designing ecommerce website

DESIGNING ECOMMERCE WEBSITE

Over the past 10 years, e-commerce has been one of the fastest growing segments of the retail industry. That may seem obvious to anyone who has ever shopped online, but the size and speed of the boom has been truly astounding. There are already hundreds of thousands of online stores around the world wide web, and according to some estimates, merchants open 20,000 new e-commerce storefronts every week.1 The popularity of the online marketplace shows no signs of slowing, so now may be the perfect time to start selling on the web. There are more options for creating an e-commerce site than ever before. You can work with an e-commerce platform provider to set up an online store, or you may want to let web professionals handle the design and development of your site from start to finish. Working with services like these offer some convenience, but if you want additional flexibility and control, your best bet may be to create your site on your own. With a little know-how and some easy-to-use tools, you can develop an e-commerce site that looks and functions exactly the way you want, helping you meet the needs of your customers and your business more effectively. In this guide, you’ll learn about what goes into creating your own do-it-yourself (DIY) e-commerce web site, from picking the right tools and services you’ll need to create your web pages, to selecting the best hosting provider and payment solution to fit your business, to figuring out the best security for your site. Choosing Your Web Design Tools After you have your business plan in place and are ready to focus on your new online venture, it’s time to start creating your e-commerce web site. The first step is selecting the tools you want to use to design and code your site. You can start from scratch and code everything by hand, but this requires solid knowledge of HTML, PHP, MySQL, and other programming languages. To shorten the learning curve, you might want to invest in web design software like Adobe Dreamweaver or Microsoft Expression Web. Depending on what version you buy, these programs can run anywhere from $50 to $300. If you don’t have the budget to spend on software, there are also several free open source options to choose from, including KompoZer and BlueGriffon (formerly Nvu). While they may not offer all of the sophisticated features that paid software does, these open source programs are still powerful and easy to use. Everyone likes different web tools for different reasons, so it’s hard to say which will be the best program for you. However, there are some key elements you should look for in any software. An easy-to-use interface is important, especially if you’re less familiar with HTML and would prefer to work with a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) application. WYSIWYG HTML editors allow you to design your site by clicking and dragging elements and inserting text Before You Start Creating Your Site Step 1: Create Your E-Commerce Business Plan. What are you selling? Who is your target market? How much money will you need to invest to get your e-commerce business off the ground? Do you want to incorporate or operate as a sole proprietorship? These questions may seem like no-brainers, but it’s worth taking some time to sit down and map out a strategy. Depending on the size and complexity of your business, this could take anywhere from a day or two to several months. Learn the language(s) of the web HTML, PHP, ASP, SQL, CSS, AJAX— today’s internet encompasses an alphabet soup of different programming codes and tools. While you don’t need to be an expert in any of them to create a web site on your own, you should at least familiarize yourself with these technologies. There are a wide range of resources available at your local library, bookstore, and of course online. The World Wide Web Consortium is a great place to start. GUIDE and links like you would in a word processing program. While you design your site, the WYSIWYG editor will generate the HTML code for you. Many of these editors will allow you to toggle between the visual layout and the site code, giving you flexibility to tweak the HTML to see how it affects the page layout, and vice versa. If your web site is small and simple, HTML/CSS is fine. On the other hand, if the content or structure of your e-commerce site is going to change frequently, you may want to consider an open source content management system (CMS) such as Joomla and Drupal. A CMS is software that allows users to add new web pages—or change content on existing pages— quick and easily. With a CMS in place, you won’t need to worry about coding new content in HTML because the system will do it for you. When you’re considering which web site building tools to use, you should make sure that the applications you choose support all of the functionalities that you want in your web site. For example, if you plan to use a MySQL database to power your product catalog, be sure that you can integrate it into your site using the program you decide to go with. If you’re not completely sure about the functionalities you may need, spend some time exploring web sites that you like and pay special attention to the features that appeal to you the most. Aside from product catalogs, many e-commerce sites offer newsletter registration forms, customer support widgets, and other elements that make a site more interactive. After you have a list of features you want on your site, do a little research to learn more about the technologies behind them. Selecting Your Web Host for E-commerce Now that you’ve got an idea about how you’re going to build your web site, you need to think about where to host it. There are hundreds of different web hosting providers to choose from, so how can you be sure you’re making the best decision? Even though it may seem like a daunting choice, picking the provider that’s right for you can be an easy decision if you pay attention to a few key issues. The first is price, and while it’s easy to do a quick price comparison on the web, the cheapest host you can find may not always be the best. Providers that have lower prices sometimes skimp in other areas, like customer service or technical support. You should also be on the lookout for providers that may offer low prices up front, but then run up charges with hidden fees. In addition to price, you should also consider the type of features offered by a hosting provider. Since PHP and MySQL currently play an integral role in creating dynamic, interactive e-commerce web sites, picking a host that offers compatibility with these languages should be at the top of your list. If you’re interested in having email addresses that match your domain name—an important factor when considering how you will communicate with your customers and any employees you may have—access to an email server is critical. Host-based security services, like firewalls and virus detection, are also must-haves. It’s also a good idea to check how