number of transactions. Use this KPI in union with average order size, or the total number of site visitors to get more profound insights.

For Customer Service:

• Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) score: The CSAT score is measured by customer response to a ubiquitous survey question: “How satisfied are you with your experience?” This is usually answered using a numbered scale.
• Net promoter score (NPS): The NPS KPI provides insight into your customer relationships and brand loyalty by describing how likely customers are to recommend your brand to someone in their connections.
• Hit rate: Calculate your hit rate by accounting the total number of sales of a single product and dividing it by the total number of customers who have contacted the customer service team for the said product.
• Customer service email count: Are the number of emails your customer support team receives on a daily basis.

For project management:

• Hours worked: The total hours worked tells the total time a team has put in a project. Project managers should also measure the inconsistency in estimated vs actual hours worked to calculate better and resource future plans.
• Budget: Budget depicts how much money has been allocated for a specific project. Project managers and ecommerce business owners would want to ensure that the allocated budget is realistic; if you are repeatedly over budget, some adjustments to your project planning needs to be done.
• Return on Investment (ROI): This KPI tells us, how much your efforts have earned for your business. The higher the number, the better.
• Cost variance: Just as it is helpful to compare real vs predicted timing and hours, you should examine the total cost against the expected cost. This will help you comprehend where you need to reel it in and where you may want to invest more.

STEP 4: Acquiring Customers

Acquiring customers, in the beginning, requires focus and time. With hundreds of channels and means to promote your business, it can become difficult to find the ones that make better sense for your business.
One needs to identify some key marketing tactics that you are planning to leverage and implement them for the first few months. Identify some KPIs to analyze whether the tactics that you narrowed down are working or not. If not then you should tweak your marketing strategy.
It’s easy to fall prey to endlessly altering your store in pursuit of perfection, instead of spending that attention into the most significant activity – Getting people to the store.
Try this challenge: If your store had already launched, focus your next 30 days exclusively on getting targeted traffic that’s likely to make a purchase.

STEP 5: UP Your Marketing Efforts

Once you are in the business for a quarter or two – It is time to shift your focus to a broader marketing initiative.  It is likely that by thi time you have a few sales under your belt. It’s time to get serious and focused. Try implementing the below strategies to drive hoards of customers to your door –

• E-mail marketing
  • Run email campaigns
  • Send promotional and transactional emails
• Content Marketing
  • Create engaging blog posts
  • Post relevant and crisp content
  • Leverage significant players of the industry
• Social Media Marketing
  • Utilize Instagram to drive traffic
  • Try your hands at Pinterest
  • Create short YouTube videos.

STEP 6: Gather feedback

To stay relevant in ecommerce, it is crucial to learn from your mistakes.

I have observed that almost everyone in the ecommerce domain never follows up on their customers’ feedback. Collecting feedback shouldn’t be your only goal; instead one needs to follow up diligently on the customers’ shopping experience and implement strategies to improve the same.
Several major ecommerce players swear by this strategy.

Wrapping Up

Building your own eCommerce business or for that matter, any business whatsoever is as appealing as it is challenging. At a rapid pace, you need to learn a tonne about choosing a product, assessing its viability, figuring out how to get it sourced or produced, building the online store, marketing and selling to new customers. The process doesn’t even end here, you need to constantly improvise and improve your offerings or someone will get ahead of you.
The process can feel quite tedious as if you’re solving a head-scratcher of a puzzle, but it’s rewarding at the same time. We wish following this resource roundup helps provide you with a clearer road-map.

We hope you found this post valuable. Let us know in the comments below what you would like to learn next about.

Handpicked Content for You

• Top eCommerce Development Companies – 2019
• 5 Things to Keep in Mind for Building an eCommerce Website
• Largest eCommerce Companies in the World
• Best eCommerce Platform for Small Business – 2019
• How Can AI Help Small Businesses?

The post How to Start an eCommerce Business appeared first on EngineerBabu Blog.

According to Statista, In 2017, retail e-commerce sales worldwide amounted to USD 2.3 trillion & e-retail revenues are predicted to grow to USD 4.88 trillion by 2021. The three major online stores’ revenues alone amount to almost USD 100 billion in 2017.

Online shopping being the most popular online activity worldwide, but this usage fluctuates vastly by region – in China, an estimated 19% of all retail sales transpire through the internet, however, in Japan, the share was just 6.7%. Desktop PCs still prevails for placing online shopping orders but smartphones, are rapidly catching up.

Thus there seems to be an abundance of incentives for businesses to leverage this lucrative industry in. For once, we would not like to end up late to the party, would we?

So, if you are on the lookout for a tech partner who can facilitate in bringing your ecommerce dreams to reality, then look no further.

A unabashed and unbiased list of the best ecommerce development companies in the US and India

1. Magneto IT solutions

Magneto IT solutions can be touted as the flag bearer of some of the finest ecommerce products of the industry. Having completed a decade, they have a vast experience of managing a variety of projects in this domain.
Magneto IT solutions, boast an impressive portfolio, collaborating and working with the likes of, Amazon, HP, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Race Chip, KTM, ESPN, and IBM being some of their star clients.

