There are three main factors to consider when planning your website: Operational, Customer (User) Experience and Payment.
Operational: E-commerce is all about running a business online. With this in mind, all the key elements of your business operations need to be considered when planning your website. From how you manage your stock, orders and deliveries, to price changes, promotions and marketing, your website should be built to cater for all your core operational needs, so that your online business can run smoothly and efficiently.
If you are already running an offline business, you may have an existing system or database which will need to link up with the back-end of your site, so it has up to date information on product availability, pricing etc. If you’re starting a business from scratch, then you can create your operational structure alongside the planning of you website.
When building your first website it is worth looking into prebuilt solutions with templates and payment solutions pre-integrated. This can save you a lot of time and hassle and means you can be live with your new website in days. Some of the more developed providers have even integrated accounting packages. This route is not only simpler but in most cases will save you a lot of time and money.
Customer (User) Experience: Although a website is a “virtual” shop, the customer remains key. In fact, the customer experience is almost more important on a website, as there are no helpful assistants to point shoppers in the right direction! Customers should be able to clearly navigate their way through the site and find what they are looking for. Once they have decided to make a purchase, they should then be taken through a quick and easy checkout where they can pay for their items and then receive confirmation of their order.
No matter how simple or complex your website may be, it’s essential to create an intuitive, user-friendly shopping experience for customers – so not only will they find what they’re looking for and make a purchase, they will also want to come back and recommend the site to others.
An essential part of any ecommerce site is, of course, accepting payments and making sales. PayPal is likely to be the best payment option for your new website, as it allows businesses to accept payments funded by major credit or debit cards, by bank transfer or by PayPal balance.
Businesses can set up agreements directly with Visa, Mastercard or other credit card companies, however this can be rather costly. With PayPal, you are automatically able to accept multiple payment options, without the need for individual contracts or a merchant account.
Shopcreator’s transact product is pre-integrated with PayPal’s Website Payments Standard – to find out more about this solution click here.
Please note that it is important to consider whether the payment solution is hosted or not. If the payment solution you choose is not hosted you will need to ensure you are PCI compliant. Website Payments Standard is a fully hosted flow which means you do not need to worry about PCI compliance.