much uptime a hosting provider guarantees. A high uptime percentage helps to ensure that your web site will be available when a visitor types your web address into a browser or finds your site via a search engine. Choosing a host that Jumpstarting Your Site Design with Free Templates Even if you decide to create a DIY web site, you don’t need to start with a blank slate. There are a wide variety of free HTML templates that you can tweak to meet your needs available at sites such as 4templates.com or freewebtemplates.com. Before you start re-coding, however, be sure that the designer really has given permission for others to use and change the look of the template. Is Free Web Hosting Right for You? It’s often said that the best things in life are free, but when it comes to web hosting, this may not be the case. If you’re running an e-commerce site, a free hosting provider may not give you the reliability or features you need to keep your customers happy. Before you decide on a host, be sure it offers the bandwidth to support all of the traffic to your site and meets your needs for guaranteed uptime. GUIDE offers frequent backups is also a safe bet just in case your site goes down and you need to recover your files. Last but not least, if you’re new to building web sites, then finding a hosting provider that offers solid customer and technical support should also be a top priority. A good hosting provider will be able to answer any questions you may have during your site launch and should be able to help you quickly address any day-to-day problems that may arise. Picking a Payment Solution After deciding where you’ll set up shop on the web, the next step is choosing a method to accept payments on your site. The payment process is what puts the “commerce” in “e-commerce.” There are two kinds of payment systems that you should consider for your site: a payment processor and a payment gateway. Payment processors, like PayPal Website Payments Standard and Google Checkout, will send a customer to a checkout page that is hosted by the processing company. After customers submit their credit card information, they will be sent back to your web site. In contrast, payment gateways—such as Authorize.net—integrate directly with your shopping cart and the transaction is essentially invisible to your customer. There are pros and cons for payment processors and payment gateways that you should weigh. For some web site owners, payment processors can be easier to use because they do not require any backend integration with web sites. When you use a payment processor, you also don’t have to worry about securing financial transactions because the processing web site will take care of it for you. However, a payment processor will also take your customers away from your site during checkout, a process that may cause confusion and may give them second thoughts about completing their transaction. Payment gateways require more technical know-how, and you will have to obtain an SSL certificate to protect credit card transactions on your site (learn more about SSL security below). Even with these additional considerations, a payment gateway will keep customers at your web site during the transaction, making the user experience smoother and more professional. Before you decide on a payment processor or gateway, you should also research the transaction, set up, and service fees that each provider charges. Average charges vary widely across the industry, with some processors charging a cash fee plus a percentage of each Don’t Forget to Register Your Domain Name Before you can host your web site anywhere, you’ll need a domain name. Pick something that your customers will find easy to remember, but try to avoid plays on words and other phrases that are not search engine-friendly. For example, if you have a business selling cat toys, CatToyOutlet.com is better than PurrfectlyPerfect Toys.com. Also, remember to complete your metadata fields with relevant content and to submit your site to the Open Directory Project , Google, Yahoo, Bing, and other popular search engines so your customers can find you. Diagram 1. E-commerce Web Site Payment Processing Flowchart Payment Processor e.g., PayPal, Google Checkout Your Shopping Cart Direct Integration Their Payment Site Payment processor’s website Payment Gateway e.g., Authorize.net Certicate Your Shopping Cart Certicate Certicate User Name: Password: GUIDE transaction (for example, PayPal charges 30 cents plus 2.9 percent of every transaction for merchants who receive $3,000 or less per month in payments). Setup fees for gateways can cost anywhere from $99 to $299, and fees typically range from 10 to 50 cents per transaction. Merchants with high sales volumes can often find providers that offer a fixed monthly rate for transactions. It is often best to start with your own bank to see what merchant solutions for credit card processing they recommend. While set up costs and fees and important, there are a few more features that you should think about before making a decision. Check to see whether the payment services provider you’re interested in offers automatic tax calculations. This will make it much easier to figure out how much sales tax you should be collecting and will cut down on accounting headaches during tax season. Also be sure to find out if the processor or gateway you want to use can automatically calculate shipping charges. With this kind of service, you’ll know exactly how much to charge your customers so shipping costs won’t eat into your bottom line. Choosing a Shopping Cart—or Creating Your Own At brick-and-mortar stores, shoppers pick items from shelves, put them in a cart or basket, and usually bring them to a cashier when they’re finished shopping. You’ll need to set up a similar system—commonly called a shopping cart solution—for your online store. Typically, shopping cart software allows people to select items from web pages, add them to their “cart,” and walk them through the purchase process when they are ready to check out. Most shopping carts will also include taxes and shipping charges to give customers a total for their order. When choosing a shopping cart to go with your payment processing solution, make sure it’s supported by your hosting provider and look to see if the cart offers the payment and shipping options you need. There are a number of open source carts with active communities like osCommerce and Zen Cart, as well as GeoTrust Partner solutions like 3dcart.com. You can also create your own shopping cart using web page authoring programs like Dreamweaver or programming it from scratch using PHP, MySQL, and other web programs and languages. SSL Security: An Absolute Must-Have for Your Site A nice site design and seamless integration with a payment system are great, but they won’t mean a thing if you and your customers aren’t protected from fraud and theft. Security is one of the biggest concerns that shoppers have when it comes to buying online. In fact, a recent survey found that 45 