Their primary focus area is eCommerce which amounts to almost 60% of their service lines and their primary clientele comprises small businesses (<$10M), amounting to 80%.
They also provide services for Mobile Application, Customize Web Application, IOT, and Chatbot.

2. Brainvire Infotech Inc

Brainvire Infotech is an Award Winning Digital Transformation focused technology Consultant Company working in Mobile Application, eCommerce Stores with Omni Channel Solutions, .Net Application, and Hybrid Mobile Application.

Besides ecommerce app development, they also offer a broad range of services including – Mobile app development (Android, iOS, Windows, Hybrid), Web App Development (PHP, .NET, MEAN stack), Game App Development, Enterprise Solutions, and even ERP & CRM Integration.
They deliver solutions to a wide array of industries, including – different verticals like BFSI, Retail, Media, and Healthcare.

From Fortune 500 companies such as Walmart to startups like FreshDirect – Their clientele comes from a wide assortment of businesses.
Having completed 17 years in the domain and have served over 2000 clients, they are a trusted partner for a majority of enterprises. They also boast a geographic presence in 11 nations including four offices in the USA, which makes their services prompt and timely.

3. Gorilla Logic

Gorilla Logic is one of the premium providers of nearshore and US-based Agile development teams. They have substantial domain expertise in delivering full stack web, mobile and enterprise applications.
The differentiating factor that I noticed after reading several client reviews on clutch was the level of control, flexibility and transparency they introduce during the development stage.

Apart from ecommerce app development, their core areas of practice comprise – Web Application Development, Mobile Application Development, Back End, UX/UI, DevOps, QA, Agile, Security, Big Data and IoT.
Gorilla Logic could serve as an ideal partner for large enterprises and mid-market entities.

4. Absolute Web Sevices

Absolute Web Services is a full-service development agency specializing in ecommerce and business websites & applications. They have been in the business for 20 years and thus have a greater understanding and acumen into the entire business process.

In addition, their development team also provides a full-service digital marketing team to design and implement digital strategies for Online Demand Generation. Thus, helping in business growth and brand transformation.
40% of their service line constitutes ecommerce development. They do offer other services such as web design and web development.
AWS can serve as ideal tech partners for the medium-sized enterprise ($10M – $1B) as most of their current clientele comes from this domain.
Their key customers include – TigerDirect, Capezio, CC Homes, University of Miami, , R+Co, , Cheney Brothers, Luminaire, Grand Western, Juno Lucina, , MigVapor, Oribe, RubberB, Isram Realty, VOGA Italia, iStencils, FairyLoot, Fitlife Foods, In Common Beauty, Wyze Cam, Royal Flowers Group, Rivergate Companies, BabyCottons, etc.

5. Cyber Infrastructure Inc.

CIS is empowered by 12+ years of experience in the field of IT.
CIS offerings fulfill all types of technology needs that you require. A differentiating factor for CIS is the fact that having worked with an extensive client-base stationed all over the world, they are well aware of the globally recognized standards and latest technology trends.
Highly optimized solutions and offerings across a wide multitude of industries serve as a strong point for CIS.
CIS’ principal area of expertise is application development, open source development, mobile application development, business intelligence and analytics, business process management, cloud infrastructure implementation, front-end design, and digital marketing.
Businesses of practically almost any size could leverage CIS’ offerings. Although most of their clients are medium enterprises, they have a successful track record of designing great solutions for small and large enterprises as well.

Trustable Ecommerce App Development Companies

6. Cleveroad

Cleveroad builds web and mobile solutions that can fit any industry and budget — dealing with startups, business segments, and even private clients.
Cleveroad has a presence in 5 countries worldwide, and their Research & Development operations are based in two Ukrainian IT cluster cities – Dnipro and Kharkiv.
They possess solid domain expertise in ecommerce development, as they have a portfolio of 500+ custom B2C and B2B apps for a variety of industries and business domains, including E-Commerce, Healthcare, FinTech,  Agriculture, Logistics, Real Estate, etc.
Cleveroad also provides its customers with full-cycle servicing that covers all the aspects of software production:

• End-to-end mobile and web development;
• UI/UX design
• Cloud-based solutions;
• AR, VR, AI, Big Data and IoT solutions;
• Advanced Quality Assurance;
• Dedicated Agile teams.

Almost 70% of their service line constitute ecommerce development which makes them an ideal partner for businesses which require complex and customized ecommerce solutions.
Cleveroad also hosts a cohort of some extremely well-known clientele, including
BET3000, PrankDial, VirginAtlantic, Octopus, DPD, HSBC, MoneyWiz, Fuji HI, Cartogram.

7. Dotcom weavers

DotcomWeavers is an award-winning web design and development company which specializes in eCommerce, Custom Software, and Mobile applications.
They have been in the domain for the past 12 years, and have developed more than 400 projects for businesses of all magnitudes & industries.
They have offices in Paramus, New Jersey & India,
They are a Magento solution partner, and their 70 member team includes some of the best Magento certified programmers.
They are hands-down one of the most reputable companies out there if you are looking to utilize Magento as your ecommerce platform. They can easily customize your Magento store to meet your specific website, integration, and conversion goals.
Another critical differentiating factor between them and others Magento companies out there is their offering of a personal, consultative approach that allows them to understand customers’ business goals and technical requirements.

