Like everything else related to the internet, ecommerce has become a world of opportunities for many businesses and people.
Many years ago, having a store was something that first required lots of investment, and work to achieve. Nowadays, you can have an online store without a physical location. You can also reach customers all over the world, and be able to automate 90% of the sales process. Meaning that Ecommerce has allowed many people to open 6 figure businesses with little time and investment on their half.
An online store can reach anyone that is online, meaning that you don't need to depend on local markets for sales.
Unlike physical location, ecommerce does not need to increase pricing on products to cover their margins. This allows you to have a competitive edge over Goliath companies who depend on physical locations.
You can now design and build a fully custom store within a few weeks. Which means you can be selling within the month.
By using tools like email registration, you can inform customers of discounts and new products, and setup an automation which allows you to contantly sell without much marketing.
Templates or themes are definitely the fastest way to start. You can be up and running within an hour with tools like wix, shopify, and woocommerce. Templates also give you the most cost effective start.
The negative side of templates is that usually the design is very basic, and there is no focus on user experience, branding or making the website personal which is what you need in order to help with conversions.
Customers love brands which give them a personalize experience. So sometimes you need to use a template, but at the first opportunity you should invest into a custom store. A custom store can increase conversions through design, copy writing and user experience.
On average, an online store has 1% - 2% conversion rate, even templates. Which means that if you get 100 people to your page 1 or 2 will buy something. This is where templates fail. By not having a well optimized site, you will lose potential customers which may have cost you time, effort and money to bring to the store.
Online stores, like any other websites need to have marketing. If you're using Google of social media paid ads to bring users to your site, you may be Spending $1-5 dollars per click. If you have a template, you will most likely have the 1-2% conversion ration. To bring 100 people, it may cost you $100-1000. If your product average price is $50-100. Then you will constantly be losing money by doing marketing, which will eventually drive your business into the ground.
Custom developed sites are optimized and can help your business grow significantly by reducing your costs and optimizing your conversion rates. See below, how it can help your online store.
Good copywriting can convince a user to buy, to subscribe, or whatever the intend purpose is. So even if it is to subscribe, and they don't buy anything, you now have that person on your mailing list. Which means that in the future you can market to them for free.
The visuals on the website are very important because they can have a psychological affect on a user. The right color, or image have influence a user to purchase because of the psychological state it puts them into.
Many businesses make the mistake of using templates, along with template logos, where the colours are incorrect for the type of audience group. Which makes it hard to change later on as it's part of the branding.
A well constructed SEO, can help your create lots of back-links through image searches and links from google to your website, allowing you to get users to your site without spending any money.
In the long run it increases your profits, and SEO optimization is definitely a long term investment. But having good structure from the start can significantly help.
Considering that most ecommerce stores get users from social media and mobile in general, it is very important that your site loads fast. Slow loading sites cause frustration with the user and increase bounce rate. High bounce rates can permanently damage your SEO.
By optimizing your site to load within 1-2 seconds, you can get more users to your site, going through the funnel and more conversions. Low bounce rate definitely increases your conversion rates.
By optimizing your ads, we can target on a specific niche, and block users which just spend your ads money. Additional we can re-target people who have visited your site allowing you a second chance to sell. Overall this decreases the amount of money you need to spend to bring users to your site.
Overall, when all these things come together and work as one, we call that a good design. Which can only be achieved through custom design. In general websites with these features usually have a conversion rate of 5-30%.
If you bring 100 users to your site at a rate of $1-2, it would be like being able to sell to 1-3 out of 10 users. Meaning that your $100-200 spent on ads can result in 5 to 30 sales out of 100 users. If your products are valued between $50-100, then a good design will definitely grow your business.
Experienced developers are more important then a great idea!
A great idea can sell itself without a lot of marketing, but those are rare. For most other stores, an experienced teams is required for success.
You can imagine being a doctor for a day, you may be able to get some parts of the job done - but how successful will it really be? Web design is a set of skills you learn and those with more experience produce better results like any other field.
While templates may cost you less to get started, they will definitely cost you more in the long run, and may even drive your business into the ground.
By working with us, you get to utilize your knowledge and experience, allowing you to grow faster then competitors who work with mediocre developers or choose to use templates.
Having worked with ecommerce for over 10 years, we understand how online stores should be setup - everything from what colours work for what niches, to how copy should be written, down to design and functionality.
You need flexibility when it comes to ecommerce. Your customers may have all types of needs on how they login and how they purchase. By working with us, we can ensure those needs are met, without having to slow down load times. Load times can be increased by using lots of third party applications.
While templates may cost you less to get started, they will definitely cost you more in the long run, and may even drive your business into the ground.
We look at your product, logo, and branding to see what you want to sell and advise the first steps we need to make - a process on how we would do it if was our own store.
We setup a timeline and strategic the best course of action based on your business needs.
We will create either a CSV file for you to fill out or we will scrap content from an existing site and upload it to your new store.
We provide mockups of your design, of the different types of pages in your store.
We develop your website and provide a live preview for you to review your site before it goes live.
We will launch your website, and provide you with the login details.
Do you want to know how much it costs to build a custom designed ecommerce store? May be cheaper then you think.
Contact us to find out more.
