eCommerce Web Design
What exactly is eCommerce web design? According to Shiprocket, "eCommerce (also known as electronic commerce) is a process of buying and selling of products or services, making money transfers, and transferring data over an electronic medium (Internet). This network allows people to do business with no barrier of distance and time." Simply put, it's buying or selling a product or service online. The next time you are purchasing something from Amazon, you are taking part in eCommerce.
As I mentioned above, Amazon is a huge eCommerce website. So is eBay. What are your other favorite websites to buy products from? It's all eCommerce.
eCommerce web design might have a different look and feel to it. It might look ore like an online store, with many products and their prices and description. Other eCommerce websites might only sell one or two items.
eCommerce Web Design Platforms
There are many options for setting up an eCommerce website. Here are some of the more common ones today.
WordPress + Woocommerce - this is our choice for eCommerce web design. WordPress is very flexible and Woocommerce is made by Automatic, which is the same company that is behind WordPress. Woocommerce integrates seamlessly with WordPress.
Other options include:
Shopify
BigCommerce
Volusion
Open Cart
These other solutions are geared specifically towards eCommerce. The advantage to using WordPress + Woocommerce is that it is an eCommerce solution as well as offering other functionality that a website needs. You may want to include a blog on your website, which WordPress is excellent for. WordPress can do just about anything you need, so you get a great eCommerce solution along with many other functionalities.
Search Engine Optimization for eCommerce
Search engine optimization is the process of getting your website ranked in the search engines. Content is one of the big ranking factors. Writing content that incorporates your keywords tells Google what your website is all about and that helps it get ranked higher. Google loves content that is relevant to a search phrase.
For example, if you are selling healthy cookbooks on your site, and someone puts into Google the search phrase "healthy recipes), if your website talks about and offers healthy recipes, Google will find your content relevant to that search phrase. That gives you a good chance of having your website rank well for that keyword phrase.
With eCommerce web design, there is not as much content as an informational website. So, how do you have content that is seo driven? Incorporate keywords into your descriptions. Give detailed descriptions that will allow you to include the keywords multiple time. Of course, don't make it sound like an infommercial, but write good relevant content that sounds natural. You have to balance between writing for your website visitors (the first priority) and having your content found and recognized by the search engines.
eCommerce Designs
We have a number of starter designs for an eCommerce website. If you go to our designs page, and then click on "eCommerce" at the top, you will see a variety of looks you can have. These are starter designs which can be modified with your colors, products, logo, content, etc. It sometimes helps to visualize what the end result will look like.
Here are a couple of eCommerce starter designs we have.
eCommerce web design is different from the standard informational web design in that it needs a way for your web visitors to purchase directly from your website. Be sure that you go with a platform that can handle this function and a web designer who has experience with eCommerce websites.