8. Atlas Softweb

Another prominent enterprise for ecommerce development for small business is this company from India.
Although being a relatively new entity in the market, they have succeeded in earning a name for themselves by offering splendid services to their customers.
Atlas Softweb could serve as a proficient partner for creating a user-friendly ecommerce website.
Their innovative Ecommerce development solutions can aid your organization in several ways including improving your business presence.
Some of their key clientele includes – Educents, Nirma University, IIT Gandhinagar, Sun Fung Tech, Pesche, and Connect Zone.

9. Contus

Contus is a digital transformation enterprise established in the year 2008 with a mission to transfigure every technology. Contus is headquartered in the US & has regional offices in India.
With more than 200+ tech Professionals revolutionized clients’ business digitally across 40+ Countries like UK, UAE, USA, etc.
Contus is engaged in developing a wide array of ecommerce extensions, mobile & web applications, and omnichannel management solutions. They also render specific tailor-made ecommerce solutions as per client requirements. End-to-end eCommerce development consisting of web backend, mobile commerce, delivery tracking app, social commerce makes Contus a go-to destination for high-end eCommerce development projects.
The company offers its eCommerce development service across several platforms including Magento, Drupal, Prestashop, Zencart and many more.
Contus offers the following services-

• Mobile Application Development
• Web Application Development
• Augmented Reality App Development
• Virtual Reality App Development
• Wearable App Development
• IOT Web Applications
• Full Stack Development
• eCommerce Applications

Along with offering services, they also boast some ready-made solutions for businesses to deploy.  Mentioned below are some of products:

• Contus Vplay – A Multi-Faceted Video On Demand Solution
• Contus Fly – A Real-time Messaging Solution
• Contus Bot – An Intelligent Chabot Solution
• Apptha Marketplace – A Sheer Hub for Marketplace Software
• Apptha Airhotels – A Sheer Hub for Marketplace Software.

10. SynapseIndia

Synapseindia is another eminent Ecommerce development company, offering effective development services. They are hailed as specialists in providing ecommerce solutions for various platforms like OpenCart, Magento, WordPress, BigCommerce and several more.
SynapseIndia is also one of the oldest in this list of ecommerce development companies and has been offering solutions since 2001. They have an extremely impressive and unique clientele across numerous domains. They have worked with some of the most reputed global brands such as PayPal, UNICEF, Indian Army, Bata, DNG, Johnson & Johnson, etc.
Their Service Offerings covers a vast array of services like:
E-Commerce Solutions – Shopify, Magento (Magento Enterprise, Magento Enterprise Cloud), WooCommerce, OpenCart, BigCommerce, etc.
Microsoft Technologies – ASP.NET MVC, C#, VB.NET, WPF, DevExpress, Telerik, Umbraco, Kentico, nopCommerce
Mobile Development – iOS, Android, Xamarin, Ionic, ReactNative
Open Source Technologies – PHP/MySQL (Core PHP, Laravel, Zend, CakePHP, CodeIgniter, Yii, etc.), RoR, Django/Python, MEAN, MERN.
SynapseIndia has also received several notable industry recognitions like:

• Microsoft Gold Partner
• Xamarin Certified Developer
• Drupal Organization Member
• Kentico Partner
• Bigcommerce Partner
• Certified by RedHat Linux
• Google AdWords Certified Partners

Concluding View

This brings us to the end of the list of some of the best eCommerce development companies out there, that can help build your next online store.

Each company listed above has been ranked in the top for their eCommerce development services. They have also been the workhorses behind some of the most popular and successful online stores of today.

Handpicked Content for You:

• Largest eCommerce Companies in the World
• Best eCommerce Platform for Small Business – 2019
• 5 Things to Keep in Mind for Building an eCommerce Website
• AI in 2019 – What Tech Companies Are Betting Big On?

The post Top eCommerce Development Companies – 2019 appeared first on EngineerBabu Blog.

From user engagement to site performance – It is one thing to design a simple website, but developing an eCommerce site comes with its series of challenges.
Firstly, eCommerce websites are built not just to inform and showcase your brand online; they are primarily built for customers to shop. Hence, designers need to ensure that the site is easy to use and intuitive to make sales.

Without sales, the whole website will lose its purpose.
So, before you begin, consider reading this article thoroughly as it can serve as a holy grail and remembers these keys to bring your ecommerce product dreams to reality.

1. Select an ecommerce or web hosting platform

If you are a small or medium-sized enterprise and aren’t looking for a customized platform – Then to save time and money, select a popular ecommerce platform.

I recommend Shopify, Magento, OpenCart or BigCommerce.
MUST READ: Best eCommerce Platform for Small Business – 2019
Most developers are quite familiar with these, making it easy to integrate WordPress plugin, payment processing, etc. The platforms also come with a range of customizations.

Additionally, these ecommerce platforms come at a reasonable price.

