10 eCommerce Website Development Mistakes You Should Avoid

With eCommerce taking over the business scene, it’s become an absolute necessity that companies adapt if they want to succeed. Not only is it crucial to create a unique and compelling website, but it needs to be fully functional as well. However, most businesses opt for cheaper and resource-saving methods to build their website, which proves to be counterproductive. This is because most business owners don’t actually understand the concepts of good web design. With that, this article will discuss top eCommerce website development mistakes and how you can avoid them.

What is eCommerce Web Development?

First and foremost, we must understand what an eCommerce website is. In simple terms, it is an electronic platform that allows businesses to sell their products and services through the internet. Therefore, eCommerce website development is the process of building and designing an eCommerce website where consumers can purchase products online. Specifically, it is the process of building the back and front of your entire e-platform. All of this includes your product and support pages, shopping cart, and order forms.

That said, an eCommerce web developer’s sole purpose is to produce prototypes of a website. This is to make sure these are fully functional and ready once they go online. Examples include making sure navigation buttons and contact forms are working properly and hyperlinks redirect you to the proper sections.

Why is eCommerce Web Development Important?

Having understood what eCommerce website development is, why is it important? Firstly, eCommerce web development is a tool that can help you boost your business’ success. eCommerce web development can help you build a website that will generate leads, increase traffic, and boost sales and revenue for your business.

With that, web development should help provide an easy and efficient user experience for your customers. Making sure it is easy to navigate through pages is essential, and will definitely help you avoid committing eCommerce website development mistakes. Along with helping them find their products and seamlessly checkout.

Additionally, there are other benefits such as leaving a great first impression. While mostly old and loyal customers visit your website, new ones are bound to stumble upon it. Because of this, it is ideal to give visitors a positive experience. Doing this entices them to stay on your site longer and proceed with a purchase.

Improved SEO is another benefit to eCommerce website development. Page speed, good content with hyperlinks, and proper coding can determine where you rank on a SERP.

Lastly, eCommerce web development can help you stand out from your competition. A high-quality website can slingshot you above your competitors. Other necessary website updates or revamps can also help drive leads coming your way in no time.

Top 10 eCommerce Website Development Mistakes You Should Avoid

It is normal for web developers to encounter certain problems or mistakes when it comes to building websites. However, it is possible to avoid these by knowing what to avoid. Here are some of the most common eCommerce website development mistakes you should sidestep.

1. Under-Utilizing the Capabilities of Their Website

Nothing is more of a turn-off for online customers than an under-utilized website. As the main and wonky website. By not focusing on adding special features that improve the smoothness and efficiency of online shopping, it deters potential sales from ever happening. Once your website is launched, for example, it is important to test every factor. From your layout, language, and placement of certain elements, it is vital that you ensure an easy and efficient user experience. In addition, since your website’s goal is to spread awareness of your business and products, you must also make sure to provide the necessary information upon landing on your website. Having details about your company, your product and your services, as well as contact information will help provide your visitors with everything they need which will help them through their customer journey.

2. Losing Focus on Website’s Objectives

With the desire to stand out, some web developers can get lost in wanting to innovate and be different, so much so that they lose sight of what their website should accomplish. And this is to get your customer success through their customer journey and convert sales for the company.

3. Not Allocating a Budget for Marketing Website

While developing a fully functional website is one thing, it is also important to follow up on effective marketing for your business. If you are not able to budget wisely and exhaust all your resources in one aspect, your business will surely suffer. One efficient marketing strategy you can look into is venturing out on social media. Not only is it a cost-effective method but it will help you reach a wider audience. With that, you can then produce content like photos, videos, or even blogs on your website that will attract potential customers and entice them to interact with you and your business. Lastly, you can also allot resources to get your SEO rankings high and invest in paid advertising to broaden your reach as much as possible.

4. Not Updating and Improving the Website

A lot of things change as time goes by, and this includes how websites function. That is why it is important to stay on top of updates and new trends so that you can implement them on your website to improve the overall experience. No customer would endure having to navigate through a website that seems it has been left in the past.

5. Not Incorporating Visuals

Customers don’t usually like having to read a lot of text on websites. With that, incorporating visuals here and there is a great way to keep visitors interested. However, it is important to remember to utilize your image layouts. Make sure they are designed efficiently, with a cohesive theme and correct use of whitespace. Furthermore, it can be helpful to add infographics to summarize long points to not overwhelm your readers. Lastly, inserting images for the sake of inserting them is a no-no. Ensure that whenever a visual is added that it is relevant to your content, as it will make it seem random or out of place.

6. Not Incorporating Effective SEO Strategies

With content, you want to be able to reach as many people as possible. With that, incorporating effective SEO strategies is key. Make sure that your written content contains useful focus keywords or phrases that visitors are likely to use when on a search engine. Factors like fast page loading time, optimized site images and using meta tags are prime factors that positively influence your SEO as well. Being able to provide these will then help your rank on SERPs, thus reaching more people.

7. Not creating a responsive design

One of the other common eCommerce website development mistakes is not creating a responsive website design. Without this, your website will not efficiently serve its purpose. Because of this, you must ensure that your design adapts to any screen size changes, to make it fit any orientation and device. Double-check each feature as well to make sure they respond when clicked or hovered over.

8. Forgetting to Optimize for Mobile

Because people shop online mostly on the go, it is essential that your website is optimized for mobile use as well. Customers will highly likely turn away from sites that have slow loading times, have elements that don’t perfectly fit the screen, or have buttons that don’t function properly. In fact, in a survey conducted by Unbounce back in 2019, they discovered that nearly 70% of consumers admitted that page speed impacts their willingness to buy from a retailer online. Furthermore, half of the participants also said that they would give up animation and videos for faster loading times. In another 2019 study by Portent, it was found that website conversion rates make a significant drop of around 4.42% with each additional second of load time (from 0 to 5 seconds).

9. Not Having a Secure Website

Keeping your customer’s data secure when on your website is one of your biggest priorities. One way to ensure this is by obtaining an SSL certificate for your eCommerce website. Along with keeping your data secure, this also helps with verifying the ownership of the website, preventing attackers from penetrating and also instils another level of authenticity, thus gaining more of your customer’s trust.

10. Not Optimizing the Website for Conversions

At the end of the day, all of your content will not do its job unless you have a compelling call-to-action. This is a key element on a webpage, as it acts as a signpost letting the user know what they have to do next. Without a proper CTA, these people may not know what their next step is. Knowing how to properly write CTA will help get your customers through their entire customer journey successfully.

Create the Optimal eCommerce Website For Your Business with Verz Design!

When it comes to building an eCommerce website, mistakes are unfortunately inevitable. However, when working with growth in mind, one can easily overcome said mistakes and utilize them to produce better situations. With Verz Design, Singapore’s best eCommerce website development company, you are sure to build an optimal website with success and growth in mind. Contact Verz Design today at 6841 1680 or email us at sales@verzdesign.com for a free consultation!