Review Your Website eCommerce
Requirements
The approach you take to build your eCommerce site should be
similar to the approach you take when you start a new business,
launch a new product or start a new marketing campaign. Success
in all these endeavors to a large extent depends on a
well-written detailed plan. You can increase the success rate
dramatically for any project if you have a realistic
implementation plan. The major challenges you will face while
creating a development plan for your eCommerce website are
generally as follows:
- Selecting the primary goal of the website
- Coming up with the needed business objectives to
accomplish this goal
- Selecting the right functionalities to achieve these
business objectives
- Having the right content material the site
functionalities should produce and need
Primary Goal
Not all eCommerce sites are online stores. Apart from
selling products and services directly from the virtual store
there could be many other reasons to have an eCommerce site.
Some are listed below:
- Build brands
- Enhance existing marketing programs
- Sell products and services
- Launch new product or service
- Develop a better understanding of the customer’s
need
- Improve after sales support
Based on your primary goal, you have to take different
strategic approach to planning your site.
Website Business Objectives
Website Business objectives are the list of processes you
need to have on your website in order to attain your goal. If
your goal is to sell products through your website you have to
display pictures and specifications of your products to the
site visitors, have a shopping cart so that a buyer can select
products and have a payment system to carry the transaction,
etc. These are your business objectives.
WebSite Functionality
System functionalities are a list of the types of website
capabilities you need to achieve your business objectives. If
one of the website’s business objectives is to send regular
emails to buyers, you need to have an automatic mailing system.
To display product information, i.e. product picture,
specification, sale’s terms, etc. you will need an electronic
catalog system. For processing a payment you require a payment
gateway.
Website Information requirements
This is the information material the website functionalities
have to generate to achieve your business objectives. To
display product information you require product picture,
product specifications, sale’s terms, shipping terms, payment
terms, etc. To send mails to your buyers you need a list of
email addresses. For executing a transaction the required
information would be payment options and information for credit
card processing etc.
Once you have clearly identified your single most important
business goal for developing the website, and jotted down the
needed business objectives, site functionalities and
information requirement to realise the business objectives, you
are ready to proceed with step by step development of your
website.
Writing the development plan
This will require deep understanding of your business goals,
website business objectives, content material and milestone
goals for the overall development process. You will be able to
acquire enough knowledge by analysing existing sites of
competitors and researching data related to your specific
industry. At this stage you will also clarify the resources
necessary to build you site and assign responsibilities.
Register domain for the website
While you are still in the process of writing your
development plan you should register a domain for your website.
You will probably have heard about the amounts of
money companies have paid out for domain names like
business.com or golf.com. There is no point wasting money on
fancy domain names. Any name is fine as long as it
is more or less consistent to your business line. Keep in mind
two things: avoid special symbols in domain name and generally
don’t select a name which is too long.
Create a one page simple website
After registering your domain name, you should start using
it immediately. Design a single page mini website with
information, what the upcoming site is going to have, and
publish it online. The idea is to get online as soon as
possible, because the older your site is the better from the
point of view of search engine spiders.
Meta Tags for your home page
Write the title name of your site, description of your site,
keywords, etc. Use them on your mini site.
Start registering your address in various
directories
Now start registering your mini website in various
directories and search engines. Don’t use the companies that
promise to get your site listed in hundreds of search
engines and directories. You only need to be in the major ones
and most of them require manual insertion of site
information.
Accumulate content
Write content for your website. This is a time consuming
job. A good eCommerce site should have a minimum 80 to 100
pages. So obviously that means you will need a lot of content
for your website.
Site plan
Loosely define the pages needed for the site and links
between them.
Create project scope
The project scope is the way that you describe the
objectives and functionalities of the web project. This gives
you a clear picture of the site from a technical point of view.
It shows the boundaries, i.e. what the project will deliver and
what it will not deliver. For larger projects, it can include
departments involved, business processes and workflows that
will be touched upon, and the data types incorporated, etc.
Design home page and one of the main pages
Finally, it is the time to start designing your web pages.
Start with creating a layout. Sketch and design the first page
and at least one of the other major pages. You may
probably need one or more designers for your site.
Create content surrounding two three key phrases per
page
Meanwhile, select keywords and key phrases for these and
other pages and start developing content surrounding these
words and phrases. You might need to involve the content
developer and search engine optimiser for this.
Select design and layouts for rest of the pages
If you are happy with the look and feel of the home page and
the other page that you have created it is time to build
layouts for rest of the pages.
Programming
Actually, you should start working on this the moment you
finished writing your project scope. You will need programmers
and a data base specialist to work on this part.
The number of specialists required will depend on the
complexity of the project.
Create the rest of the pages
Now is the time to develop the physical look of the rest of
the pages. Don’t forget to create Meta Tags for these
pages.
Installation on your local server
All your work will be done on a local server and the trial
version of your site will reside there.
Testing and debugging
Now that the site is ready it is time to test all the
functionalities of the site and check pages for broken links
and other errors.
Let others review your site
If possible request your best customers, industry colleagues
and friends to check out the site thoroughly and give you
honest feedback. Make changes according to the suggestions that
you think are valid and valuable.
Publish
Finally, the big day has arrived. Publish your
website on the Internet. Make sure to issue a press release
describing your website and how useful your eCommerce site will
be.
Constantly monitor and update
In order to serve your audience better you will need to
monitor your site. What is working well and what needs
improvement? Update your website periodically with specific and
quantifiable enhancements in line with the search keywords
shown in your cPanel.
Promoting your Website
Having a great site is not good enough! You have to work on
promoting your site so that enough targeted traffic visits your
site to make it profitable.
Benefits of a well designed and constructed
website
Companies can reap tremendous profits from a robust, well
designed, well managed and constructed eCommerce website
including these amongst others:
- Sales increase, sometimes many fold
- Better customer satisfaction
- More sales per head
- Less work for the sales force
- More profit per sale
Whilst building your website, take a systematic approach so
that you can have your website developed on time, with
allocated resources and without unpleasant surprises.
Review of eCommerce Website
Requirements
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