2. Reverse Engineer Successful eCommerce Websites

One of the most ingenious ways to create an ecommerce website or product that generate leads, drives traffic, and converts visitors is to reverse engineer what is already working for the other ecommerce sites. Learning from those who are already excelling in the domain is a sure shot way to ensure that you create a functional platform which is lucrative for your business.
But, how can you do that?
To understand what your competitor is utilizing, you can go to Ahrefs (or other competitor analysis tools such as SpyFu, Similar Web, or SEMrush) and type in your own website’s URL or that of your competitors’.
Once you do that, try finding out how they’re getting their traffic, what keywords they’re ranking for, what keywords they’re bidding on, etc.

3. Open source or SaaS – Choose wisely

Depending on a variety of factors – such as your company’s current and future needs, as well as budgetary and other constraints – you’ll have a significant decision to make as you dive into the world of eCommerce:
Should you use an open-source or a SaaS platform to house your online store?
Let’s compare:

If you don’t require a much-customized online store and want to instead focus your energy & time on running and scaling your venture instead of managing technology – you’ll be more content with a SaaS platform. It will save you considerable time and money while allowing you to focus on achieving your business objectives.
If you have the pockets to hire a developer, and want a highly customized shopping experience, then open-source will be a viable bet for you.

4. Finding the Right Tech Partner

Choosing the right tech partner is a critical step to ensure your product succeeds, especially if you are from a non-technical background.
eCommerce can get tricky at times. Some problems arise which could only be handled by experienced developers, thus you must hire a partner who has an experience of working in this domain.
Going for a jack of all trades isn’t really a good idea here. Also, solely hiring a developer won’t suffice. You will require an eCommerce domain expert to fulfill your requirements.
Owing to the fact that ecommerce is a massive entity in itself; it would be foolish to hire someone on the basis of their work in other domains. A developer who is good with designing ride-hailing or dating apps won’t necessarily be good in developing ecommerce applications. 
Check out our award-winning ecommerce application right here.

Trustable Ecommerce App Development Companies

5. Clear and Easy Navigations

Make sure you have clear and easy-to-follow navigation at every step of the purchase. If a user doesn’t find the product or services they were looking for, they aren’t going to spend long looking for them on your website. After all, they have plenty of options to choose from.
Aim at retaining the user by providing them with a clean and clutter-free experience.
Keep in mind the following pointers and you’ll be good to go:

• Match Your Design with Your Products

Keeping your design coherent with what you’re selling will complete the overall feel and look of your site. While designing, make sure that everything from text, images, color schemes, perfectly aligns with your website.
For instance, If your website is selling toys, your design should look fun and colorful.
And if your website is trading gadgets, the theme of your design should look modern and techy.
For instance, this e-commerce website which buys and sells Captain America merchandise uses a design that matches their products perfectly.

• Proper Product Showcase and Descriptions

The purpose of your ecommerce site should be to sell products; thus it is essential to highlight your products on your website. When showcasing items, always ensure that you’re using high-quality images that will grab user’s attention. The larger the images, the better. By showing good quality pictures, your customers will visualize how well the product looks in real.

For better usability, choose a layout that emphasizes your product on every page. Don’t give them a hard time finding the page for “Accessories” or “Shoes” if they’ve already looked or clicked on a similar product.

• Easy Checkout Process

Besides from allowing transactions to be swift and anonymous, an eCommerce site should also make it as compelling as possible for consumers to check out their items. The more straightforward this process, the more motivation your customers will have to make a repeat purchase. So don’t create too many pages for checkout.
Try to create a single-page process while not being too overwhelming for consumers.

• Payment Options

I’ve observed several eCommerce sites that deny users to pay with Paypal or with other kinds of payment aside from Visa or Master card. Now with the introduction of a Unified Payment Interface, you need to ensure that you provide ample payment solutions in order to cater to a wide range of shoppers. By considering your consumer’s payment preference, you can increase their motivation to shop thereby boosting your sales in the long run.

Questions to ask an agency when developing an eCommerce site

Many non-technical customers we encounter are concerned majorly about two things,

“Cost & Time”

But this is definitely not the correct approach to follow. Firstly, you should give clear instructions of what you are trying to build (Clear Requirement Document) and ask other questions like the following.

• Building the portfolio
  • How do you determine the price of the project
  • How big is your company and how long have you been in the market?
  • Can you provide instances of websites you’ve developed in the past?
  • Do you hold any case studies that showcase the effectiveness of your sites
  • Do you have a project manager who will take ownership of my website when it is being created
  • Is there an ongoing cost to maintain the website, and if so, how much?
  • What standards and practices do you use to ensure that the site is responsive to different devices and is optimized for search?

• Analytics and reporting
  • Are you willing to set up analytics for me?
  • What tools and solutions do you use for site’s analytics?
  • What eCommerce metrics do you advise we track?
  • How can we trace what products are performing best
  • How can we trace what channels are performing best?
  • How can we track how customers are using our site?
• Website features
  • How do I create a discount or voucher code for my customers?
  • Will I be able to personalize the prices based on user groups?
  • Can customers review the products?
  • Can you develop a “WishList,” “Notify when a product is available,” or “Back-ordering” features?
  • Will the consumers be able to change the quantity of an item in their cart from the cart page?
  • Will the website possess a “dashboard” where users can update their information?

