With approaching half of all sales in the UK now going online, and an increasing average order value at just over £70, ecommerce is big business in nearly all retail sectors. Having a presence is seen as essential for even small to medium size retailers.
The first question then is how to create an e-commerce website. Well it’s no longer a matter of uploading a PHP based template, sticking an ecommerce website designer on the job and then manually entering a thousand products. Ecommerce design and hosting is much more sophisticated than this now, and the software is advanced to the point where certain operations can be made much simpler.
It’s still important to find a great ecommerce website designers like iM3. We not only create attractive and functional websites, but we also integrate then styling and display into our ecommerce SEO packages. A good developer now has to have optimisation at the forefront of their mind when setting off to build the shopping cart functionality and to structure the template layout and CSS.
There are many affordable SEO solutions available for e-commerce websites. Magento is a tricky buy comprehensive shopping cart package, and is open source so the basic workings are free of charge. It’s then a matter of having a design company like iM3 add the front end- the part the shopping public will see and interact with. Also there are options from WordPress, a huge open source based application that makes for great site functionality and back-end management.
Next the products need to be added to a website, if possible in bulk to save time and standardise the Meta details. Many leading manufacturers or UK distributors of retail products offer CSV or Microsoft Excel downloads of their current range. Where possible this sort of information can be manipulated to start to enter product details.
Pictures and videos for your products are important- conversions are known to be much higher when the browser can interact with an item visually, even more so when a video takes the potential customer through the features and benefits of the model on offer.
Payment options include all the usual suspects, but there are also integration options for Paypal and Google Checkout. Google also offer a free service called Google Products, where you can have a live XML feed from your ecommerce website updating the service constantly. This offers the chance for extra organic SEO traffic – at no extra cost once in place! You’ll benefit from fantastic quality, immediate traffic.
Integration into social media is also possible, and we specialise in merging social media management with the launch and maintenance of e-commerce operation. Add a new product to your online catalogue and watch it instantly be posted (automatically) to 50 social networking platforms. This informs loyal customers of new additions to your shopping portfolio, and gives the chance for extra backlinks (SEO related) and more exposure.
Call today to see examples of our work with online e-tailors, or call to arrange a meeting to discuss our services and options. We offer e-commerce SEO in Sheffield and across the UK.