Ecommerce Website Design

Online sales continue to grow and it is predicted that by 2026 24% of all retail purchases will take place online.

Whether you are an established business operating from a shop or industrial unit, or you have a virtual business - operating purely online, e-commerce has to be one of your main priorities. Even with a moderate budget, you can achieve a lot.

The components of an ecommerce site usually include a combination of:

• Shopping cart software
• Payment gateway
• Merchant account

For each there are a plethora of providers, costs and alternatives. The choice of which platform will depend on your business needs. We can help you to make this complex process smooth, integrating the right components to ensure you succeed online.

Ecommerce platforms

Below is an overview of some of the most popular eCommerce solutions we work with:

WordPress WooCommerce

 An ecommerce plugin that works with WordPress. WordPress has the biggest CMS market share in the world, and WooCommerce is by far the most popular shop in the WordPress ecommerce plugin portfolio. It is easy to use and intuitive. If you need to extend the functionality of the shop, there is a wide range of additional plugins that will integrate with WooCommerce. However, WooCommerce does require optimisation and a quality web server to be performant.

Joomla Ecommerce

Unlike WordPress, Joomla does not have one ecommerce platform that controls the market share. Instead there are a number of plugins including J2Commerce, HikaShop, Virtuemart, Eshop and MijoShop. There are pros and cons to these different plugins, so depending on your business requirements we would recommend a best fit.

Shopify

An out of the box hosted platform that is more straightforward to set up but gives you less control over your data and your shop, and is not as good in terms of Search Engine Optimsation (SEO). This is compared to option 1 & 2 which are open source products where you control all aspects of your ecommerce.

Payment Systems

Giving consumers a choice of how they pay is a key part in improving your ecommerce conversions. Some examples of functionality and providers are shown below, many of these providers offer a broad range of services:

• Payment gateways: the software that reads your customers payment card and sends the details to your bank. Examples include PayPal, Worldpay, Stripe, Opayo
• Buy Now Pay Later: What it says on the tin! Examples include: Klarna, PayPal, Clearpay, Afterpay, Layby
• Mobile payments: Using a customer's digital wallet to streamline the purchase. Examples including: Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay
• Pay by invoice: Popular with B2B businesses. Eg. Mondu
• Recurring payments: Good for membership platforms. For example: GoCardless, Stripe, PayPal

Ecommerce Integrations

Once you are up and running with your ecommerce store, the next step is to ensure it seamlessly integrates with your back-office software and any third party software/services you use. These website integrations will make time consuming manual jobs a breeze. Examples include:

• Accounts integration
• Warehouse management
• Shipping systems
• Third party ecommerce integrations, eg. Amazon, Etsy etc
• Dropshipping

Multi-language and Multi-currency

Expand your potential customers to different regions and meet their needs with their own language and currency. This will substantially improve your conversion rates in these areas with easy checkout experiences.

Multisite Options

Companies with multiple locations, departments or subcontractors, can provide ecommerce using a WordPress Multisite. This is an efficient way of running a network of websites on one installation, with the overall management and maintenance of the system streamlined and highly efficient. Read more about WordPress multisites here.

Ecommerce SEO and Optimisation

Ensuring your products are showing in the right place and improving CTR is a continuous process. We will guide you during the build process and ensure you have the right building blocks for a well ranked ecommerce site with an SEO friendly design and site architecture. We provide ongoing campaigns including keyword research, PPC and SEO Campaigns.  Read more about our digital marketing and SEO here.  

It can be overwhelming with so many options and with every business having unique requirements. At Channel we will take the time to find out in detail how your business works and help you choose the best ecommerce solution.

Please feel free to contact us for a no-commitment discussion on the way forward.