• Search engine optimization
  • Do you incorporate keyword research as part of the website build?
  • Is site-wide HTTPS included as part of the build?
  • How do you optimize page speed, especially on catalog and image-heavy pages?
  • Will you implement Schema markup for my site?
  • Will you include a blog on the website? If so, will they be on the main site or sub-domain?
  • How will you deal with dynamically-generated pages?

• Tech Questions:
  • Which technologies will be adopted in frontend?
  • Which technologies will be adopted in the backend?
  • Are you going to make Native Android & Native iOS Apps or Hybrid?
  • Which server will be used for hosting?
  • How will you ensure the security of the website?
  • How much time would be required to implement changes, if needed?
  • What happens if the server is down?
  • How do you ensure protection from hacking and phishing attempts?

Wrapping Up

An ecommerce site can completely transform your business. It can not only boost your sales but can also establish your enterprise globally – That too without the pain of going through opening a brick and mortar store.
It is true that creating an e-commerce website requires a lot of sweat, time, effort, and expense. However, if you know the right techniques, a good e-commerce site cannot just boost sales, but also retain more long-term customers than you could ever expect.

Our team at EngineerBabu prides themselves in designing some of the best ecommerce solutions for businesses globally. Our cherished Australian ecommerce customer Frankgreen has won numerous awards, like the Best Design Award for not one, not even two, but three consecutive years!! Our other ecommerce application Ondoor (an online supermarket app) went on to garner more than 100k downloads in record time.

Contact Usright away for a free consultation! 

We hope that you found this post helpful. Let us know in the comments below what you would like to learn next about.

Handpicked Content for You:

• Largest eCommerce Companies in the World
• Best eCommerce Platform for Small Business – 2019
• AI in 2019 – What Tech Companies Are Betting Big On?
• What are UI and UX? A Designer’s Guide to the Tech Industry

The post 5 Things to Keep in Mind for Building an eCommerce Website appeared first on EngineerBabu Blog.

I am quite certain that most of us are pretty much aware of that. It is also safe to assume that almost every one of us might have either heard of or used some of the services of the companies mentioned in this list.
The ecommerce landscape is dominated by the worlds’ elite – Billionaire businessmen like Jack Ma, Jeff Bezos, and others, are in a relentless race to dominate the ecommerce realm.

After all, the ecommerce industry is without a doubt the most lucrative business of the 21st Century.

Now, one might assume that he or she knows pretty much everything about the companies listed below, but I am pretty certain that you might not be aware of the secret sauce that made these companies so influential. Let’s shift our paradigms a little, and shed some light at these corporations from an entirely fresh and quirky perspective.

The list is not all Western; and no, Alibaba is not the only Chinese success story:

1. Amazon

Only if you are living under a rock or were in a Captain America sort of coma for a while, could be the case when you might not have heard about this giant-little bird.
This Seattle based company (rather a country) is now the most valuable business in the universe.
But this isn’t the only thing that makes headlines about Amazon. The now immortal CEO of Amazon is equally in the news, if not more. 2018 saw Mr. Bezos become the first centi-billionaire of the world. His net worth is estimated to be a whopping 137.1bn USD (meh!)as of 2019.

The X-Factor:
Amazons’ 1997 letter to shareholders, gives us a pretty good insight into the way Jeff Bezos functions. The letter tells us about the unrelenting focus the famous founder has maintained through the years, along with some invaluable lessons for all who are pursuing organizational excellence.

Here are a few highlights:

• Focus on delivering value:
  Too many companies today are focussed on maintaining slim profit margins, at the expense of keeping customers happy. Amazon, however, has always been laser-focused on providing value to their customers.“Since inception, our focus has been on offering our customers compelling value. We brought our customers’ much more selection than was ever possible in a physical store (our store would now occupy six football fields), and presenting it in a valuable, easy-to-browse, and easy-to-search format in a store which is open 365 days a year, 24 hours a day.”, explained Bezos.The fruits of this resolute mentality could be clearly seen 25 Years later.
• Customer First. ALWAYS. NO MATTER WHAT.
  Amazon as a company has always strived to keep customers at the helm of their business. Amazon’s emphasis on the long-term, as shown by the image above, has made investment decisions in the light of long-term market leadership considerations rather than short-term profitability considerations or short-term Wall Street reactions. There are swarms of people that don’t agree with this approach. But then again, not everyone can build a business like Amazon.
• Never Ever Stop Learning
  Another critical reason why Amazon has rose-up to the top is their willingness to learn from their mistakes. In an interview, Bezos acknowledged the road ahead, “We now understand vastly more about online commerce then when Amazon.com was formed, but we still have so much to learn. Though we are optimistic, we must remain sharp and maintain a sense of urgency.” Every entrepreneur an businessperson should try and inculcate this in their business.
• Visualize the bigger picture 
  Rather than eyeing short-term profitability, Bezos has always tried to focus on long term gains. Their refusal to compromise has given the company purpose and direction – and has transformed Amazon from an online bookseller to a global retail empire.

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Trustable Ecommerce App Development Companies

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2. Walmart

Walmart is not just the world’s largest retailer (but Amazon is closing in), it is also the world’s leading private employer. Walmart products are manufactured in more than 70 countries. At any given time, Walmart is managing an average of $46.18 billion in inventory (Q: Oct 2018) throughout its 11,695 stores operating in 28 countries.
To top that, they have made several significant acquisitions (Flipkart being the most notable one) to compete with Amazon in emerging markets like India.

