An e-commerce website allows you to sell goods and services online. It is up these days and it expects to grow in the next few years. That is why there is still room for new participants in the market. By operating a well-designed e-commerce website you can widen your conversion funnel. Since your website is user-friendly, it keeps users coming back to shop.
It is worth putting all the effort into developing your e-commerce. Usually, we differentiate two development methods from each other. Ready-made tools are website builder programs that offer templates. They are fast solutions, even for first-time users. Developing an E-Commerce Website by yourself is a harder job to do because you have to use programming languages. It takes some extra time, but at the same time, it leads to a more special outcome. In this article, you can learn more about these two website development methods.
How To Choose The Appropriate Development Method For Your E-Commerce
First of all, control your server set up and set an affordable budget for the whole process. A well-equipped server is indispensable since its task is handling all the e-commerce data. While calculating your budget, count on the following expenses:
● Domain name
● Website builder or software development
● Design elements and supporting pages
● Integration with shipping and payment services
● Marketing
The more complex E-Commerce Website you build, the more initial costs you’ll have. The development costs highly affect, how many extra functions you want to include. If you are on a strict budget, try to keep it simple. Focus on the main functions. Create a simple design. It is also a good idea to start your e-business only with a few products, not the whole supply. These can be selected according to some characteristics, like top-selling our newest products.
Before starting your e-commerce, always do a market analysis. Check the webshops that can be your rivals. Study the design, the structure, and all the features of that. Read as much customer feedback as you can. Through that feedback, you can realize the preferences of your target audience. If they are satisfied with basic solutions, ready-made website builders are invented for you. It is also a good choice when there is no strong competition in that certain industry. But if there is a high contest between market participants, it seems to be better to custom-build your website. In this case, you can achieve extreme resolutions. Through that, your E-Commerce Website can be more special and easy to identify.
Ready-Made Solutions
The biggest benefit of the website builder tools is that they fit in any budget. You have to pay an annual fee for that, which is quite low compared to programming costs. They are easy to use, even for those who don’t have any coding experience. First-time users are more likely to choose them.
There are hundreds of ready-made extensions. You don’t have to develop the features by yourself, for some extra fee you can add them with a click. A wide range of add-ons is pre-designed for you. However, the choice of features is limited and you can’t achieve all your ideas. Due to these ready-made features, website builders work with almost every online payment platform. You don’t need to make an extra effort to invent a custom payment platform for your webshop.
Although the design elements can’t be so unique, they are at least easy to modify. Using a website builder is the quickest way of creating e-commerce. It is also worth mentioning that there is a big community of people using website builders. Thanks to that it is easy to ask for help. There is often a support staff that is ready to answer all of your questions.
Lastly, there is a disadvantage that it is important to declare. As soon as you start using a website builder, it gets access to all of your client’s data. You should be careful and protect it somehow.
Custom-Builds
There is no doubt that building a website from scratch completely by yourself is an expensive and time-consuming process. But with this method, you can accomplish all of your ideas, even the extraordinary ones. The only limits are your creativeness and your proficiency in programming.
To earn a huge success, you have to find a programming language that meets your skills. A well-chosen one is likely to boost your conversion rate. Though it has to fit not only your skills but also the database you’ll have to insert into it. You keep under control the whole development process. You are the only one who is responsible for support. In this way, you can match all the special needs of your target audience. You can react swiftly to any changes in your customer’s behavior. All the data is protected since you are the only one who manages it. The structure and the design elements can be invented by yourself.
Analyze the heatmap of your webshop to put all the features where users are the most expected to find them. It is key to place the unique elements well. It can do easily with heatmap tools. They show the catchy parts of the E-Commerce Website and also those that capture less interest. Place the key elements to the parts that get more attention.
To tell a drawback, in the case of custom-builds it is harder to connect them with any payment platforms. Since there are no pre-built features, you have to code all for yourself.