All posts by Swapnil

All, PHP Development, Web Designing

Points to be considered in eCommerce website building

Electronic Commerce, commonly known as e-commerce, eCommerce or e-comm, consists of the buying and selling of products or services over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks. Other example is PayPal, which is an online payment processing site, and could also be integrated in your own websites as well.

It is more than just buying and selling products online. It also includes the entire online process of developing, marketing, selling, delivering, servicing and paying for products and services. The amount of trade conducted electronically has grown extraordinarily with widespread Internet usage.

Electronic commerce is generally considered to be the sales aspect of e-business. It also consists of the exchange of data to facilitate the financing and payment aspects of the business transactions.
Your eCommerce development plan should include such factors as are necessary to attract more buyers. In this Article I am listing most Important Points you should consider before starting making of E-commerce Website:


building ecommerce website

Familiarize yourself with the target audience:

Amazingly, most people completely ignore their target customer when writing product descriptions. However, the site visitor is the key to how the copy is shaped, the tone it takes and which angle is used to communicate the benefits.

Knowing your audience as a whole, and understanding each segment is imperative to creating eCommerce copy that hits the mark every time.

Limits of content management systems (CMS):

Content management systems (CMS) can be frustrating at times. Before you set out to write product copy that’s 150 words long with a catchy headline, you’ll want to verify what can and cannot be accomplished within your system. Some have limited room in the copy field. Others force the headline, pulling from information you enter into the product specifications. For example, the headline on each product page would be automatically fed from the title of the product. A few common areas to check include:

  • Maximum word or character count in the product copy field.
  • Forced information: headlines that are automatically inserted, product copy automatically fed to the category pages, etc.
  • Additional fields below the fold: if you run out of space in the product copy field, then you can add a link for “more information” that drops the reader to a space further down the page.

Incorporate search engine Key Phrases / Keywords:

Depending on your site design and your CMS, your product descriptions could conceivably be hundreds of words long. Generally speaking, however, you’re most likely looking at around 6080. That doesn’t leave much room to incorporate keywords.

While longer web pages benefit from the use of multiple search terms, I recommend sticking to one key phrase for short product descriptions. Start with the framework of your page including the title tag, description META tag, file name, page name in the navigational structure, breadcrumb trail, forced page headline and other elements. Then move on to the content. Use search phrases in the:
Headline include a key phrase into a headline, but – if for some reason it just doesn’t flow – leave it out.
Product image caption – too many eCommerce sites simply shove “Product #12345” below graphics. Instead, underneath the hero shot of your product, enter a short, keyword-rich sentence that briefly describes the item. This assists your visitors with learning about your product and gives a little nudge to your rankings.

Product copy – even within 6080 words, you should be able to comfortably work your search term in two or perhaps three times. Read the text out loud. If it sounds redundant, take out one instance of your key phrase.

Use good shopping cart function:

You should also make sure you include a good shopping cart function on your eCommerce website, as it is this that will alert you when an order is made. It will also take care of the necessary administration such as calculating tax on individual orders and sorting out order summaries. You should ideally go for a piece of software that updates regularly as this will help you ensure you stay on top of regulation while making ordering easy for your customers, which is very important on an eCommerce site.

Payment gateway option:

Another important thing to consider when building an eCommerce site is your payment gateway. As well as shopping cart software, you need a means of receiving and making payments. There is a lot of software that does this for you. For example, a lot of businesses use a package supplied by large website such as PayPal. If your company is larger, then you might want to talk to your web designer about integrating an alternative solution to meet your needs.
Make sure that the payment options included are not focused to a specific region. As you are on internet so there is no specific region for your customer to purchase from your shop. Try to include most of the payment options other than PayPal and Google Checkout.

At least include popular payment gateways of those regions from where you are getting maximum amount of visitors/conversions.

Safety security:

This point is very important in making of eCommerce website. Online transactions has provided the shoppers a great shopping comfort, but increasing cyber frauds and crimes has also made them skeptical about revealing their details, required while making online transactions. Always provide assurance to the customer with proper transaction securities such as Verfication etc.

If you keep all the above points in your mind while executing your eCommerce website development plan, you’ll surely get a lot of success and profit. If you have any other suggestions or any questions then drop me a comment let me know your thoughts.

