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
- https://whatcms.org
- Check what your competitors are using
- https://builtwith.com/
- https://www.printful.com/
- https://www.fullstory.com/
- https://www.hotjar.com/
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
- 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

I’m founder and director of The Digital Agency; a certified Google Partner and Shopify Partner digital marketing agency operating in London and Istanbul. The Digital Agency has a solid track record of delivering high growth in eCommerce, Facebook & Google advertising, social media communication, search engine optimization, eCommerce and website production through 16 years of experience with 140 brands in 500 projects. Visit The Digital Agency here