In the past few decades the benefits of eCommerce industry has expanded vigorously, led by a sharp increase in online shopping. It has also brought immense opportunities for businesses with diversified ways to sell their products. Therefore, investing in eCommerce development is a lucrative choice today. The opportunity to sell online has helped many businesses grow and earn hefty revenues.
But the question arises, does your business need an eCommerce website? Why e-commerce is important. What are the advantages of eCommerce sites? Especially for retail startups, this matters most as they have limited resources to be invested prudently.
So, the question coming to your mind about how your business can benefit from an eCommerce website is obvious.
There are lots of benefits of eCommerce websites that you get for your business. For instance, an eCommerce website will let you sell easily and extend your market reach, among the various benefits it has to offer. Still in a fix? You need not worry; this blog is for you to describe the importance of eCommerce website for your business besides all other aspects of eCommerce websites.
Benefits of eCommerce Website Development
This section provides you with an insight into the importance of e-commerce.
Reach Out to Customers Globally
How can you expand your retail business globally? Your business can get a broader reach if you have an eCommerce website. Indeed, this is a major advantage of an eCommerce website as it gives you a wider reach than your brick-and-mortar store. Needless to say, a website can reach every nook and corner of the world, making it a feasible solution to target different customers regardless of their location on earth.
This is certainly an excellent benefit of an eCommerce website as it provides the capability to serve different types of customers. Apart from this, your business can be available round-the-clock because you need not close it like a brick-and-mortar store. An eCommerce website can be available anytime without a specific time for opening and closing.
Multiple Payment Options
When you have an eCommerce website, you can offer multiple payment options to your customers to make it easy for them to pay for their purchases. You can have various payment options like pay via credit/debit cards, online banking, digital wallet, cash on delivery (COD), etc. These payment options will make the life of your customers easy by allowing them to pay seamlessly with online or offline modes.
Cost Reduction
Cost reduction is the biggest advantages of eCommerce sites. You can avoid the expenses of rent, electricity bills, staff salaries, physical infrastructure, etc., by creating a website to sell your products or services. Retailers have to bear hefty expenses when it comes to selling from a brick-and-mortar store.
But selling from an eCommerce website is highly cost-effective. Even if you invest in a brick-and-mortar store, you may not receive the desired profits and ROI. Once you have an eCommerce website, you can avoid the expenses incurred when you have a physical store. This is one of the crucial benefits of eCommerce. All in all, with an eCommerce website, a seller can reduce how much is spent on the upkeep of the store.
Customer Trust
With the increasing digitalization worldwide, people are more inclined to buy online. Websites not only represent your business, but they also help you earn customers’ trust. How? Well, with a website, you can allow reviews and ratings on your website for various products based on the purchase experiences of your customers.
This creates a positive image of your website and business. Also, today most businesses have websites, and people search online before they actually make a decision. Hence, you will lose customers and further growth opportunities if you don’t have a website. This shows the benefits of e-commerce as you can stand a chance to create a good business image.
Things You Should Consider When Creating an eCommerce Website
An eCommerce website is a complex piece of tech with various components and features. If you want to develop an eCommerce website, you need to know the different requirements for creating such a website. The following are the requirements for eCommerce websites.
Type of Website
Another benefit of e-commerce is that you have different options for eCommerce website development. For instance, you can create a B2B website, a B2C website, or a multivendor site. The following are various types of eCommerce websites.
Different Types of eCommerce Websites
If you want to create an eCommerce website, you should first know its types. Today, there are various types of eCommerce websites based on a particular business model. For instance, there are websites where businesses sell to customers or customers sell to businesses. The following are the types of eCommerce websites based on different business models.
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B2B Website
A B2B or Business-to-Business eCommerce website is where both buyers and sellers are businesses. Such a website has many functionalities like quote management, bulk buying, pricing, catalog, etc. It consists of various features allowing businesses to easily create accounts and start selling to others. eBay is a good example of such type of website. You can leverage the benefits of eCommerce by creating a B2B website to serve corporate customers.
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B2C Website
A Business-to-Customer or B2C website is one that provides a way for a business to sell to different customers. These types of websites have features like a shopping cart, multiple payment options, product filters and comparisons, easy checkout, and more.
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Multivendor Website
A multivendor eCommerce website is one that allows multiple retailers to create accounts and sell to different customers. Amazon is an ideal example of a multivendor eCommerce website. You can read more about creating this type of website with the complete guide on multivendor marketplace development.
eCommerce Development Platform
To get the utmost benefit of eCommerce sites, you need to build a perfect website. Selecting the right website development platform is a crucial requirement before creating a website. There are multiple eCommerce development platforms like Magento, Shopify, and PrestaShop, each with its own merits and demerits. Further, some of these eCommerce platforms are free, and many come with license fees.
For instance, Shopify is a subscription-based eCommerce platform, and you need to pay based on which Shopify plan you choose. On the other hand, Magento has both free and subscription-based options.
If you want to create a robust eCommerce website for your business, you need to choose the right platform that can fit your business needs. You can pick a platform based on its price and other factors.
Let’s check how different eCommerce platforms fit into your requirements:
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Shopify
Startups have a limited budget and require a cost-effective solution to start their eCommerce websites. Shopify can be the right option for startups to create a budgeted and feature-rich eCommerce website. There are numerous powerful advantages of Shopify for startups. Take a glance at the key benefits of Shopify eCommerce development for startups below.