percent of consumers are worried about identity theft when they buy on the web.2 Even more troubling for e-commerce business owners, security concerns like these have a serious impact on consumer behavior. The National Cyber Security Alliance recently found that a majority of Americans—64 percent—have abandoned an online purchase because they were not certain that a web site was secure.3 Given these fears, SSL security is critical to your web site. With an SSL certificate, you’ll be able to prevent cybercriminals from intercepting financial data as it’s transmitted over the internet. Not only that, but you’ll also be able to show your customers that your business is legitimate and can be trusted. GUIDE What is an SSL Certificate? SSL certificates are bits of code that you install on your site that will encrypt logins, passwords, credit card numbers and other information so that hackers can’t intercept the data and decode it. After an SSL certificate is installed on a site, it uses an extensive system of security checks to establish a domain and server as trustworthy. To encrypt logins, registration forms, credit card transactions and other situations where sensitive information needs to be sent between web browsers and servers, an SSL certificate uses a private “key”—essentially a long string of complex code—that is unique to the individual server that hosts the web site and a public key that is sent to web browsers. The private key can only be “unlocked” by the public key, and vice versa, helping to ensure that the data remains secure. The vast majority of businesses obtain SSL certificates from third-party providers called Certificate Authorities (CAs). In addition to providing the SSL certificate, a CA will also authenticate a business to help ensure that the company represented by the web site actually exists. For example, GeoTrust will check domain registration information and request business registration documents to verify a web site owner’s identity and location. SSL is now considered a standard internet security technology, but that doesn’t mean that all SSL certificates and providers are the same. Just like picking your design tools and your web host, there are several important factors you should think about before you select a CA and an SSL certificate. Choosing the Right SSL Provider Before you worry about any technical specifications, finding a credible SSL provider that has a strong reputation for online security should be a top concern. Why is this so important? With SSL security from a well-known CA like GeoTrust, your visitors will know that your company has been verified by an objective third party recognized for its strong security practices. People will be more likely to buy when they know that their information is protected and your business is safe, helping you turn that 64 percent of shoppers who have abandoned an online purchase into paying customers. Without legitimate SSL security, you run the risk of losing business because customers won’t recognize that your site is safe. Even worse, it can take just one fraudulent incident to damage your business reputation, even if it wasn’t your fault. Customers may still blame you and tell everyone they know—from family, to coworkers, to a potential audience of millions on popular social media sites like Facebook, Yelp, and Twitter—that your site can’t be trusted. Along with the reputation of your SSL provider, you also need to research what type of SSL certificate will be best for your site. Fortunately, this shouldn’t take too much of your time since there are only three types of SSL certificate that you need to learn about: Extended Validation, organization validation, and domain validation. Types of SSL Certificates Domain validated SSL is a basic certificate that provides encryption and only verifies that the person applying for the certificate has the right to use a specific domain name. These certificates are ideal for business owners who want to get a certificate as quickly as possible, however, they represent the lowest level of SSL security. Organization validated SSL, on the GUIDE other hand, also confirms that a company is a confirmed legal entity and establishes a physical location for that organization, giving customers more assurance that the business is legitimate. When people click an on organization validated certificate, it will display your company name, and trust marks provided by CAs may also display your business name. GeoTrust offers a domain validated SSL product—QuickSSL Premium—as well as an organization validated certificate called True BusinessID SSL. For sites that handle financial transactions, Extended Validation (EV) is your best bet. In addition to the encryption and authentication that organization validation provides, EV SSL also offers a clear sign that your web site is safe: the address bar in high-security browsers will turn green and show the name of your company as well as the name of your SSL provider. EV SSL requires a more thorough authentication process, but many businesses experience increased conversions and higher sales thanks to the green address bar and recent research shows that top performing sites are more likely to use EV SSL.4 If you’re looking for an EV SSL certificate, GeoTrust True BusinessID with EV is an ideal choice. Conclusion and Resources E-commerce has made it possible for entrepreneurs to extend their reach farther than they could have ever imagined. You’ve just read about all of the different components that go into creating an e-commerce web site, but here’s a quick recap that will help you put everything into place: 1. Choose your web design tools — Determine what tools you’re going to use to design and your site. 2. Select your web host — Find a hosting provider that can accommodate all of the tools you want to use and offers the features you need. 3. Pick a payment solution — Weigh your options to see if a payment processor or gateway is right for you. 4. Choose or create a shopping cart — Your customers are going to need a way to select items and buy them, so find a shopping cart solution that meets your needs. 5. Obtain credible SSL security — Work with a provider like GeoTrust to get credible SSL protection for your site. With the rise of identity theft and malware, item five is particularly important. If customers don’t believe that a site is secure, they won’t choose to spend their hard-earned money there. By using a reliable SSL certificate provider, you’ll be able to arm your site against online threats and send your customers a clear message that your company can be trusted. Not all SSL certificates are equal, however. Using the information in this guide, be sure to invest in a solution from a credible provider like GeoTrust that will help you build confidence in your site, communicate your commitment to online safety, and protect your business. Taking the time to find the right SSL certificate for your site now will pay off in the future, helping to ensure that your business is a success.

