The approach you should take in creating your own selling online eCommerce site should be same as if you were starting a brand new business, launching a new product or starting a new marketing campaign. Success in all these endeavors to a large extent depends on a well-written detailed plan. You will and can increase your success rate dramatically for any project if you have a realistic implementation plan. The major challenges you will face when creating a development plan for your own eCommerce website are as follows:
- Selecting the primary goal of the website
- Coming up with your needed business objectives to accomplish this goal
- Selecting the right functionalities in your website to achieve your business objectives
- Having the right content material the site functionalities should need and produce
Your Primary Goal
Not all eCommerce sites are online stores. Apart from selling products and services online directly from a virtual store there could be many other reasons to have an eCommerce site.
Some of them are listed below:
- Enhancing existing marketing programs
- Launching a new product or service
Based on your primary goal, you will need to take different strategic approaches to planning your site.
Your Business Objectives
Business objectives are a list of processes you will need to have in order to attain your main business goal. If your goal is to sell products through your website you will have to display pictures and specifications of your products to your sites visitors, have a shopping cart so that a buyer can select products, a payment system to carry out the transaction, etc. These are your business objectives.
Site Functionality
System functionalities are a list of the types of site capabilities you need in order to achieve your business objectives. If one of your site's business objectives is to send regular emails to
buyers, you need to have an automatic mailing system. To display product information, i.e. product pictures, specification, sale's terms, etc. you will need an electronic catalog system. For
processing a payment you will require a secure payment gateway.
Information Requirements
This is the information material the site functionalities will have in order to achieve your business objectives. Display product information, product specifications, sale's terms, shipping terms, payment terms, etc. To send mails to your buyers you need a list of email addresses. For executing a transaction required information would be payment options, information for credit card processing, etc.
Once you have clearly identified your single most important business goal for developing the website, and jotted down the needed business objectives, site functionalities and information
requirements to realize your business objectives, you are ready to proceed with the step by step development of your website.
Writing The Development Plan
This will require a deep understanding of your business goals, site business objectives, content material and milestone goals for your overall site development process. You will have to be able to acquire enough knowledge by analyzing existing sites of your competitors and researching data related to your specific industry. At this stage you will also need to clarify resources necessary to build your site and assign responsibilities to each part of your website.
Registering A Domain For The Website
While you are still in the process of writing your development plan you should register a domain for your website. You have probably heard about the amounts of money companies have shelled out for domain names like business.com. There is no point wasting money on fancy domain names. Any name is fine as long as it is more or less consistent to your business line. Keep in mind two things: avoid special symbols in domain names and don't select a name which is too long.
Create A One Page Simple Site
After registering your domain name, you should start using it immediately. Design a single page mini site with information, about what your upcoming site is going to have, and publish it online. The idea is to get your site online as soon as possible, because the older your site is the better it is from the point of view of the search engine spiders.
Meta Tags For Your Home Page
Write the title name of your site, description of your site, keywords, etc. And use them on your mini site.
Start Registering Your Address In Various Directories
Now start registering your mini site in various directories and search engines. Don't use the companies that promise for money that they will register your site in hundreds of search engines and directories. You will only need to be in the major ones and most of them require manual insertion of your sites information.
Start To Accumulate Content
Now start collecting, selecting and writing content for your website. This is going to be a time consuming job. A good e-Commerce site should have minimum 80 to 100 pages. That means
you will need a lot of content for your website.
Your Site Layout Plan
Loosely define the pages needed for the site and links between them.
Create Project Scope
Scope is the way that you describe the objectives and functionalities of your web project. This gives you a clear picture of the site from technical point of view. It shows the boundaries, i.e. what the project will deliver and what it will not deliver. For larger projects, it can include departments involved, business processes and workflow's that will be touched, the data types incorporated, etc.
Design Your Home Page And One Of The Main Pages
Finally, it is the time to start designing your web pages. Start with creating your layout, sketch and design of the first page and at least one of the other major pages. Create content surrounding two or three key phrases per page and start developing content surrounding these keywords and phrases.
Select Design And Layouts For The Rest Of The Pages
If you are happy with the look and feel of your home page and the other page that you have created it is time to build layouts for rest of the pages.
Create The Rest Of Your Pages
Now is the time to develop the physical look of the rest of the pages. And don't forget to create Meta Tags for each of these pages.
Testing And Debugging
Now that the site is ready, it is time to test all the functionalities of the site, check your pages for broken links, and all other errors.
Let Others Review Your Site
If possible, at this stage, request your colleagues and friends to check out the site thoroughly and give you honest feedback. Make changes according to the suggestions that you deem extremely valuable.
Publish
Finally, the big day! Publish your website on the Internet. Make sure to issue a press release covering the usefulness of your eCommerce site.
Constantly Monitor And Update
In order to serve your audience better you will need to monitor your site. What is working well and what needs improvement? Update your website periodically with specific and quantifiable enhancement.
Promote
Having a great site is not good enough! You have to work on promoting your site so that enough targeted traffic visits your site to make it profitable.
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