Every buyer wants to get the maximum quality for an adequate price. The customer of the online store is no exception. The sphere of website creation is specific and dynamic, there are a lot of pitfalls in it that are difficult to see from the outside.
Understanding the target audience
For those who have no experience of doing business on the Internet, it can be difficult to immediately understand who his potential client is, where he will come to the site from, what he will order and how he wants to pay. There are many nuances, so it is better to start by studying the market niche. At the first stage, you can launch a website with the most necessary functionality in order to get feedback from customers, and then change the design and development of products and services in the right direction.
Market research online
Before entering a new market, you need to study it carefully. Find out who is already working there, what products are offered and at what prices. It is important to understand that today there are no empty niches in the market, except those where there is no money.
By studying competitors, you need to create a unique selling proposition that will answer the question of how your product differs from all existing ones. If you cannot offer either assortment, quality or price, then no site can make your business more successful.
Planning dates with stock
It is important to understand that anything can happen during development. Elementary, the customer himself will not have time to work closely with the agency. It is never known in advance how the approval of the work already completed will take place. You can schedule 2 weeks for design approval, and in the end, spend 2 months.
Attention not only to prime pages
For example, a standard online store consists of five main pages: catalog, product list, product card, checkout page, and home page. Ideally, the site should have pages explaining the specifics of purchase, payment, guarantees, returns, the operation of various delivery services and payment systems.
Many people think that first you need to order from an online store, and then deal with acquiring, delivery companies, etc. This is wrong! Visitors are already spoiled for good platforms and expect a certain level from you. All nuances, features, etc. need to be reflected in the product requirements document.
Design for the buyer, not for the seller
It happens that a customer likes one particular design, but it is more appropriate to use another for efficiency and increase sales. It's not about the owner's taste, but about what will be more profitable and more interesting for the buyer. There are certain laws in the field of online store design, it is better to follow them, rather than the preferences of individual people.
Ease of ordering
You shouldn't force a person to fill in many fields with all kinds of data. Delivery is most often carried out by courier or to the point of issue. What is the point for a person to indicate a house and an apartment if they still call him from the delivery service and specify where to deliver. Instead of requesting full passport data, it is better to limit yourself to the city and the choice of the delivery service.
Microdata
It is not enough to post information on the site, there is also an invisible side. All search engines and aggregators actively read the micro-markup of goods on the pages of the sites. Microdata are special tags on product pages that tell search engines what kind of information is posted here. All texts must be marked up with its help, making it easier to obtain data from the site. Without this, high-quality search engine optimization is impossible.
Testing everything that is possible
It is difficult to say in advance what will be profitable and what will be a loss. It is imperative to clearly track what kind of return certain investments bring.
Take, for example, social media advertising to promote a new website. You can invest the same budget in 4 different social networks and study the detailed analytics of the site for clicks and purchases. It remains to calculate how much is earned from each of them and leave only the most promising ones. Until you try you won't know. The importance of testing can hardly be overestimated.
The need for promotion
Most of the niches in online sales are so densely filled that without promotion, your new online store may simply not be seen. Immediately increase your positions in search engines, set up an advertising campaign and social networks. There are also rare highly specialized areas where competition is low and it is easier to advance, but there are much fewer buyers there.