Walmart’s influence has been so immense that its impact on communities and society as a whole has been a consistent topic of academic interest in a variety of areas.

The X-Factor:
While Walmart is celebrating success, other major retailers are struggling.
Macy’s, the nation’s second-largest department store, had its share price plummet. For fiscal 2017, the retailer is projecting a 3.2 to 4.3% decline in sales.

J.C. Penney saw a 15.3% decline following its weak earnings report.
And Nordstrom, revered for its customer service practices, saw an 11.3 % drop, while Kohl’s slumped nearly 8% after disappointing financials.
SO, why is Walmart winning when most of the retail markets are tanking?

Two reasons:

• Stay true to your purpose:
  Sam Walton started Walmart in 1962 with one simple goal: to “help people save money so they could live better.” Despite its humongous size, the organization has never lost sight of its purpose. Even today, helping its customers save money and that is central to everything Walmart does.
  Their unwavering and laser-sharp focus makes them stand-out.
• Execute your purpose:
  Every employee of Walmart adheres to the vision of their late founder, Sam Walton, who believed, “Each Walmart store must reflect the values of its consumers and support the vision they hold for their community.”Everyone at Walmart is coherent with this vision. Every action Walmart takes at each and every level of the organization is to support the retailer’s purpose. From the no-frills corporate offices to its requirement that all employees, even executives, empty their own bins, every employee makes it a point of keeping its costs down, so it can sell products for less. This sheer resilience and the ability to execute its purpose is what distinguishes Walmart even now.Recommended Read: Best eCommerce Platform for Small Business – 2019

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3. Alibaba

Alibaba is hailed as “the Amazon of China” because of its dominance in the worlds’ most populous country. Much like Amazon, the founder CEO of Alibaba boasts a big fanbase and is touted as a global entrepreneur and visionary.

Alibaba has been killing it since the dawn of the 21st Century and is on its way to dwarf American stalwarts such as Walmart, Amazon, and eBay. It has already outperformed Amazon, Google, and Microsoft in key areas such as public cloud revenue growth.

With entities almost everywhere, (movie production, music and movie streaming, online learning, micro-blogging, online maps, travel booking, mobile apps, and so much more), the Alibaba Group has shown the world that China is a force to be reckoned with.

So what factors are accountable for this incredible growth in such a short span of time? Let’s take a look,

The X-Factor:

• A loyal customer base
  Alibaba doesn’t charge a single penny for admission and only charge for their services in marketing and technical support.
  This contributes to a significant and robust market-share made up of loyal customers. Alibaba’s profits mainly come through keyword biddings and advertisements, which represent 55% of its total profits.The second most important source of profit (amounting to almost 25%) comes from the technical services based on big data of the consumer behaviour.By eradicating intermediate fees and allowing sellers to register for free, Alibaba has been able to cultivate an online transaction habit among its customers.
• Being in the right place, at the right time
  Jack Ma has taken carpediem way too seriously. Alibaba has always excelled at identifying and seizing unique business opportunities and thus cleverly positioning itself as a leader in developing customer loyalty.For instance, The ‘Double 11’ festival falls on Nov 11, between Christmas and the Chinese National Day. Most consumers initially avoided shopping during that period, but Taobao (a subsidiary of Alibaba) has successfully transformed that day into an actual shopping festival.

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4. JD.com

If anyone in this world can lock horns with the likes of Alibaba is this ecommerce giant – JD.com has started giving Alibaba a run-for-money by introducing advanced technologies and drone delivery systems. They have also announced that they are planning to build more than 150 drone launch centers to improve delivery capabilities for consumers in rural areas.

Additionally, JD is in a strategic partnership with Walmart that was extended this year to further the integration of their resources, platforms, and supply chains within China.

Strengthened by initial failures, Richard Liu Qiangdong, took risks that paid off heavily, mounting his startup JD.com into the ranks of Chinese e-commerce giants.

“Within five years I’m 100 percent sure we will be the largest B2C [business to consumer] platform in China — we will surpass any competitor,” said Liu in a statement to Financial Times.

The X-Factor:

• Focus:
  “The key reason for [JD’s] success is focus,” Liu, (Founder, JD.com) said in a speech at the University of Pennsylvania in 2009. “For us, e-business is everything.”
• Striving for innovation
  JD.com has established themselves at the helm of the newest technological innovations. Liu has even gone so far to predict his company won’t need any humans, and said, “I hope my company would be 100% automated someday…no human beings anymore, 100% operated by AI and robots.”

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5. Booking Holdings

Booking Holdings is the only travel fare aggregators that has made it to this list dominated by retail giants. But there is good enough reason to mention them here.

According to sources, Booking Holdings operates websites in about 40 languages and 200 countries. In 2017, consumers booked 673.1 million room nights of accommodation, 73 million rental car days, and 6.9 million airplane tickets using websites owned by Booking Holdings.

Booking Holdings stocks touched an all-time high of $2,229 per share in the first quarter of 2018.

