Rely on Tested & Proven Web Design & Development Strategies by DLD for your eCommerce store

The global COVID pandemic has determined many people to adopt online shopping, as they had to spend time at home, in lockdown. If you want to continue to thrive locally, you need to find a professional web development company in Austin, TX to create an online store that would allow you to cater to all kinds of customers, including those who will continue to do their shopping from the comfort of their homes.

In the changing world we live in, web services and shopping are quickly becoming the new norm. All age groups now have a working knowledge of smartphones and laptops. Given the chance to order the products they need from their sofa or home office and have them delivered to their doorstep, many will gladly choose this option over going to your brick and mortar store. Thus, you cannot afford to lose customers by not giving them the choice of online shopping. And this is why you need to find a team of professionals experienced specifically in ecommerce development.

What Is the Difference Between a Regular Site and an Ecommerce Website?

A simple presentation website contains text, photos, and videos, and allows users to send you online messages or click to call you. Ecommerce type of development involves many more steps, such as:

• Keeping product inventories in real time
• Allowing users to complete a purchase 100% online
• Integrating various payment platforms that allow your customers to pay online

Thus, an eCommerce store allows financial transactions to take place between your customer and your business. In this context, ecommerce development involves high levels of security, as requested by federal and state regulations and by payment processors.

It is highly skilled and specialized work, which requires a lot of experience and being up to date with the latest trends and standards in the field. Since your eCommerce store will store very sensitive data (your customers’ personal data and credit card details), you need to hire a company with an excellent reputation and know-how.

What Is Involved in Ecommerce

Creating an online store is complex work, as we have explained. It requires constant communication with the customer and profound knowledge of the customers’ business model and products.

The key steps in website development are the following:

Planning

Direct Line Development will send you a questionnaire asking you detailed questions about:

• Your company
• Your brand image
• Your products
• Your target customers
• Your competitors
• What business goals you want to achieve

Based on the information received from you, the planning of your future eCommerce store can start. It involves critical steps such as selecting the best eCommerce website builder, determining the functionalities of the site, and the overall structure of the site.

UX/UI development

Just like any website, an online store has two core functions:

• User interface (UI) – the visible part of the website, the one the user interacts with
• User experience (UX) – the hidden part of the site, which determines page load speed and how the user interacts with the website (clicks, taps, etc.)

Our team will work in parallel, building the design of the website and its functionalities.

Coding 

The next step in ecommerce development is putting together the elements of the site – writing the code that will create the site. This is the most sensitive and difficult part of the work, as the developers will also have to integrate a payment processing method and other integrations required by the client (to a CRM, ERP, email marketing tool, etc.)

Testing

Before the client gets to see how their site looks and works, a team of experienced testers at Direct Line Development will try to identify any bug, malfunction, or portion of the site that does not work correctly, as well as any potential security vulnerability.

Launch

After the website passes all tests with flying colors and the client agrees that the site is complete, the next step is uploading the site to the client’s hosting server. Before the site goes live on the internet, a new round of tests is performed.

After-Launch Support

The developers will assist you with various maintenance tasks, such as updating the code, adding new features to the online store, and teaching you how to manage content editing in the backend.