Are you looking to create an auction-based eCommerce store where you can upload the products and allow buyers to bid on them?
If yes, then this blog post may help you!
We’ve recently helped one of our clients in Canada to create his auction eCommerce store and in this post, we’ve shared the steps that we performed to create his auction-based website.
Before we proceed ahead, let’s see what should be the essential features of an auction-based eCommerce store:
- Incremental bidding allows users to bid in the multiple values
- Last-minute bid extension
- Proxy bidding
- Reverse price
- Buying price
- Bidding fee
Recommended post: 7 Essential features to have on your auction-based eCommerce store
So, here are the steps that we followed for the development of an auction-based online store for our client.
#1 Defining the purpose
The first step was to define the purpose of our client’s eCommerce website development.
He told us that he wants to sell both normal products and auction-based products. He didn’t want to limit his website to either of the selling models.
He further added that he wants his website to have 2 major sections. ‘Auction’ and ‘Store’.
Under the ‘Auction’ page, he wanted his visitors to view only those products that are available for bidding.
While under the ‘Store’ section, he wanted to show the products that can be purchased straight-forwardly by paying the mentioned amount. Which means no auction or bidding.
So, we decided to add a feature for him on the product creation page, to choose whether the product should go under the ‘Auction’ or ‘Store’ section.
#2 Defining the budget
The next step towards the eCommerce website development of our client was to define the budget. So we naturally asked our client about his website design budget.
He told us that he has been receiving web development quotes from various local web designers in Canada and they were out of his budget. He was getting quotations worth as high as $15000 however he wanted to invest a small amount only.
In other words, being a small business owner, our client didn’t have a high budget and was looking for affordable website developers in India.
We offered him a much more affordable price to create his eCommerce website and he immediately agreed to proceed ahead.
Recommended post: How much is the eCommerce website development cost in India
#3 Suggesting WordPress
Since the web development budget of our client was quite low, we suggested he use WordPress to create his website.
Initially, he wasn’t sure about choosing WordPress to create his website because he thought that WordPress isn’t meant to build such complicated websites.
But when we showed our previous WordPress works to our client, he was impressed by our portfolio and agreed to use WordPress.
We also shared with him some of the other benefits of using WordPress, like below:
- WordPress is customizable and can be scaled up according to any business requirements.
- WordPress developers are available in abundance which means one can easily hire an affordable WordPress developer. Additionally, hiring Indian WordPress developers can also help to cut down the website development cost.
- The WordPress backend interface is easy-to-use.
- WordPress is SEO-friendly.
So finally, we decided to use WordPress for our client’s auction-based eCommerce store.
Recommended post: 5 Reasons to choose WooCommerce (WordPress) for your eCommerce website development
#4 Providing web design options
Once we finalized the CMS to be used on our client’s website, we then started working on the website design.
During the website design process, we always create 2 different mockups for our clients to have a look over them & feedback to us. And we did the same for our client who wanted to set up an auction-based eCommerce website in Canada.
Like in most cases, we received some feedback from our client about the design. Our team made the required changes to the mockup according to the client’s feedback.
The updated layout was sent to the client again and this time we got his approval to get started on the website development.
#5 Plugins integration & customization
Since we decided to use the WordPress CMS to create the auction online store for our client, we used the WooCommerce plugin to integrate the eCommerce features into the website.
Along with the WooCommerce plugin, we also used some other useful plugins such as below:
- Yoast SEO
- LiveChat
- YITH WooCommerce Wishlist
- WooCommerce Products Slider
- YITH WooCommerce Quick View
- WooCommerce Products Filter
Our WordPress development team also did some customizations to some of the above-mentioned plugins.
#6 Testing
Testing is among the crucial parts of a website’s development. Especially, if it’s an eCommerce website, testing is imperative.
After we integrated all the required plugins for the auction website development of our client in Canada, we started working on its testing.
We tested our client’s website for several important parameters such as:
- Functional testing as per the scope of work.
- Usability testing
- Compatibility testing for all browsers & devices.
- Interface testing
- Performance testing
- Security testing to ensure the website’s protection.
Recommended post: 8 Things to test on your eCommerce website to get more sales
#7 Deployment & handover
After completion of the testing process, the next & final step was to deploy the website on our client’s own server.
It took us a few hours to deploy the website and make it work on the live server. Of course, we again did some tests on the live server to make sure that everything is working as expected.
Additionally, we also handed over a manual to our client that described the process of:
- Adding new products to the website.
- Adding new web pages.
- Managing the existing web pages and products.
- Making necessary tweaks to the products so that they can be displayed on the auction page or the normal shop page as expected.
After launching the website, we provided our client with free support for 3 months because we always believe in long-term association with our clients.