Here’s Why We Believe Booking Holdings Is worth $2,229 per share,
The X-Factor:

• Market Reach:
  Booking.com operates websites in about 40 languages and in 200 countries, which is quite a feat, considering the market they operate in. Booking.com had a total of roughly 29 million reported listings, of which 23 million were listings in hotels, motels, and resorts and almost 6 million were listings in homes, apartments, and other unique places to stay.Their plans to consistently grow its reported listings, expand its real estate on its online accommodation, booking website, and improve its technological capabilities help them lead the herd.
• Customer Service:
  Judging from my personal experience and from those of others, Booking Holdings reliable customer service and their competitive pricing with easy-to-use user interface draws repeat purchases. Their business model thrives on repeat purchases. They aim to provide a better holistic travel experience to their customer, which reaffirms its value in the market.

Concluding View

One of the several interesting ah-ha moments we had while preparing together this analysis, and which surprised us the most was the level of consolidation that is undergoing within retail. Major acquisition activities included purchases by private equities and retailers buying Internet companies and other ecommerce players.

Like the recent acquisition of Flipkart by Walmart – Walmart outbid Amazon to buy a controlling stake (77% for $16bn) in the Indian ecommerce giant. The acquisition is touted as the biggest ecommerce deals of recent times. This goes on to show that big-box retailers are eyeing emerging markets like India to strengthen their foothold across the globe and at the same time get an edge over their competitors. The sudden shift in focus from markets like the US, Canada, and the UK is due to the stagnancy that the developed markets are witnessing.

EngineerBabu prides themselves in creating some of the best ecommerce solutions for businesses worldwide. Our dear Australian ecommerce customer Frankgreen has won several accolades such as the Best Design Award for not one, not even two, but three consecutive years!! Another ecommerce application Ondoor (an online supermarket app) created by developers of EngineerBabu have garnered more than 100k downloads in record time.
Contact Us right away for a free consultation! 

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The Deciding Factors…

The points mentioned subsequently could serve as a starting point for determining the best ecommerce platform that could serve your purpose.

• Pricing Structure
All platforms come with a price list with an applicable subscription period. Now, if you are a small business owner and are just venturing into the world of ecommerce, you need to take into account the pricing structure of the platform that you are planning to use. Always make sure that you get a detailed understanding of the pricing structure. You must also ensure the affordability of the eCommerce platform which may also include subscription fees, delivery costs and the extra tax amount.
There have been numerous instances when merchants were required to switch to a different platform as they increased the prices and the costs were totally unjustified. If one isn’t cautious, switching between ecommerce platforms can wreak havoc on your site’s authority with search engines.

• Do your research
Don’t dig your own grave by selecting the wrong platform.
Brainstorm with your team and gather all their expectations regarding the platform. Ask every possible question you want, to ensure that all the bases are covered. An excellent ecommerce platform needs to make the best possible online store for your brick and mortar shop.
Another aspect of ecommerce is choosing the best hosting service. A bad hosting company can have a detrimental impact on your search rankings, making your site slower and causing a significant downfall.
With proper diligence narrow down at least three hosting services that you like, list all the pros and cons of the services, and then proceed accordingly. Taking hasty and unplanned decision is definitely a path that should be avoided.
Read: How to Build an Awesome eCommerce App? 
• SEO friendliness
All the above shenanigans won’t matter if you can’t make your store rank on Google. It can be extremely beneficial to have your store rank high in search results. You want your customers to find you when they’re searching for products like yours.
Some of the most important factors when looking for an SEO-friendly platform include:
    • The ability to add a blog to your site.
    • The ability to use a personalized domain name.
    • The ability for customers to drop reviews.
Your SEO efforts shouldn’t just end here. Once you start appearing in search results, you will need to continually optimize your offerings lest you would go down in ranks with time.

• Mobile Friendliness
Did you know, according to an official statement by Google, mobile users account for a staggering 50% of the entire search queries globally. Thus it is hard not to address the elephant in the room – While finalizing an ecommerce platform for your business, kindly ensure that whichever platform you decide on, has capabilities to provide mobile-friendly pages.
This indicates that it is extremely critical to look for platforms which allow customers to access your website quickly and also make purchases on their mobile or tablet devices.

BEST ECOMMERCE PLATFORMS IN 2019

1. WooCommerce

WooCommerce differs from other platforms mentioned on this list solely because it is a WordPress plugin. This makes its application quite tricky as it can be useful for only a specific set of businesses.

To implement WooCommerce, you must possess an understanding of WordPress, because it plugs directly into it.
Also, WooCommerce pricing is a bit tricky to pin-down. There are several costs associated with hosting WordPress and WooCommerce that can fluctuate within a certain range. One user’s cost is going to differ from the others.
X-Factor:
WooCommerce provides a varied range of analytic tools to choose from. With these, you can effectively measure the sales and analyze according to date brand, statics of customer, calculate your daily and monthly sales, and even estimate the number of orders. However, many tools are also inbuilt in WooCommerce.
Pros:

• WooCommerce is free. Being an open source free software, one doesn’t need to break the bank to start with it. Additionally, it also offers free updates from time to time.
• Being a WordPress plugin, it is extremely customizable with many themes, making it a delight to use. Additionally, you can also download extra plugins to modify your website.

