Best eCommerce web development practices in 2022, most effective development platforms of this year, latest trends, insights, and the right way to hire dedicated web developers and eCommerce website development companies for affordable yet excellent results.
The eCommerce of 2022 is new. It is repurposed. Transformed.
Thanks to this three-year-long, on-and-off pandemic, there has been a flood of innovation and redirection. But, the customers have been at home all this while. And, businesses have left no stone unturned to reach the shoppers right where they are.
The result- a new and better way to sell online!
Now, 2022 is no different. You can expect it to bring new challenges your way. You can bet on it to push you towards finding enhanced ways to sell more effectively.
Here is a comprehensive 2022-special eCommerce website development guide to help you do just that!
Do You Need A Website For Your eCommerce Business?
Why is that even a question?
Because we live in a time where express delivery, quick access, and ease of shopping are the top market differentiators, nobody does these better than leading eCommerce marketplaces like Amazon and eBay.
So, it is quite natural to wonder if you should invest in eCommerce website development when you could easily open an eStore on one of the popular platforms!
Well, here is why you should.
- Digital shoppers are growing a likeness for the websites of local and small businesses.
- Every six in ten shoppers in the USA prefer websites, mobile apps, VOIP, or live chat to shop online.
- Despite a 23% year-on-year growth, only about 56% of small businesses in the USA have a website.
There is opportunity and demand.
Add to that the fact that eCommerce is a highly competitive industry. To succeed in such a cut-throat landscape, you need a multidimensional strategy.
Creating eStores on leading marketplaces or business accounts on social media or launching email campaigns are parts of that strategy, as is building a website.
Take a look at the few advantages of eCommerce website development over only selling on Amazon or other such sites.
- No commission
- More control
- Easier management
- No extra or hidden charges
- Freedom of shipping choices
- A brand building opportunity
Simply put, eCommerce store development is a critical part of building a brand and business online when you do that with a personal website, your chances of success multiply.
Successful eCommerce Website Development Parameters
Alright! Creating a website is key to successfully establishing a brand online and promoting sales across different markets and regions.
But, what constitutes a successful example of eCommerce websites?
This answer changes as the markets evolve. As new trends come in and old fade over, the differentiators between a successful eCommerce website and a failing one also shift spaces.
Here is a list of parameters that will define a functionally stellar online retail website in 2022, as recommended by the top eCommerce website development company in the markets.
- Quick Load Time
- Responsiveness
- Checkout Convenience
- Security
- Ease of Review
- Ease of Navigation
- Clear CTA (Call-to-Action)
- Shareability
Let’s discuss them one after another.
1. Quick Load Time
53% of mobile visitors will leave your website if it takes more than three seconds to load completely. Nearly 70% of customers admit that page loading impacts their decision to shop from a website or leave it and go to another eStore.
Intimidating, isn’t it?
Well, bounce rates (The % of users who leave a website after visiting only one page) and loading speeds are heavily interconnected with conversion.
2. Responsiveness
Ours is a multi-screen world. If your website can’t offer that flexibility to the user- of accessing the site on any device, you will suffer from traffic and conversion losses.
- Over 73% of eCommerce website designers believe lack of responsiveness to be the top cause of higher bounce rates.
- Nearly 54% of web developers and designers admit that non-responsiveness is often the prime reason for website redesigns.
So, keep it responsive.
3. Check-out Convenience
Cart and checkout abandonment are headaches you DO NOT want, trust us!
Many reasons contribute to checkout abandonment; each should be catered to carefully when creating a website. These include:
- Hidden costs
- Compulsion to register
- Complicated process or too many steps
- No delivery timeline
- Slow delivery
- Poor or vague return policy
- Fewer payment options
- Poor security
4. Security
Your website needs to secure the user’s data as much as possible. That includes their location, credit card information, addresses, etc.
When you lose any of the multiple layers of security that a website should ideally have, it negatively impacts your brand’s reliability image and eventually hampers the conversion and sales.
5. Ease of Review
Your website should be easy to find. The products should have reviews. A user should not have to turn the internet upside down to assure that you are a real business and your products are of good quality and will satisfy their requirement.
Because they will not!
Online reviews are a major purchase factor. 91% of online buyers read them; 84% base their buying decision on them.
