Building an ecommerce website can be a whole lot of fun. But ecommerce website design is also an extremely intricate process that involves smart website designing and the application of various User Interface (UI) or User Experience (UX) principles. From the moment a user lands on to a website to the time he exits, it is important to create a seamless experience for the consumer. But how do you go about doing that? First things first, you ought to find an eCommerce design and developer in Singapore. It is important to ask yourself and your eCommerce developer these questions to know what you’re in for. So if you’re a local business looking to create an eCommerce website of your own, read on to find out!
1. How to create a stunning eCommerce website?
If your business requires a little bit more than the conventional template modules type of website, it’s best to to start sourcing for a local website design agency or a creative agency in Singapore. The right expertise is crucial not only to reel customers into your eCommerce site but also increase your eCommerce conversion rates. If you already have an idea of how you envision your website design to be, you can work with the agency to bring your design to life as well. If you haven’t worked with an agency before, here’s what you need to understand before you get started
- Do up a clear brief: You should have an idea of the key functions that you require. If it’s not the usual ones, it may need more time for custom programming or design. If you have design references that you’d like the agency to take reference from, that would be great too. Any special effects that you’d like, should also be communicated early to avoid ambiguity or confusion during the engagement. Otherwise, you should fill up all the required information within the brief form that the agency provides you with.
- A brand guide: A good corporate identity guide helps set in stone certain uniformity and consistency with regard to how your brand looks and sounds. If you don’t have one, minimally you should send us a high-resolution logo file and your preferred brand typeface. In the absence of one, you can leave it to the agency to propose. Even better, you should consider having a brand guide done up by a branding or creative agency. There are also Enterprise Singapore grants (Strategic Branding and Marketing Development) that fund up to 80% of the costs of branding/rebranding to defray your cost and expenses.
- Get all your assets ready: If you have a photo archive from past corporate photoshoots, brand logos and corporate fonts, as well as the product write-ups of your eCommerce store, do send it over right when you’ve endorsed the quotation. Factor in website copywriting as an essential part of communicating your brand values and message. Most creative agencies offer this service, so you could certainly benefit from their expertise in crafting the right words for the ideal brand positioning.
- Plan out your sitemap: These will help us plan the subpages better. But of course, if you need advice on this, the team from the creative agency will be able to advise you further on the feasibility and if the number of pages is within what’s contracted.
2. What do I do after creating my eCommerce website?
Having a great website is one, but getting your brand discovered and getting traffic becomes more important. Consider these two outlets: physical and online advertising.
Physical: This includes word-of-mouth recommendations, networking and Out of Home advertising. Above the Line (ATL) advertising to your website and to create brand awareness, in general, can be considered depending on your target audience. Billboards, TVCs and radio may be traditional outlets of advertising, but their effects hold strong even with the draw of social media and other Below the Line (BTL) forms of advertising. However, do bear in mind that you will need to allocate a handsome amount of budget to reap a worthy return of customers.
We’re looking at a minimum of S$30k to get started on something impactful.
Digital/Online Advertising: From digital marketing services to search engine optimisation (SEO) and Google Advertising, there is a multitude of ways to improve your eCommerce website and its discoverability. With many organisations going online, we’d definitely encourage Search Engine Optimisation service to draw discoverability to your website. What is SEO?
3. How do I optimise my eCommerce website for Google?
Now you have the products and the website all set up, what comes next? You want people to actually start visiting your website and purchasing items from you. That’s the work of SEO. There’s at least 3.5 million Google searches done per day globally on average. So let us first break down what eCommerce Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is. Optimising your eCommerce website for SEO is simply the process of improving your website’s visibility on search engines results (e.g. Google, Bing) and thereby, improving the quality of users who come into your website and increasing the traffic as well. So if your partner is a creative agency who offers a full suite of services, it’d be good for your business to explore optimising your eCommerce website for search engines so that your consumers can find you rather easily.