Step 1: Finalize Your Model

You need to size up your requirements before starting the development process. The more precise your specifications are, the better the end product you will get. So, you need to decide first that if you wish to have a full-fledged eCommerce website to sell your products. Or you want to create an eCommerce marketplace to let others sell their merchandise on your website.

The basic difference between having your own eCommerce website and a marketplace website is the authorization. Marketplace website is a common platform, where any seller can register to sell their merchandise and anybody can purchase from them. It’s more like a market.

Whereas, an eCommerce website is a place where you sell your own products or maybe merchandise of a specific brand. Here, only the admin can add and sell products, no other seller can intervene. Similar to what you see in the retailer shops. Create your beautiful online store using an eCommerce platforms and get in the business right away.

Step 2: Choose Your eCommerce Platform Wisely

The content management system (eCommerce platform) you use to design your eCommerce website will have a huge effect on its success or failure. A CMS or eCommerce platform should be chosen while considering the scale of your website. Of course, both in terms in of products and customers.

There are various content management systems (CMS) such as WooCommerce, Magento, PrestaShop, OpenCart, Shopify etc. available in the market to choose from. However, you can create an eCommerce website with WordPress WooCommerce and TemplateToaster. WooCommerce is basically a WordPress plugin that converts your simple website into an eCommerce store.

But how about a beautiful amalgamation of WordPress, WooCommerce, and TemplateToaster? Yes! TemplateToaster – a website builder software that lets you create a fully functional template or website in the desired CMS. TemplateToaster can benefit you in many ways. It gives you the freedom to switch your designed theme with any other CMS of your choice. Check out free WooCommerce themes.

Step 3: Responsive eCommerce Design

The flexibility to use mobile devices has pushed the eCommerce business enormously. Thus, it is absolutely important to make sure that a website should be mobile optimized. A website should be compatible with all devices no matter what size it is of. If you don’t have a responsive web design, then there are huge chances that you might lose your maximum traffic. Also, your site will not appear in the mobile search results. Thus, your site’s SEO will be affected. Because Google itself gives preference to responsive websites.

Since much of the audiences is inclined towards mobile devices nowadays so you cannot overlook the importance of the mobile-optimized website.

