Choosing an ecommerce website development partner or solutions is the most critical decision while setting up an ecommerce store. Because all of your activities, from selling to buying to receiving payments and shipping products, are to be carried on your online store.
Table of Contents
- Benefits of right ecommerce solutions
- 7 Questions To Ask From Your Ecommerce Website Development Partner
- 1. Is your platform open source or proprietary?
- 2. What features can I expect in my online store?
- 3. Is the ecommerce platform mobile-friendly?
- 4. Do you provide payment and logistics support?
- 5. How Secure Are Your Ecommerce solutions?
- 6. Do you provide SEO support?
- 7. What Marketing Features Does ecommerce Solution Offers?
- Add-on Questions For Extra Benefits
Benefits of right ecommerce solutions
The Right selection will lead to the fulfilment of long term goals like-
More sales
More loyal customers
Boosting the efficiency of services
Increasing brand reputation and awareness
Moreover, you can expect great customer support and technical assistance from your ecommerce solutions.
You can also expect greater control over your website design and inventory.
You can also manage complicated tasks like payment processing, shipping management, etc with 100% ease.
Want to gain all of the above benefits and expected results? Follow the guide to approach ecommerce solutions highlighted below.
But First Ask 5 Questions To Yourself
Before jumping on a demo call with an ecommerce website development partner, give vivid answers to the questions below-
What are your business current and future goals?
What Is Your Business Model?
What are your products? How many products do you want to sell?
What type of ecommerce store do I need? Multi-vendor marketplace or B2C ecommerce store or B2B ecommerce site?
Which ecommerce solutions do you want to use? SaaS or open source?
Have you got answers to all of the above queries? If yes, then let’s move to the next section.
7 Questions To Ask From Your Ecommerce Website Development Partner
1. Is your platform open source or proprietary?
Evaluate the types and benefits of an ecommerce solution. For a clear picture, let’s discuss 2 types ecommerce solutions
Pros and cons of SaaS ecommerce platform
They are cloud-based systems that are accessed on any web browser. Here the maintenance, hosting and security is handled by the solution provider. Business can create an online store without a developer with prebuilt themes, integrated payment partners, readymade apps, etc.
Pros and cons of Open source platform
In Open source ecommerce software, businesses get source code that they can modify and improve. Open source requires businesses to take care of Maintenance, hosting and security. You have to incur heavy development and operation costs compared to SaaS software.
StoreHippo is Saas ecommerce software that lets you build an online store quickly without website developers.
2. What features can I expect in my online store?
Ask How many features your solution has? How efficient & profitable are these features in ecommerce website development? Keep in mind, the features should be easy to use without any technical knowledge.
Check for below features in an Ecommerce solution-
Mobile Commerce: Mobile app support, device responsive themes and PWA sites.
Shopping Cart Essentials: Pre-integrated shipping and payment solutions, automated inventory management, multiple languages and currency support.
Marketing Support: Inbuilt marketing and SEO tools
Miscellaneous features: Multi-store, Multi-vendor marketplace, omni-channel Commerce and headless commerce.
Get 300+ features in StoreHippo ecommerce software-
StoreHippo is the easiest to use ecommerce solution that is beginner-friendly and has advanced ecommerce technologies. StoreHippo has 100+ attractive themes that are pre-coded, pre-designed and 100% editable.
All the sites powered by StoreHippo are mobile-friendly. Thus, relieving clients from doing heavy optimization. You can manage shipping, orders, taxes, pricing, inventory, right from a single dashboard.
3. Is the ecommerce platform mobile-friendly?
The global share of mobile commerce in total ecommerce sales is going to be 53.9% by 2021 (BusinessWire). This shows the potential of mobile-friendly ecommerce stores in growing sales and revenue. So here are characteristics of m-commerce stores-
They have mobile payment options
Stores have mobile responsive themes
Sites are fast loading and mobile responsive
Sites offer seamless navigation throughout the customer journey
Make mobile-friendly sites with StoreHippo-
StoreHippo uses PWA (progressive web apps) to build online stores. PWA sites load fast and work seamlessly in poor internet connection.
