Creating an eCommerce website can add wings to your small retail businesses.
It can help your business in many ways when you build an online store. Before we talk about anything else, let’s see why you should have an eCommerce website.
Why eCommerce?
- eCommerce website development is affordable as compared to setting up a physical store.
- There are no high recurring charges associated with eCommerce website maintenance.
- You can sell 24/7.
- Your customers can buy your products from anywhere, anytime.
But not every small business owner can invest a huge amount of money in their eCommerce website development.
And therefore, most small business owners are looking for low-cost web development services so that they can build a profitable store at an affordable price.
While hiring website builders in India can help you to save your web development cost, not all Indian companies offer affordable web design services.
We at Innomax, help our clients to get a low-cost eCommerce website.
In this blog post, we have shared our experience with one of the clients for whom we created a profitable eCommerce store at an affordable cost.
#1 Asking the budget
The very first question that we asked our client was “what’s your web design budget?“.
Since Indian website builders are affordable and can offer unbeatable web development packages, most webmasters across the globe expect to get the lowest possible price when they hire web developers from India.
Our client told us that he has been receiving different quotes varying from $4000 to $8000 from the local developers in Canada to create his eCommerce website. But his budget was much lower than that.
He didn’t want to spend more than $1k on his website development.
Recommended post: How much is the average eCommerce website development cost in India
#2 Recommended WooCommerce
After knowing the web design budget from our client, we recommended WooCommerce (a WordPress plugin) to use for his eCommerce website development.
He wasn’t sure if choosing WordPress for his eCommerce store development will be a good move.
But we explained to him the benefits of using WordPress. Also, we shared a lot of eCommerce websites that we had developed using WordPress (WooCommerce) and most of them are running successfully.
Our client agreed to use WordPress after knowing its great benefits and having a look at our WooCommerce website portfolio.
Recommended post: 6 Reasons for you to choose WordPress for your eCommerce website development
#3 Recommended affordable hosting
Our client had already bought the domain name but he was looking for affordable web hosting services as well.
We, at Innomax, are the resellers of several reputed web hosting companies and can offer a discounted price to our clients.
Therefore, we recommended our client one of our reliable yet affordable web hosting principles to host his website.
#4 Website design
The next step was to start working on the designs of the website. Our client shared a few reference websites with us that helped our website designer a lot to design the mockup according to the expectations of our client.
Our website designer came up with 2 different mockups for our client.
There were several feedback and inputs that we had received from our client but after making those iterations, we got the confirmed approval from him to use the design for his website development.
#5 Free images
Keeping in mind the web design budget of our client, we also recommended a few free image stock websites such as Pexels and Pixabay.
Using high-resolution images can add life to any website. But not all website owners can afford to buy licensed images.
Therefore we helped our clients to use free images from stock websites like Pexels and Pixabay.
#6 Essential plugins installation
A WordPress CMS requires several plugins in order to incorporate different features into the website.
We made a list of all the free yet powerful plugins that we could use to build the eCommerce store for our client.
Below are some of the plugins that we used for our client’s website development:
- WooCommerce (a plugin to add eCommerce features to any WordPress website).
- Order Delivery Date for WooCommerce (allows your customers to choose a delivery date and time on the checkout page).
- WooCommerce PDF Invoices & Packing Slips (adds a PDF invoice to the order confirmation emails sent out to your customers).
- YITH WooCommerce Compare (allows the customers to compare the products of the shop).
- YITH WooCommerce Ajax Search (creates a simple search box that shows you instant search results, by suggesting products from your WooCommerce store that match your searching criteria).
- Custom Product Tabs for WooCommerce (Allows website owners to add custom tabs for each product other than the default tabs of WooCommerce).
Of course, our WordPress developer had to customize some of these plugins to match the requirements of our client.
#7 Testing & launch
After integrating all the required plugins and customizing them according to the website theme, the next step was to test the website.
Testing a website is as important as its development in the first place.
Here are a few checks that we usually do for all the websites:
- Browser compatibility check.
- Responsiveness check (to ensure mobile-friendly design).
- Loading time check.
- Broken links testing & fixing.
- Security check.
- Functional testing.
- Form validation testing.
- Tracker installation testing.
Recommended post: 8 Things to check in your eCommerce website for getting more sales
#8 Handover
After making the website live, the final step was to hand over all the necessary details or materials to the client.
Handing over the website is a very crucial part.
If you are wondering, what materials or details you should be handed over by your website developer, below are some of them for you:
- The username & password of the admin section.
- The PSDs of website layouts & logos.
- The source codes of the website.
- The database backup of the website.
- Any other credentials that your website designer may have with him for eg. Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, etc.
If you don’t care about the handover of your website, you may face a lot of challenges in making the required changes to your website in the future.
You will always have to rely on your existing website developer, even if you are not happy with them, to make any kind of changes to your website.
Recommended post: 5 Important things to take handover of after the completion of your website development