So, collect lots of reviews. Even if you are starting and don’t have a hundred reviews yet, that’s alright. But, whatever you do have, make sure that genuine feedback is highlighted and is easy for a potential buyer to find.
6. Ease of Navigation
Navigation flaws are fatal mistakes.
A customer comes to your website looking for something. They should be able to find it with ease and in no time.
As long as your sitemap allows for quick search and convenient access, your customers will come and stay, hopefully even convert.
7. Clear CTA (Call-to-Action)
When anybody looks at your website, a few things should be obvious.
- What do you sell?
- What is your USP?
- Where to contact you?
- How soon can you provide solutions to customer queries?
This information should be available on every page and easily visible to the visitor.
A lack of CTA can lead to poor conversion rates. That’s because even if your content and navigation and loading speed win a potential customer, if they can’t find where to contact or how to buy, you will lose them.
8. Shareability
If you aren’t allowing your users to share things on social media, you risk losing their business.
Why?
- Nearly 30% of social media usage is intended to look at what’s being discussed on the internet.
- Nearly 28% of people use social media to seek inspiration to shop.
- 26.2% of people find products they want to purchase on social media
Simply put, people like sharing information about products they like. It is a part of regular social media consumption. Therefore, you must capitalize on it.
Provide shareable buttons or links on pages.
| Top eCommerce Website Development Platforms in 2022 | ||
| Shopify | Magento | WooCommerce |
| BigCommerce | OpenCart | OSCommerce |
| Salesforce Cloud | Wix | Prestashop |
9 Step Checklist to eCommerce Website Development
We shall assume that you have the basics sorted into this checklist. I.e., you have:
- Determined an industry niche
- Established the product idea or service idea
- Identified the primary target customers
- Decided upon a business model to generate ROI
- Have the necessary permits and licenses in order
If you haven’t, you will need to get on top of these before getting into creative eCommerce website design.
If you have, go through this checklist for further eCommerce web development.
1. Choosing An eCommerce Development Platform
How can I choose the best platform for my eCommerce business website?
Ask yourself that before anything.
This decision involves careful consideration of several factors, including the following:
- Set-up convenience
- Integrations and extensions
- Customization capability
- SEO-friendly
- Mobile responsiveness
- Analytics support
- Tech support
- Payment choices
- Total cost
- User reviews
Whoever eCommerce website development company or platform you choose should ideally provide the required features within your budget.
2. Domain Name+Hosting Service Provider
Many premium eCommerce web development platforms (SaaS-based ones) also provide hosting services. Therefore, you can choose the same when choosing one.
Otherwise, you can look for hosting providers in your budget.
Either way, before hosting, you need to invest in a proper domain name. Remember, this domain will be used to define your website and your business. Therefore, it has to be effective in more than one way.
You can utilize the following tips when choosing a domain name.
- Short, if possible.
- Uncomplicated
- Memorable
- Avoid unnecessary use of hyphens
- Relatable
- Should make sense concerning your brand or business
Also, choose an extension while keeping your geographical target markets in mind.
3. Set Up A Content Management System In Place
Do you need a CMS for eCommerce? What is the role and purpose of CMS in eCommerce sites?
Well, yes! And critical.
A content management system is used to design and manage optimized, helpful, and personalized digital experiences. A CMS uses content across a website (web pages, blogs, product pages, videos, reviews, etc.) to create fruitful interaction opportunities for the end-user.
4. Design The Home Page & All Standard Website Pages
The home page is your introduction- service, USP, and first impression, all wrapped in one.
But, at present, traffic comes from various sources and can land on any of your website pages. So, you need to have a list of pages that an eCommerce website designer will create.
Take the following stack, for example.
- Home Page
- ‘About’ Page
- Contact Page
- Product Listing Pages
- A Dedicated FAQ Page
- T&C for Service Page
- A Page for Privacy Policies
- Shipping Information Page
- Return & Refund Pages
- Shopping Cart
- Checkout Page
- Thank You Page
There can be many more pages on an eCommerce website. You have to base this list on your general proposition and user requirements.
5. Develop A Convenient Site Map
A Site Map helps you just as much as it helps your visitors.
- It provides a definite organization to your website pages.
- It helps your customer easily reach the products/solutions that they need.
- It helps search engines quickly crawl and index your site for improved rankings.
During eCommerce development, you can choose between different types of sitemaps.
