If you’re new to eCommerce, chances are that your website doesn’t function as efficiently as it could. Does it offer the security necessary to protect your customer’s credit card transactions?
The main reason that businesses use eCommerce website programmers is that they want their customers to have the comfort of a secure checkout. The internet is a wild west of sorts, and data theft is one of the fastest rising crimes worldwide. This often leaves would-be buyers hesitant to share their information on sites with which they are not acquainted. By hiring a professional who writes secure code, you can ensure your customers’ privacy and confidentiality, and thereby eliminate that hesitation to buy.
When you’re building your eCommerce site, many things need to happen in order to for it function properly on an open market. For instance, product descriptions may need altered, and items will need added or removed. If shoppers have options on items, they need sorting functions, and general searches require filtering to simplify your customers’ shopping experience. Do you have pictures to be linked with certain descriptions only? Does your website provide for buyer comments which could be valuable for product development and sales as well?
Think about the whole process from the other side. How would you like to see this site operate if you were a customer? What are your shopping habits, or those of your target customers? Do they tend more toward impulse buys, or do you need to provide a shopping cart that holds items on logout? Although this may seem like an insignificant detail, many customers move items into a shopping cart and take their time before making a decision. If their cart on your website is empty when they come back to buy, you can easily lose would be sales.
While this may sound like a relatively simple task, setting up a shopping cart is anything but. If you don’t have personal experience building eCommerce sites, your business could reap the benefits of hiring eCommerce website programmers. Because eCommerce is all about the convenience, if your website cannot offer a saved shopping cart, you are much more likely to lose customers to competitors do offer that function. No one wants to feel pressured when they shop, and forcing your customers to buy before their screen saver kicks on is technically putting your customers on a time crunch. By putting that pressure on your customers, you may decrease the chances of making that sale.
Another function offered by good website developers is integrated inventory. Contrary to inventory procedures of the past, this is a simple and effective way to track your inventory without the headache of counting endless product. By keeping checkout information and integrating it with current inventory numbers, a digital count of your product is available at the touch of a button.
While security is obviously the number one concern that leads business owners to outsource eCommerce development, there are other factors at play as well. For those interested in taking their business to a whole new level, it is often the logical next step. Most businesses start out small, and with only local markets to appeal to. The ever-changing world of eCommerce now allows businesses to take that huge leap from local to global with the help of widely available professionals.