4. How does SEO benefit my eCommerce website?
Working on SEO for your website is important, and it’s akin to having an unexpected virtual tour guide. Apart from acquiring an additional effective stream of potential revenue, SEO helps you get the right traffic if you do the keyword planning and optimising efforts right. And the expertise comes with a price, but one that is extremely worth it. In the absence of a storefront, your website is the best way to communicate and sell your products or services to your audience. The benefits of SEO are as follows:
- Drives relevant traffic to your eCommerce website
- Drive brand awareness for your brand
- Higher potential for sales conversion considering that
- Target the right audience at a worthwhile investment
- Leads to improved eCommerce user experience (UX) and SEO
With that being said, you want to look for the most efficient way to increase your SEO ranking. There are billions of websites on the internet and amongst which are many other eCommerce websites. How do you stand out from the rest? So the first order of business is to improve your product pages’ SEO, rather than your entire eCommerce site as a whole. For example, you may want to rank for a specific supplement instead of the entire health supplement eCommerce website. The ultimate aim of SEO is to ensure that your SEO efforts are useful to a consumer’s search intent and that your pages must help Google bots to understand what purpose it serves. If you wish to learn more about how to organically get your website to rank (without advertisements), drop our brand guardians a message and let them guide you through.
5. Can I customise my website?
Different eCommerce sites sell different products and serve different purposes. What works for eCommerce X may not necessarily work for your brand. This is when a template website will not cut it for you. If you’re looking to offer unique experiences or customisation features, seek out a website designer and work out the details and processes for the idea to come through.
6. How many rounds of revision are allowed?
For a creative agency like us, clients are usually allowed 3 rounds of revisions to make any necessary tweaks to fit it to their liking. As compared to an in-house designer and programmer, creative agencies often provide a timeline that they follow. This is important to note as any further changes could result in additional costs.
7. What services do you include as part of web development?
Depending on the agency, the services they provide may vary as well. Here at I Concept, we offer the following:
- Responsive Web Design: Factoring in search engine friendliness and mobile responsiveness, we tailor each website to ensure each design is effective, yet impactful.
- Digital Solutions: To help make both our clients’ and users’ lives easier, we’re always on the lookout to present innovative solutions like marketing automation.
- Website Maintenance: To ensure that our client is adept in managing their own website, we make it a point to include regular website updates (where necessary), content management services, technical support & training and security enhancements as part of our offerings.
8. How long does it take to develop an eCommerce website?
Building an extensive eCommerce website takes time. On average, it takes a minimum of 3 – 4 months to complete. Clarifying this from the get-go can help to manage expectations for both parties. The 16 weeks timeline takes into consideration website home design, subpages design, programming and UATs (User Acceptance Test). Ask the agency to find out what the project timeline may look like, as well as the projected live date of the eCommerce site. This will allow you the room to plan for any digital marketing or content marketing strategies to accompany your website launch.
9. What eCommerce platform will be used to build my eCommerce website?
Having prior knowledge on what platform you’d prefer your eCommerce site to be built on can be beneficial in the long run. For our agency however, WordPress are our preferred CMS platform with WooCommerce and Opencart as the preferred WP plugin for ecommerce websites. Getting yourself acquainted with the content management system (CMS) will help you to edit your site easily when the time comes.
10. Will you provide training on how to use my site after it is developed?
Yes, definitely. The last thing you want to happen is that your website is all perfectly set, but you’re not. For future product page updates or policy changes, it is crucial to know how to navigate around your eCommerce platform. We also offer a one-year complimentary tech support, subject to the scope of the maintenance service.
Cut Through the Noise
With more business taking up digital solutions, it has become more important than ever to be distinctive. If you’re looking for a creative partner to offer you a comprehensive set of services to get your eCommerce business up and running, you’re at the right place! Discuss your eCommerce ideas with our brand guardians and we’ll see what we can do for you.
I Concept has been featured on FinestInCity Singapore as one of the best web design agencies in Singapore.