You can build a diagrammatical site map page or create XML or HTML sitemaps with user-friendly UX.
6. Optimize The Website For Page Loading Speed
The previous section sheds enough light on the critical importance of page loading speed on website conversion rates and bounce rates.
Naturally, you ought to optimize your pages. The process should be repeated now and then. It is vital to maintain a good page loading speed from user experience and SEO.
Good page load speed leads to:
- Enhanced user experience
- Conversion rate optimization
- Minimized code bloating
- Improved bounce rates
- No first input delay (A Core Web Vital)
So, keep your page loading speed up to the mark.
7. Check For Site Responsiveness
By now, you have a somewhat functioning website that does its job on a desktop.
The next task has to be the creation of its mobile-ready counterpart.
Ideally, your eCommerce website should be accessible on any device. You have to be prepared for every customer touchpoint. And a significant part of online browsing is committed on handheld devices, even if a good deal of actual buying happens on a desktop or a laptop.
So, reward your customers with a simplified shopping journey by making your site device-friendly and mobile responsive.
8. Create a Data Backup Plan
Losing website data at any stage can be a huge setback for your website. It puts your hard work, accumulated data bank, and investment at risk. Plus, if the data loss is not a hardware issue but something more sinister (think cyber-attacks), you stand to face graver losses.
- Hardware failures cause 45% of data backup issues.
- The USA faces nearly 140,000 hard drive crashes a day
- 60% of businesses forced to face a data loss are also forced to shut shop for six months on average
- 93% of companies faced with a data loss and no plan to manage the same shut down within a year or so
Not a pretty picture, is it!
- Here is what you can do to help yourself in this scenario.
- Regularly create and update complete website backups
- Store your backups on a new or different server
- Run a backup cycle after theme code customizations
- Use an SSL certificate to secure your data
- Analyze web traffic to monitor suspicious performance
And, always, ALWAYS, test your website after every update.
9. Ensure Visible Social Media Sharing Buttons, Contact Icons, And CTAs
This is more of a last-minute check.
You will be adding and updating a lot of content throughout your website. Some of it will be informational, and some of it will be transactional. Whatever the nature may be, you need to ensure that visitors can easily spot the following on any page.
- How to contact you?
- What does the page offer?
- How do you share any information on social media?
Keep these visible and in an optimized multitude. When your content and website convinces a client, the CTA, shareability, and accessible contact mediums will further help in conversion.
Top eCommerce Development Trends This Year
Wondering what the future trends in eCommerce are? Or what is the fastest growing form of eCommerce in 2022?
Right now, we are running omnichannel, touching numerous touchpoints, going mobile, doing responsive, and personalizing almost everything. So, what should you do this year? Hire eCommerce developers? Create something new? Optimize something old?
Well, here are the 2022 eCommerce trends to keep in mind.
Wondering what the future trends in eCommerce are? Or what is the fastest growing form of eCommerce in 2022?
Right now, we are running omnichannel, touching numerous touchpoints, going mobile, doing responsive, and personalizing almost everything. So, what should you do this year? Hire eCommerce developers? Create something new? Optimize something old?
Well, here are the 2022 eCommerce trends to keep in mind
| Trends That Will Impact Online eCommerce Website Development In 2022 | |
Technology Trends
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Development Trends
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Generic eCommerce Development Trends For The Year 2022
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What to Do After Developing an eCommerce Website?
After developing and testing an eCommerce website, focus on managing, promoting, and upgrading it.
For example, you can adopt the latest eCommerce web development trends. Or, you can upgrade it to the best eCommerce website design monikers.
Just keep an ongoing cycle of improvement, optimization, and testing, and you shall be fine in the long term.
Should You Outsource This Job to an eCommerce Website Development Company?
Well, you can if your budget and time constraints allow for it!
You can hire dedicated web developers or a website development company. However, doing so has numerous advantages.
- No need for multidimensional technical expertise
- No hassle in recruiting the right developers
- Minimal time consumption
- Better cost optimization
- Stellar results of enterprise-grade quality
- Less involvement
- Complete control
Plus, outsourcing to an eCommerce website development company will protect your core team from getting distracted. You can grow your business simultaneously.
However, carefully review and interview before you hire eCommerce developers. Or, take the help of experienced vendors for assured quality, quick results, and zero hassles on your part.
