Planning to launch an ecommerce business via a stunning website that brings leads, converts, sells, delivers and makes money while you focus on building better products or may be enjoy your financial and professional freedom? If yes, here is a list of 18 questions that will help you navigate the early-stage homework and prepare you for the investment you are about to make in your business with an ecommerce website.
While you can offer basic to advanced features like AI-based product recommendations, I’ll give you a list of most essential features that all ecommerce stores have to have:
- product search and filtering
- wishlisting, add to cart and checkout
- online payment options
- customer ratings and reviews
- product comparisons
And some customer support features like live chat, order inquiry etc. As your business grows, you can scale your website by offering more features.
While popular options include Shopify, WooCommerce (WordPress), Magento, and BigCommerce, your choice should depend on your specific needs and development budget. Know that each of these ecommerce platforms offers different features and options for scalability.
You can choose between WooCommerce and Shopify depending on your ecommerce store growth plans and business requirements. For reference, WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin that offers flexibility and customization but requires little technical expertise to set up and launch; and it’s suitable for businesses already using WordPress.
On the other hand, Shopify is a hosted solution with built-in features. It is ideal for beginners and those looking for ease of use.
WooCommerce has a lot of themes and plugins and you can literally pull off a store for ZERO AED. Shopify’s themes are great and premium – so you’ll need to make an initial investment.
If you don’t choose to DIY, I’d recommend hiring a mid-level web developer company in dubai to manage the initial store set up with you.
A reputable website development company in Dubai will typically give you a ballpark figure around AED 35,000. As a quick run down, ecommerce website development costs start at AED 15,000, with 3-5 features, little customization and world-class themes in this tier.
As your platform choice, customizations, features, and complexity increase, the price also goes up. You can allocate a budget between AED 12,000 to AED 43,000 to start with, but large-scale commercial ecommerce projects with advanced features can cost more.
For reference, if you already have an established ecommerce business, with a decent social following and would like your store to reflect the brand messaging, then you can go for custom design as it will show a unique brand identity and elevated user experience.
If your business is new and you are starting off with building a digital presence, and have low budget allocations, then themes are a good option and premium ones come with decent customization options to suit your brand.
It’s ideal to offer popular and secure payment options like PayPal and Stripe. You can also go for local payment gateways, especially ones that are common across UAE to accommodate different customer preferences.
Ask your web development company in Dubai to
- implement SSL certificates
- use secure payment gateways
- utilize premium codes instead of null themes and cracked plugins
- regularly update software,
- and follow best practices for data protection.
All of these measures will keep your ecommerce website secure, as well as highlight potential threats and issues.
As a ballpark figure, a typical ecommerce website with 3 to 5 solid features can take between 80 to 145 development hours. These hours are calculated based on complexity, features and customization requirements of the business founders. If you already have an ecommerce website, but that’s a low-scale basic one, then your website needs revamping and that might take around 90 development hours.
There are several options to offer customer support features in an ecommerce website. The most popular ones include:
- Offer live chat support
- FAQs
- contact forms
- and clear return/refund policies
With time, you can set up live product inquiry, push notifications and web applications set up to optimize the customer experience.
There are 5 strong digital marketing techniques that almost every ecommerce business now uses to attract visitors and buyers to their stores. You’ll have to market regularly on social media, create content that’s valuable and relevant for your buyers but optimized for search engines and send out emails. You can also go for paid ads on Google.
While it is ideal to subscribe to a website maintenance service to keep your ecommerce business up and running, you can self-manage product inventories and content on your site with an admin portal that helps you self-manage without any technical expertise. Web development companies in Dubai typically build these portals to help small businesses publish content like blog articles, read messages from customers, update inventory levels and so on/
You can ask your developer to build an inventory management feature and integrate with your ecommerce platform. This can track stock levels, automate reordering, and manage order fulfillment efficiently and send you mobile notifications when SKU levels are low.
You’ll have to integrate APIs and plugins that work like real-time shipping calculators. On your website, you can offer multiple shipping options, and partner with reliable shipping providers that provide transparent and efficient shipping services.
There are a lot of tools like Google Analytics, ecommerce tracking, and heatmaps that can help you monitor traffic, sales, conversion rates, and customer behavior.
While there are a lot of ways to start a loyalty program and offer discounts on your ecommerce website, the simplest way is to start voucher codes and embed a checkup code snippet in the website backend. The website will automatically check if the voucher code exists and deal accordingly.
On your website, create a page about return policies. As a business step, provide easy return processes, and offer prompt refunds in case of genuine complaints.
For scaling, you start with focusing on customer retention, then expand your product offerings, and explore new markets. When you are ready to invest in high-end customer acquisition, hire a mobile app development company in Dubai to build an app for your ecommerce store. Such an app will work as an additional outlet of your business and help you leverage data-driven insights to expand business growth globally. With time, you’ll have to increase international shipping and payment options, and with it you’ll have to strengthen the management.
While the list of questions concludes here if you’re still reading, you are on the right track! While building a website-based ecommerce business isn’t as simple as others might market to you, it is definitely a lucrative venture and considering its long-term success case studies, is worth the development time, effort and budget that you’ll allocate now to yield benefits in the future. With this list, you’re near-ready to talk to your developer and begin the work.