All, Download

Dear web design community, where have you gone?

As Web craftsmen, we are living in exciting times today. The frenetic pace of evolution in our industry has created remarkable opportunities for our work. Our established set of design and coding practices is more comprehensive than it has ever been before. Our designs are becoming more usable, our code more scalable, our layouts more responsive. In fact, just by comparing our design processes to those from a decade ago, it’s remarkable to observe how quickly we’ve developed and honed our craft over all these years.

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However, the maturity of our industry is far from being complete. While producing a myriad of technological advancements, we have outpaced other developments along the way. These developments aren’t related to the lack of cross-browser standards support or technical downsides of the tools we are using. No, they have a different nature. They have emerged within our design community a community which is now so fertile and diverse that it is becoming increasingly difficult to ensure its professional maturity.

In fact, there are many issues that require a thorough, profound discussion within our industry, yet they are not properly discussed for one reason or the other. This article is based on my recent, often unrelated, observations of our community. It features my personal opinion on the problems we need to tackle and conversations we need to start to ensure its healthy evolution.

Where did the community spirit go?

I was very lucky to have experienced the development of the Web design community from its early days on. As a passionate newcomer to the industry, I was captivated by the sense of enthusiasm that seemed to be flourishing everywhere and spurring everyone. It was a strong and genuine feeling that was sparkled among dozens of sites and magazines and fueled by the motivation of experienced and non-experienced designers. The community was reasonably small and therefore very welcoming and supportive, so everybody was perfectly fine with asking lengthy questions and providing detailed answers.

I clearly remember in-depth discussions with hundreds of meaningful, engaged comments, in which designers would thoroughly analyze the techniques presented and suggest improvements or alternatives. I remember having experienced print and digital designers writing articles and teaching inexperienced designers the obscure details of and practical tips about the new craft. I remember vivid debates spreading from one site to another, connecting designers and building professional relationships in the community.

These discussions still take place today. There are many more designers and developers out there encouraging these discussions. The remarkable work of people like Paul Boag, Dan Mall, Jeffrey Zeldman, Francisco Inchauste, Chris Coyier, Simon Collison, Andy Clarke, Paul Irish, Chris Heilmann, Jeffrey Way, Trent Walton and many others is a vivid manifestation of the tremendous care and dedication of designers and developers to our industry. There are literally thousands of talented folks out there who are writing articles and releasing wonderful new tools and resources for all of us to use. That’s great. That’s great because all of these contributions bring our community much further.

However, every now and again I can’t help but realize that the number of active contributors with knowledge and experience hasn’t increased proportionally to the overall magnitude of our growing community. Way too often I find it extremely difficult to find meaningful debates spanning over the whole community debates that would create a strong echo and prompt us all to revise, extend or adjust our practices and hence become better professionals.

Way too often do I come to the conclusion that this remarkable, inspiring enthusiasm we once had is now gone. What remained are stranded cliques of passionate designers who lead design discussions privately and separately, often unnoticed by the vast majority of the community.

The tragic irony is that although we are probably one of the most connected professional communities out there, it seems that we are increasingly not connecting. It’s not that we’ve become just a bit too comfortable with the processes we’ve developed over the years nor that we don’t care about improving our design and coding skills. In dialogue with our readers and colleagues at conferences or even online, I’ve become confident that this development has entirely different roots.

Starting time to Contribute

Since there is so much going on the Web these days, it seems only reasonable that many of us might experience difficulties finding time to actively engage in professional discussions. Personally, I am just as guilty as the next guy, as I find it extremely difficult to read more than 5/7 design pieces a day not to mention commenting on any of them. I’m trying to challenge myself to be more responsive and engaging. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but I have firmly committed to this change and maybe just maybe so could you.

I believe that the lack of time is one of the reasons for our changed behavior online. Our emails have become shorter, and so are our blog posts and comments. Our interest has become much more difficult to enrapture, and so we’ve become more passive and less critical. We way too easily consume and accept ideas, designs, concepts out there, sometimes without even questioning their validity and correctness. Instead of debating, we agree; instead of criticizing, we accept or simply click away and ignore the discussion altogether. And this is the reason why many conversations in the community do not get a critical mass of interest.