eCommerce Websites
eCommerce, short for electronic commerce, is a transaction of buying or selling online, which has become extremely popular in the last 20 years. Once an industry that required extensive skill, capital and business savvy to participate in, it has now become a method of doing business that is accessible to nearly anyone.
This level of ease to participate has, however, created an extremely diluted market, making the new challenge being found among the crowded marketplace, standing out, and being remembered. Those with great strategy, marketing, and industry niches are still greatly rewarded for their efforts, in this, the modern gold rush.
eCommerce is Cost Effective
Unlike brick and mortar stores, startup costs are dramatically less, which greatly reduces the risk of starting or expanding a business. When you consider the cost of having a professional eCommerce website developed ($3-10,000+) compared to leasing a commercial space and building the space out for retail ($50-250,000+), it’s no wonder why online stores have become so popular. Owners of brick and mortar stores are also getting into the eCommerce game, knowing that, for comparatively little, they can dramatically increase their audience and potential sales.
Shopper Experience
You can think of an eCommerce website as an online storefront. It is the face of your business and, just like walking into any physical store, shoppers expect a certain experience. They don’t want to have to hunt around to find what they are looking for, and they expect good customer service if they have an issue with a purchase. It’s critical to think ahead about how to make your web store easy to navigate, purchase from, and make returns to.
Traditional advertising techniques don’t always work, so you’ll want to be careful not to seem like a pushy salesperson, but rather have the emphasis be on customer service, as in “how can I serve you and your needs/wants?”. The temptation is to think once someone is on your site they are a captive audience that you can advertise to. Unfortunately, that attitude is what makes people hit the back button, which often happens in less than 5 seconds.
Bigcommerce Hosted eCommerce Platform
Historically websites had to be hosted on a server that was hired by the owner of the site. This gave you ultimate control and ultimate responsibility, aka liability. Imagine if your eCommerce site was hacked and your clients’ credit card information was now in the hands of the hacker.
Bigcommerce is a hosted eCommerce solution, meaning that your site lives on their servers which they maintain tight security on. It also allows them to roll out improvements and additions to the platform seamlessly with no impact on your site’s appearance or performance.
Built in eCommerce Tools
All Bigcommerce sites come with full eCommerce functionality including category pages, product detail pages, a shopping cart, checkout function, shipping and tax calculation, payment processing support, and client pages where your customers can check on their orders, change their preferences and even reorder items. The administration area allows the store owner to manage all the aspects of running their business: listing products, making content changes, fulfilling orders, optimizing for SEO, running sales and coupon codes, and much more. And, if it sounds a bit complex there’s no need to worry. All Bigcommerce plans include 24/7 phone support from their team of support experts.
Bigcommerce Seattle
Being just 90 mile north of Seattle, we do a lot of work with eCommerce companies all along the Puget Sound. Find out why we are the only Bigcommerce Preferred Partner in all of Washington State. Click here.
Custom Bigcommerce Websites
At Peter James Web Design Studio, we pride ourselves on building some of the most beautiful and easy to use Bigcommerce storefronts available. Your business is unique, and we want to build your website to reflect your core strengths and unique value. We offer a free one hour consultation to discuss your business and your online goals, and then find out which of our website packages and upgrades are right for helping you launch or grow your business. Call us today to schedule your consultation, or send us a message with the form below.
We look forward to hearing from you.