Get mobile app support to build codeless smartphone apps in a few minutes.
Check sales data, manage inventory, track orders, etc from the admin panel on your smartphone.
4. Do you provide payment and logistics support?
As revealed by Statista, digital and mobile wallet accounted for 41.8% of the total ecommerce transaction. credit cards being at second, followed by debit cards, net banking, COD and other methods.
If you want maximum checkouts, give multiple payment options.
Check with your ecommerce website development partner about the availability of integrated payment gateways. You can ask-
Do you offer integrated shipping solutions?
IF yes, do I have to pay an additional cost for the Account setup?
Do I have the flexibility to integrate my shipping partner?
Get pre-integrated payment solution & Shipping Partners with StoreHippo-
Deliver anywhere in the world with Shipkaro logistics partner. Create a Shipkaro shipping account at zero cost and get low-cost rates on all your orders. Assign your orders to selected ecommerce logistic solutions with a single click.
You can also get access to 60+ payment gateways that have local and international transactions. Activate payment gateways within a few clicks. Some popular gateways are CCAvenue, Paytm, Stripe, Paypal, Authorize.net, etc.
5. How Secure Are Your Ecommerce solutions?
Your ecommerce website visitors will leave if they see a security alert. However, with the implementation of security protocol, you can gain-
Protection against hackers, malware, Bots
Make sure your ecommerce website development partner should provide-
PCI-DSS compliant payment partners for secure transaction
Multi-Layer Security
Get high-end security in StoreHippo ecommerce solution-
StoreHippo secures your data and network using the Azure cloud computing platform and services. Here are key security advantages of using StoreHippo -
Automatic elimination of Cross Scripting and HTML Injection with built-in AngularJS features
Protection of sensitive data with PCI-DSS compliant Payment Gateway partners
For additional security, StoreHippo offers a Free SSL certificate for all plans.
6. Do you provide SEO support?
It is always better to have inbuilt SEO tools because it will save time as well as money. Like most ecommerce platforms are not SEO friendly
Benefits of Inbuilt SEO tools-
Create an SEO friendly store
Build your online visibility on Google and other search engines
Get inbuilt SEO tools in StoreHippo ecommerce software-
With StoreHippo SEO tools, you can create SEO friendly web pages in seconds. Optimize page URLs, Meta title, Meta description, Meta tags, Keywords, etc from your admin dashboard.
7. What Marketing Features Does ecommerce Solution Offers?
Want to reach new customers every day? Marketing is the way. With the right marketing capabilities in your ecommerce development partner, you can reach your potential customers, enhance the brand trustworthiness and online visibility of the store.
Top marketing tools to look at are
Get rich marketing tools in StoreHippo to reach customers-
With StoreHippo, you have unlimited access to Inbuilt marketing tools. Tools include-
Offer discounts based on customer’s location, order size, device, payment source, etc. Generate coupon codes for loyal customers.
Send automatic follow-up emails to customers who abandon their carts without placing an order. Engage with lost customers by sending FOMO alerts. Such as 200 off (valid for up to 24 hours).
Send personalized notifications based on buyers browsing behaviour, purchase pattern, etc. There are 4 types of notifications in our ecommerce solution- push, email, web, and SMS.
Track conversion from various online platforms with pre-installed Google tag manager, Facebook conversion pixel, Google ecommerce tracking codes.
Add-on Questions For Extra Benefits
Is there a free trial?
Free trials help in evaluating the ROI and usability of the ecommerce solution. However, free trials are limited to some ecommerce website development partners.
Will I get technical support in your ecommerce platform?
Technical support is basically for fast troubleshooting of technical issues. Ask queries like - Do you have knowledge base articles, and software manuals for self-help?
Fortunately, StoreHippo gives you advance support with the help of calls, emails, self-help knowledge guides and forums.
Go ahead, clear your expectations and goals from the ecommerce website development partner. Then, ask the above 7 questions to crack a profitable deal.
StoreHippo ecommerce platform has everything you need to sell your products, build customer loyalty, and grow your business. Get started with a 14 days free trial of StoreHippo to create an online store easily.
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