Cons:

• WooCommerce doesn’t provide online store owners with the necessary tools to implement SEO effectively. 
• You must know both WordPress and WooCommerce to make changes to your website.
  

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Trustable Ecommerce App Development Companies

2. Shopify

Shopify is hands-down, one of the most successful and well-known platforms that small and medium-sized businesses can leverage right now. It empowers more than 500,000 businesses worldwide to sell online and has a whopping 1 million active monthly user base. A considerable chunk of the overall ecommerce transactions is processed through Shopify, roughly amounting to almost $46 Billion.

As a platform, Shopify offers a tonne of flexibility. You can completely customize your online store and manage your inventory and products.
X-Factor:
Shopify has successfully leveraged its humongous seller as well as user base to its benefit by setting up an active and thriving online community, where shop owners share their tips and expertise. This helps the developers keep pace with the latest developments of the industry, and at the same time release timely updates.
Pros:

• There’s a dedicated mobile app so you can keep track of your store anywhere and any time.
• Shopify is extremely SEO-friendly. It allows custom title tags as well as meta descriptions on every category page. It also allows you to create customized landing pages which are extremely useful for marketing purposes.

Cons:

• Aside from their monthly rate-plan, many of the themes on Shopify comes at an additional cost.
• Shopify is still struggling to cater to large businesses. Although Shopify Plus has been introduced, it still lacks the panache that is needed to handle large customer base.

3. Magento

Many technicians tout Magento as one of the best premium open source solutions in the game, but not so much for small businesses. Helming over 150,000 sites and many fortune 500s under its umbrella, it is indeed popular amongst enterprises.

X-Factor:
Scalability is one of the most prominent X-factor for Magento. Magento is built to scale, so whether you are selling 10 or 10,000 products, Magento can handle it.
Pros:

• Flexibility – Magento offers full flexibility for users to play with the code and practically modify every aspect of your site according to your whims.
• The platform is extremely feature-rich owing to its open source software and third-party support.

Cons:

• Technical Expertise – Exclusive Magento developers are hard to find. Being an extraordinarily expansive and extensive system, (over 30,000 files and 300 database tables) – Magento has a broad learning curve, and it takes a fairly experienced developer with a solid understanding of object-oriented development and experience with core software to really comprehend what they’re doing.
• Price – The Enterprise version starts around $1,988/month, and the premium enterprise version costs $49,990/year.

4. OpenCart

Opencart is a free-to-use and open source ecommerce platform. One can just visit the website and install the software. While a functional site can run for free but if you want add-ons, then the average cost range from $20-100 per module (which includes – Sales Motivator, SEO Backpack, Intuitive Shipping, etc.

X-Factor:
The cost of setting up a store with Opencart is quite approachable even for small businesses. There are also a vast number of add-ons available, and many of them are free – you can basically get a site up-and-running using diverse payment gateways for practically no additional costs, whereas on other platforms you would need to pay.
Pros:

• Opencart doesn’t require an extensive learning curve. It is also easier to install. New users could readily understand the platform, which would help them set-up and start using Opencart quickly. This is because the interfaces offered by the solution is pretty straightforward.
• Well-Designed admin interface

Cons:

• Opencart doesn’t guarantee high-performance capabilities. One would need to install additional plugins for SEO, sales and shipping, etc.
• Opencart isn’t extremely customizable which can constrict some businesses.

5. BigCommerce

While one end of the ecommerce platform is dominated by Shopify, at another end of the spectrum, lies Bigcommerce. Much like its counterpart, BigCommerce offers a range of prices and packages, tailored to suit different types of businesses.

X-Factor:
BigCommerce has one of the most carefully considered checkout framework in the industry. It provides one of the smoothest single-page checkout experience, which helps in conversion to a great extent.
The importance of this cannot be understated, as the checkout page is a place where it is most likely to lose a consumer.
Pros:

• Bigcommerce provides massive hosting resources with a dedicated team that works on optimizing and keeping it running smooth.
• Provides layers of security.

Cons:

• Extensive customization available only if you possess good coding skills.
• It is a bit more expensive.

Concluding View

Choosing between ecommerce platforms requires extensive research. Each platform has its own set of services, charges,  subscription-period, strengths and weaknesses depending on the functionality.
Custom-made platforms will surely help you, but to scale up your operation, you will need to leverage any of these platforms. The biggest hurdle for a small business is to decide upon the most suitable platform, choose from their services and deal with their limitations.
Stay tuned as in the upcoming series of articles we will extensively cover each aspect of ecommerce, thus helping our readers and clients grow their business and attain new milestones.
Our founders started EngineerBabu to transform the technological landscape for our customers.
Having heard stories of how clients get duped by their tech partners, they resolved to do something about it. To ensure that customers don’t feel exploited they strived to introduce total transparency into the product development process.
Our team truly strives to develop a personal connection with customers which helps us to understand their requirements better. 
In the words of our wonderful founders,
We aren’t in the business for just making money; we are here to build lasting relationships.
Having worked on all the platforms mentioned before, we possess solid domain expertise of creating incredible ecommerce websites which have helped our customers achieve significant breakthroughs. This is what they have to say about us –

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