Step 4: Impressive Mobile App for iOS and Android

Don’t panic it’s not a mandatory aspect of eCommerce website development. In fact, it is just a suggestion. If you want to attract more traffic to your website then you can build a mobile app targeting specifically iOS and Android users. People spend most of the time on their phones and if you are offering an exclusive app for them, then this can boost up your business giving more authentic traffic. But at times creating an app can be a little heavy on your pocket, but believe me, it’s all worth it. Additionally, having a mobile-friendly website is indeed a great idea.

Step 5: Select the eCommerce Website Hosting Platform

Your choice of hosting server can have a massive effect on your eCommerce business. The site’s performance, efficiency, and website accessibility are connected to the chosen hosting platform. You should choose a hosting plan according to the needs and after analyzing the traffic that possibly can come to your website. Although it can be tough to analyze traffic in advance still you need to have an understanding before you buy any hosting plan.

There are various types of hostings such as VPS, Dedicated hosting, Cloud hosting, Semi-dedicated hosting, etc. available that you can choose for your website.

Virtual Private Server (VPS) is a virtualized server that provides you dedicated resources on the server. It is a secure and stable solution. It can serve medium-level traffic pretty well.

Dedicated hosting is a type of hosting in which a server is allocated to a single user only. Thus, more security and high performance are guaranteed.

Cloud hosting basically operates across distinct servers in the chain. Your data in the cloud hosting renders from varied servers. The best thing about cloud hosting is that you pay for what you use only. Your server needs can fluctuate with the business up and down and so is the price which you will pay to the server.

There are some Free WordPress hosting out there but you definitely need a good paid plan for eCommerce Website Development. As they say “if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys”.

Step 6: Some Important Other Key Factors to Keep in Mind

Perfect Site Search

This is actually not a step to implement rather a key component that needs to be taken care of in the development cycle. It helps you increase the user engagement to your website. The perfect the site search result, the more the user engagement will. Yes! A site search will help users to search for the desired product on a particular website. A site search engine searches the website for a particular result. When a user can’t find what they are looking for then chances of increase in bounce rate gets higher. You ought to have a perfectly working site search to keep your users on your site and to scale your WordPress eCommerce website easily.

Adding Related Items

It is absolutely important that other displayed merchandise should be related to the product that a visitor is currently viewing. Display of unrelated items can cause you to lose potential customers. Likewise, in the multi-product website, you need to be very specific about the related items you are showing to the potential customer. For example, you can display a specific model covers to the visitor that is searching for a mobile phone.

Perfect Categorization and Tag usage

A perfectly categorized website is a treat to eyes and the easy navigation is like a cherry on the cake. If all the products are well categorized then users can quickly find the relevant items. Thus, increase traffic to your website. Whereas, for a multi-product website it becomes even important to have well-defined categories to display the products.

You can also use tags to link to your merchandise. Since a Tag is a keyword referring to a particular product and helps it appear in the search result. Once a product is tagged then it is easy for a user to discover that specific product simply by typing that tag in the search. Therefore, tags are another very helpful tool to organize your store.

Look after SEO

One thing that you can never overlook in the eCommerce website development is search engine optimization. Use the best SEO practices to help people find your website, products, and services. An SEO-friendly website draws more customers than a non-optimized website. Similarly, adding target keywords make it easily searchable for the users. During the website development life cycle, you’ll find many SEO strategies that if implemented correctly can attract a huge number of potential customers to your website. Follow these eCommerce SEO tips for higher sales and conversions.

Use eCommerce Rich Snippets

Rich Snippets are basically a piece of structured data that helps users as well as crawlers to perceive more information about the site’s content. These rich snippets work amazingly different for your website. They attract the audience by displaying necessary information because you can’t tell a search engine to what exactly to show regarding your merchandise or pages. eCommerce rich snippet gives an idea to the search engine and customer to what to expect from a specific page. And it will help your site gain more exposure in organic search.

Security

Being an eCommerce website, security is the biggest concern. The transactions carried out through your website is your responsibility and it needs to be as secure as possible. The server you are using should Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS) compliant. And your site must support Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). As the primary purpose of SSL is to provide a secure connection to exchange sensitive information such as credit card details, name, phone number, address etc. over the internet. Thus, employing SSL will give your customers a sense of security and consequently keep your data absolutely secure. In fact, basic SSL certificates are freely available these days. You can follow these instructions to set up SSL using Let’s Encrypt.