One of the primary reasons why you should choose Shopify to develop an eCommerce website is its affordability. Startups have a huge challenge to keep their costs low without cutting corners due to their budget constraints. Shopify can help cope with challenges by keeping the cost of developing an eCommerce website within budget. You can utilize Shopify for various benefits of eCommerce for your retail startup business.
There are different types of plans like Basic Shopify, Shopify Plus, Shopify Advanced, etc., ranging from $29 to $2,000 and more. Moreover, a Shopify store can be customized using themes and add-ons called Shopify apps. Other advantages of Shopify include ease of use, built-in hosting, and high-end security with certified Level 1 PCI DSS compliance.
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Magento
Magento is another excellent eCommerce development platform with numerous benefits. It has now become Adobe Commerce. If you want to choose this platform, you can choose between a free and a subscription-based option. Magento Community is a free and open-source platform; you need not pay any license fees for this platform. An enterprise version of this platform is available after a license fee.
You can develop an eCommerce website using Adobe Commerce for your startup. It offers similar benefits of eCommerce that you get with Shopify. Therefore, it provides built-in hosting and various extensions and themes for customizing your website. As a highly customizable eCommerce platform, Magento is suitable for large and complex eCommerce development projects.
If you want to leverage the benefits of e-commerce for your business, Magento can be an option to realize the advantages. You can leverage its benefits with Magento development services to build a robust website.
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WooCommerce
WooCommerce isn’t a standalone eCommerce development platform, but it’s a plugin for WordPress that can be used to build eCommerce websites. It comes with numerous features and benefits that allow you to convert a simple WordPress website into a full-fledged eCommerce store.
As a free and open-source platform, WooCommerce offers extensive customization and numerous other benefits. It provides thousands of unique website themes available with WordPress. Setting up a WooCommerce website is much easier because you just need to add a plugin for the eCommerce functionality.
With third-party integration, you can extend your website’s functionalities and customize it according to your needs with appropriate plugins and a theme. While WordPress and WooCommerce are free, which makes them a cost-effective option for retail startups, there are some hidden costs that make up the development cost.
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PrestaShop
PrestaShop is an open-source and feature-rich eCommerce development platform with numerous benefits. It is a self-hosted platform and a multilingual platform supporting 65 international languages. It is free of cost yet offers a broad range of add-on features. It has a simple and user-friendly back-end system making website management easy. It offers extensive features for the benefits of eCommerce.
PrestaShop is a secure platform with SSL protection. It supports a one-page checkout process. Convenient and reliable payment gateways are the major attraction of this eCommerce platform. You can opt for PrestaShop development services to create a robust eCommerce website for your retail startup.
For an in-depth detail on various technologies for creating an eCommerce website, you can go through a blog on the best technologies for eCommerce web development.
Secure Transactions
Security is crucial for any eCommerce website to fight against phishing, malfunctions, cyberattacks, or cyber crimes. There can be no better way for the best user experience than providing website users with a secure and hassle-free shopping experience on your website. Let your customers feel secure when purchasing or doing any online transaction on your eCommerce site.
You can implement various security features such as SSL, two-factor authentication, custom themes/add-ons, and more to protect your customers’ sensitive data. This is what you can expect from an eCommerce development company as it offers the right services to you.
Fast-loading Speed
Fast speed is crucial for the maximum benefits of eCommerce because it can impact your online business. An eCommerce website has many web pages and a separate web page for every product. Hence, it becomes challenging to cope with the loading speed of your website. Too much loading time can compel your users to quit your website and look for another one. Therefore, when creating an eCommerce website, you must ensure that it meets the speed and performance criteria.
Search Engine Optimization
SEO or search engine optimization is another important factor in creating a perfect eCommerce website for your retail startup business. With search engine optimization, your website will get proper visibility on the web. You can get an SEO-friendly website if you choose to develop one with a reliable eCommerce development company.
How to Choose a Perfect eCommerce Website Development Company?
You have gone through various benefits of an eCommerce website. If you want to create an eCommerce website for your retail startup, you need to choose the right eCommerce development partner. There are lots of companies offering eCommerce development services making it difficult to choose the right one. Here are a few tips to find a reliable company to build your eCommerce website.
Project Requirements
Firstly, you need to understand your project requirements. Decide whether you need a B2B, B2C, multivendor, or any other type of website.
Trust Factors
When comparing different companies, you need to consider various trust factors like reviews and testimonials to establish credibility. Reviews provide insights into the quality of service and other details.
Check Portfolio
You should check a company’s portfolio for insights into what type of projects they have completed and whether they have worked in your similar niche.
There are many other things you should consider hiring the right company to build your eCommerce store. You can read more to get complete information on how to select the right eCommerce development company.
What’s the Cost of Developing an eCommerce Website?
Now the benefits of eCommerce apart, you might be wondering what’s the cost of creating such a website. Moreover, the cost of developing an eCommerce website depends on multiple factors, such as the type of platform, number of pages, third-party integration, overall complexity of the project, and more. There are dozens of factors that influence the cost of developing an eCommerce website. The primary factors in deciding the cost include website type like B2B, B2C, or multivendor, overall features, customization, and several other things.
Let’s Summarize
Today, online shopping has skyrocketed with a lot of eCommerce websites with a convenient way to shop. Moreover, businesses, whether small or big, are investing in eCommerce development to leverage its benefits to earn hefty revenues. If you are a retail startup, you can grow and earn more by investing in eCommerce development services. There is an excellent opportunity you have if you invest in eCommerce development.
