Develop eCommerce Website Storefront

After developing your eCommerce platform, your business and products will be seen 24/7. Your store will run 365 days a year and your customers can visit and buy from your eCommerce store anytime, anywhere.

Unlike a traditional store, you won’t need to pay the fixed costs of staff and rental. Yet will still be able to provide amazing customer services and presentation of your products on your beautiful eCommerce website!

Orders & Payment

Receive orders and process them quickly via secured payment gateways like Stripe & PayPal. More and more people trust online payment gateways and feel safe while typing their credit card and payment details online ^[1]https://www.paysafe.com/en/blog/do-consumers-trust-online-payments-more-now-than-before-covid-19/.

Use Digital Marketing To Grow Your eCommerce Platform

Foster and engage a group of loyal fan base with newsletters. A lot of companies also post on Facebook, Instagram and share product reviews to advertise their newly developed eCommerce website.

Without digital marketing, even a beautiful eCommerce platform wouldn’t be able to get any sales. Think about Amazon. They spend millions every year re-investing into the business to find the eCommerce designs that will help increase and maximise conversion rates. This will also increase the ROI of your eCommerce project.

Inventory Control

Monitor your online inventory using stock tracking levels, displaying out-of-stock items and receive auto-notification when stocks are low^[2]https://woocommerce.com/document/back-in-stock-and-price-alert/.

Any good eCommerce web developer will ask for your goal during your first meeting. An eCommerce store is not just about a working URL and website. Any elementary WordPress developer can do that. A good eCommerce developer will help you identify your goals and help you to achieve them.

Want a high sales conversion rate of 10%? Make that clear from the beginning. Tell us your priorities for your eCommerce platform. Make sure that we’re aligned with your target market, products and long-term objectives.

Say that you’re looking to sell coffee online. What type of coffee are you looking to sell? If you’re targeting young women like Starbucks, your eCommerce platform should be designed for young women and talk about values important to them. This is what Starbucks does with its CSR initiatives.

Testimonials are the only way to check for an eCommerce developer’s credibility. It’s your job as the client to conduct your own research. Look at the eCommerce developer’s past clients. Ask them for their experience if it’s a small town and if you happen to know them. It’s key to evaluate the eCommerce web development agency’s work ethic, communication skills and reliability beforehand.

You might also want to find and ask for past projects that they’ve done with specific eCommerce platforms and programming languages. Most eCommerce developers will probably say WordPress and WooCommerce. But a good eCommerce web design & development agency should have developers familiar with PHP, Javascript and Python too.

The answer might be surprising – no. Don’t get us wrong.

A good eCommerce developer should provide a proposal that details everything about the eCommerce platform A good proposal should include the programming language that the developer plans to use, how payments will be done and how the database will be set-up. But not providing a proper plan-of-action or proposal is a clear sign of an inexperience developer. This is a bad sign and can’t be ignored even if the eCommerce developer claims to have years of experience working for an agency and is now striking out as a freelancer. This shows proof of inexperience with communicating with clients.

A good eCommerce developer will provide you with a design overview and maybe even a template on a sub-domain. He would also offer your a lot of tips to develop an eCommerce platform with a high conversion rate. For example, he may recommend you to add an abandoned cart feature or for you to re-take new photographs for your new eCommerce website.

Like any service industry, there’s a huge difference in pricing. A lot of eCommerce development agencies will build your website on an open-source eCommerce platform like WordPress. They might charge around $2,000 SGD for the eCommerce development and $100 per month for maintenance.

On the other hand, other web developers charge $1,000 SGD for a Wix website. You’ll then have to pay the eCommerce platform Wix $10 per month for as long as you’d like your website to be live. That’s not too bad considering that you’ll still have to pay a web hosting fee with WordPress.

If you’re a Singaporean small business, you can take advantage of the PSG Grant. PSG stands for the Productivity Solutions Grant^[3]https://www.enterprisesg.gov.sg/financial-assistance/grants/for-local-companies/productivity-solutions-grant. It’s for small and medium enterprises and was launched by Enterprise SG (a Singapore government agency). It’s a subsidy that covers 50% of the eCommerce development project for small and medium enterprises (SMEs). To help you with the PSG grant application, please contact a reputable pre-approved vendor for eCommerce web design solutions, such as Digital Solutions.

And on the extreme end, a custom-built eCommerce platform in Typescript or Python might cost $10,000 SGD or more. The maintenance will also be a lot higher – a few hundred dollars a month. This is much more expensive than any eCommerce platform in Singapore.

But cost shouldn’t be your only consideration. In a recent Java survey, 53 percent of developers admitted that they are “technical breeders” who only adopt new updates when the industry accepts them as the standard. You should always be on the lookout for someone who really loves programming and web development. That’d give your business the advantage of being a first-adopter and first-mover and have an eCommerce website that’s able to get more conversions than your competitors.

5 Things to Note when you develop an eCommerce platform

There are a couple of things that everyone needs to know before developing an eCommerce platform in Singapore. Starting an eCommerce development project is a huge commitment and requires a huge downpayment. You’ll also be working with the eCommerce developer for the next couple of months so you need to make sure that you’ve selected the right agency or developer to work with.

1. Responsive design

Excellent eCommerce web design starts with responsive layouts and website designs. This is an important thing to note down since it can make a lot of difference for both your business and your potential customers. All entrepreneurs who aim to develop eCommerce platforms in Singapore need to focus on how to make a website accessible and usable on every device.

2. Reliable Content Management System

Professional CMS streamlines the process you need to undergo to develop eCommerce websites. So, if you want to start a new project for eCommerce web design in Singapore, you should look for implementing a reliable and user-friendly system. Some of the leading CMS platforms in 2022 are Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce, ZenCart, PrestaShop, and BigCommerce^[4]https://www.wpbeginner.com/showcase/best-cms-platforms-compared/.

3. Latest security measures

Planning to develop an eCommerce website has each entrepreneur thinking about cybersecurity measures. And since we’re talking about distributing goods online, implementing the best security tools is more than necessary. You will have to protect and handle financial and personal information from your customers.

4. Plan for technical issues

Maintenance and backups are essential for any eCommerce store in Singapore. And this happens since unexpected downtime can impact your sales and revenues. Also, slow loading pages lead to negative brand perception and numerous abandoned carts. So, it is more than necessary to think about how you will overcome this issue before making your website live. Having a specialized backup operations team might turn out to be beneficial for your business.

5. eCommerce Website Design & Development Optimization

Professional eCommerce website design comes with a thorough assessment of optimisation. You can do this with knowledgeable content, product descriptions, and keyword research. Make sure you ask your web design team about search engine optimisation and search engine digital marketing.