Twenty years ago, no one bought things online, but today it’s a trillion dollar industry. If you’re a business and you’re selling something, you’re doing it at least partly online. But it’s not enough to copy-and-paste a PayPal button onto your site – you have to have a top-notch team who knows how to flawlessly convert visitors into paying customers.
Like everything else involved with developing for the web, the technology underlying e-commerce has advanced by leaps and bounds. Making purchases online may feel the same for the consumer, but there’s so much more going on under the hood. For instance, purchasing can be carried out in local languages and currencies, even the local date and time. You can also integrate search engine optimization techniques to improve search ranking, breadcrumbs to allow users to move around your site without clicking backwards. All these features, and many more need to be supported by world-class computer code. Sloppy programming could lead to site freezes, security holes and worse. Good technology means good business.
If a customer walking down a grocery aisle needs to be able to see what’s on the shelves, a visitor to your e-commerce site needs to be shown a proper selection of products and services. And not just some jumble of images, but a properly-organized and visually attractive display. Just as a lot of thought goes into what you see on store shelves, a lot of thought goes into displaying products on an e-commerce site. The organization, the layout, the design – everything is geared towards facilitating and boosting sales.
The more you ponder the ins and outs of e-commerce the more you realize how big a role technology can play if it’s properly implemented. Inventory tracking, stock control, localized tax and shipping calculation, text message notifications, coupons and bonus offers – the list is long. All these features and many more can be integrated into a digital storefront, all of it carefully selected according to your needs and executed with the highest level of professionalism.
You can’t ever overlook the importance of data in e-commerce. It’s essential to track your customers, note their shopping habits, see what grabs their interest, remember what they ignore. Learn where they are, what their interests are – make use of your data to ensure your marketing can be more specifically targeted, thereby increasing its effectiveness. In this business, data is everything. If your e-commerce site doesn’t make use of data, it’s incomplete.
Effective marketing offers powerful opportunities for e-commerce. The correct use of data and marketing ensures that the shopping experience can be made unique to every customer, offering them only the products they want at a price you know they’re willing to pay. Without effective marketing, the best e-commerce website relies on pure luck. And luck is not a good business model.
Feeling intimidated by the technology listed on this page? There’s no reason to worry – we know everything there is to know about e-commerce, we know how to implement it and we know how to keep it running dependably and securely. We can create add-ons and all the functionality you might require, we can ensure the use of whatever merchant provider or payment gateway you prefer to use, and we can build, customize and even host the entire site for you. From start to finish, you’re in good hands.
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