Speed optimization

The site’s performance is directly proportional to its speed. If the speed is slow, you’re likely to lose customers. It’s true! Generally, people abandon the website which takes more than 4 to 5 seconds to load. So, you have less than 5 seconds only to hook a new visitor to your website. Page load can significantly impact the user experience and your site’s ability to convert visitors into buyers. There are many ways to improve the performance of your WordPress website to run it smoothly. Consider using image compression and caching during development. Caching is a technique to save a static copy of pages so the server does not need to generate it dynamically every time it is requested. Caching is an essential tool for ensuring that your website runs efficiently and provides the best experience to the users.

Step 7: Website Testing

Once you’re ready with eCommerce website or even along with the designing process you can run testing. It is probably the most vital facet in website development. Testing is carried out for:

Bugs

User Convenience

Broken links

Usability

Shopping Cart Abandonment

Forms

Script

Navigation

spell-check

Both automated and manual testing should be done so that there should be no room for errors. However, you can never test enough. eCommerce website having errors or any other type of bug can leave your visitors as well as existing users dissatisfied.

So here are some factors which you need to keep your focus on. And you require to run various testings such as cross-browser compatibility checks, resolution testing, load test, scalability, stress testing, integration testing, performance examination, security checking, functionality check, cookies usage, and database testing.

According to experts opinion, around 20 to 25% of total ecommerce website development time should be invested in this stage only.

Step 8: Market Your eCommerce Website

That’s it. Congratulations, your store is now live. But don’t forget to market your website. Digital marketing is actually the most essential part of the eCommerce website development life cycle. Rarely will visitors discover your eCommerce website by accident. Thus, in order to generate sales, you will actively need to market your website on various platforms. In fact, you should be ready in advance with your market plans, so that as soon as you launch your website, online marketing and promotions can be rolled out. An online market campaign needs to be really effective so that the website doesn’t go unnoticed. Right strategy, right implementation at the right time will definitely attract potential users.

To promote your product and to increase traffic and drive sales, follow these popular marketing methods.

It Includes:

First and the foremost method is the traditional method is by giving ads in the newspaper, magazines, pamphlets, etc.

Social media marketing (SMM). SMM is the most popular and attention seeking digital marketing solution that helps marketers to market their merchandise conveniently. Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Linkedin, Google+, Pinterest, etc. have almost become an integral part of every business marketing strategy to promote their business.

Email marketing is another effective way to market your website. You can ask your visitors to leave their email addresses in exchange for some enticing offers or promos. Send emails to your customers at specified intervals (not too often) and inform them about the new deals or new launches. Send them discount coupons to keep their interest in your store.

Content can help you reach the next level. Yes! Content marketing is an imperative measure of eCommerce development. It is something that can take the website higher in search results. Produce authentic, unique, and shareable information to attract visitors to your store. Give them something interesting and genuine to read and keep up their engagement.

Use viral marketing. Viral marketing is all about how creatively and quickly you create a strategy to get people to promote your website via however medium they like.

Step 9: Payment Methods

This is certainly a significant aspect of eCommerce business. It is your responsibility to make sure that no customer should ever feel insecure while making online payments. Thus, it is essential to include convenient payment options like cash on delivery, net banking, payment wallets, and credit or debit card payments. The best user experience always includes simple and secure payment methods. Support for these payment options will ensure credibility. If you wish to serve customers from various countries, then it requires you to integrate multiple currency payment options to ease your foreign customers. Here I would like to mention how the “Cash on Delivery” method dramatically changed the eCommerce ecosystem in India

Step 10: Effective Return and Exchange Policy

Since you’re running an eCommerce website so the chances that you will face many cases return and exchange of items. Nowadays with huge competition in the market, you have to have a good exchange and return policy to stay in business and ahead in this race. You should employ easy exchange and return policies so that your customers will never have trouble if they ever want to change or replace or maybe return the product. Give your users extra peace of mind.

Step 11: Offers, Sales, and Coupons

This is interesting. Well, at least for the customers. Everyone likes offers, sales, and coupons, you being the owner of an eCommerce website need to keep this in mind to introduce various offers and sales time to time and keep up the excitement. And also if you get lucky enough to collect plenty of email addresses of your valuable customers then you can send them discount coupons via email as well. Not only existing customers but sales and offers can get you more organic visitors as well. So keep tracing customer’s browsing habits, purchase patterns, and other user reactions to refine your offerings accordingly.