Setting up an eCommerce Website

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QUESTIONS TO START

 

  • Own site, marketplace or both
  • Own site – how? Shopify
  • Site assets you will need
  • Site organisation
  • Site search
  • Legalities
  • Payments
  • Site security
  • POS – point of sale

 

DOMAIN STRUCTURE

 

  • Shop.site.com
  • site.com/shop
  • Site.com – full ecommerce

 

PLATFORM CHOICE

 

  • Shopify is the best ecommerce platform .
    • As an ecommerce consultant I find it is easier to get shopify working
  • Wix very slow – slow is death in ecommerce
  • Square space – some of it good some of it very bad – not recommended
  • Easy as possible but should be able to sell your stuff
  • Security – do you want to trust 1-2 people for the security of your website or a world class
  • Shopify and amazon work well
  • Magento is very good but the problem is it is very technical and you need a developer. It is overkill. It was the best ecommerce platform 10 years ago
  • How much control do you have over what helps you to sell?
  • What is the ROI rather than the cost?
  • Are they a trusted supplier for the long term?

 

TOOLKIT WEBSITES

 

 

DESIGN AND LAYOUT

 

  • You should not mess around too much with the design and page layout in ecommerce
  • Page layout is fairly standard. Functionality is pretty standard as well.
  • You want to mess around with branding, colors, logo, feel of it. Look of it.
  • Especially on mobile, almost most websites look very similar. Except images / visuals

 

LOGO, BRANDING, BRAND GUIDELINES

 

  • Branding mostly about consistency, guidelines
  • Landscape logos better for layout . don’t push content too much down
  • What gets seen gets sold
  • Colors can be a problem for navigation (contrast)
  • Domain, short, difficult to get wrong, memorable
    • Co.uk if you are selling exclusively in the UK
    • Com if you want to look bigger

 

IMAGES FOR ECOMMERCE

 

  • Hero at top of page = landscape orientation
  • Rest = dependent on product, clothes – portrait, housewares – square. Be consistent
  • Square images work well both on social, mobile and web as well (on desktop you can do 3 column layouts for it)
  • Design for mobile first – square preferred
  • Optimise images – speed is very important
  • Shopify generates other image sizes if you supply it with enough hi-res at first (eg it will generate mobile version for you)
  • As small as possible in terms of file size – for site speed. Image compression

 

BURAK Add videos to SSB

 

BURAK Use mobile banners not landscape

 

MOBILE NAVIGATION

 

  • Use first column in footer for further exploration eg. collection names not about us etc. It is the first thing they see after the product
  • E Commerce is mobile. ⅔ or ¾ of visitors are from mobile now

 

BURAK Update SSB footer columns

 

THEME CHOICE

 

  • Avoid commercial themes, go with free and popular themes
  • Must be responsive – probably no one is selling a theme not working on mobile but good to check
  • Security , these things maintenance. Especially in wordpress. What you want to be buying into?
  • Speed – shopify theme test
  • Functionality – filters
    • Shopify supply works with large inventories
  • Ease and simplicity
    • How does image view work on mobile?
    • Does it scroll well?
  • Inventory size – most built for small inventory
  • Longevity – will it be updated?

 

SITE STRUCTURE

 

  • Think about your main or sub categories
  • Collections are handier than categories
  • Consider SEO as well

 

VARIANTS

 

  • Variant = a variation of a single product
  • Variants are normally listed on a single page
  • Size colour
  • Style finish
  • It’s up to you to decide whats a separate product and what’s a variant
  • Crucial event is what works for the user?

 

SEARCH

 

  • Don’t use search as a sticking plaster for poor content architecture
  • It is a primary channel for people to find products
  • Google custom search – includes ads, potentially from competitors
  • CMS’s basic search usually not enough
  • Autocomplete search.
  • Algolia, instantsearch by fast simon, klevu, freefind
  • It isn’t easy and it can be expensive

 

PAYMENTS

 

  • Consumers like a choice
  • Paypal, amazon payments, stripe, sage pay, world pay
  • Consumers like a name they recognise
  • Has to work with your platform and market
  • Account based- paypal, amazon payments
  • Payment processors – stripe, worldpay, sagepay
  • Some require merchant account, others are all in one
  • Your responsibility for security varies

 

SECURITY

 

  • Your responsibility depends on your payment solution
  • Don’t keep handle any customer data you don’t need
  • Strong passwords
  • Avoid plugins as much as possible
  • Change default settings. No username like admin
  • Keep it up to date as much as possible
  • Customer fraud: claimed that they haven’t received etc. always track postages.
  • 3d secure to switch responsibility

 

LEGALITIES

 

  • Selling over the web – normal legalities (sale of goods, consumer protection, data protection)
  • E Commerce regulations 2002 info you have to provide during the sales process
  • Consumer contracts regulations 2014 cooling off period of 14 days
  • Info that must be on your site: company name, address, email, registration, VAT number
  • Payment card Industry data security

 

GDPR

 

  • Became law on 25 May 2018
  • More affirmative consent – end of pre-ticket boxes
  • Customer can ask for their data or to have it deleted
  • Need to include GDPR in terms and conditions
  • Service providers need to be gDPR compliant. If you are sharing info with them.
  • Refer to Paypal’s GDPR, mailchimp GDPR policies etc
  • Shopify GDPR compliance .

 

POS INTEGRATION

 

  • Physical sales, sell offline
  • Some platforms also include it Shopify – It only works on IOS
  • POS often involves ipad
  • Integrated POS means a single inventory control for online and offline

 

COMMON ISSUES

 

  • Store is too slow

 

BURAK SSB on mobile

https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fststephensbooks.com%2F&tab=mobile

 

  • Store is confusing to the new visitor – what is it?
  • Products are difficult to find
    • Do user test, do it on mobile, don’t help testers
  • Tangibility  not achieved. Products don’t feel real enough

 

BURAK videos?

 

  • “Build it and they will come”
  • Locked into a platform / theme that is a problem
  • Seriously underestimating the competition
  • Failing to convert visitors to buyers