Ecommerce website is used for selling products which is a very different setup from normal blogging sites.Most eCommerce websites consists of user interface, administration settings, store data in a database and follow a work-flow of processes. Let’s study more about an ecommerce site.
The Basics
An eCommerce website consists of a group of people who has thier own respective roles. They are
- The Customer – who buys the product
- The Website Owner – who ships bought products & gets paid
- The eCommerce Application – an interface between customer and website owner
- The Payment Gateway – who handles payment transactions
- The Business Bank Account – Website owner’s business bank account
Below is the flow chart on how these all people play in an succesful ecommerce site:
- Customer visits the site/app and browses product catalogue
- Customer adds product to basket
- Customer buys product and enters check-out process on the eCommerce application
- The eCommerce Application contacts a Payment Gateway
- Payment Gateway provides secure customer shipping and payment details entry form
- Customer securely enters shipping and payment information
- Payment Gateway contacts Website Owners’ Bank Account
- Bank Account processes payment transaction and returns control to Payment Gateway
- Payment Gateway returns Customer to eCommerce Application
- eCommerce Application notifies Customer of successful (or failed) payment
- eCommerce Application notifies Website Owner of purchase
- Website Owner ships product to Customer
apart from this simple flow chart theres alot of more steps involved in each step.
Things involved in an ecommerce website development
1. What will you be selling?
The first step you need to do is think what types of things you’ll be selling on-line. this may be physical items that require packaging and posting or digital products or services which you provide online and the one which doesnt require shipping. You also need to idenmtify how may products or types of services are you going to offer, will it be Local or International etc. you also need to think about “How many things are you selling and to whom?”
2.The eCommerce Application:
An eCommerce application is a simply a Content Management System (CMS). Similar to updating posts and blogs, ecommerce website includes updating products and services and supporting commerce functions. The ecommerce website can be divided into two parts, the front-end or shop-front where the customer can browse and buy goods and the back-end where you login to an administration dashboard and manage the website options, including the product catalogue.
3.The Product Catalogue:
A product catalogue is where all your goods-for-sale data lives. It consists of product name, description, cost, stock level, pictures etc. It shoiws all the products you have to a customer. Product catalouges can be created within ecommerce application through product catalogue interface in the Administration Dashboard. e-Commerce catalogue offers a simpler solution while still covering the essential requirements you’ll need to sell stuff on-line like adding discount codes, customer reviews, product videos etc.
4.The Admin Dashboard:
Admin Dashboard. is a special web page on your site where entering a username and password will take you to the advanced options of your eCommerce website. From here you can update almost every aspect of the website including accessing the product catalogue, shipping costs, currency exchange rates, payment gateways, sales reports etc. Admin dashboard consists of many featires and tools which help you in running an succesful ecommerce startup.
5.The Shop Design:
An ecommerce website requires a better shop design which will look and feel like a fit to your business brand. This shop design is very important because it creates the first impression in the minds of the customer as soon as the customer vistis your website. Shop design should be user fridnly, easy to understand which helps in retainig of customers and boosts sales. Shop design invlude logo, background colour, text colour, admin and user pages etc.
6.Domain Name and Website Hosting:
You need an domain name fro displaying website and hosting plan to store all the website files. Always choose a perfect hosting and domain name for your website with guaranteed uptimes and dont fall for free webhostings as they may affect your site reputation adn inject virus to your files. Many of the cheaper hosting plans that are offered to you when purchasing a domain name, do not support databases or database applications. They may charge an extra setup and yearly fee for setting this up. So it’s usually best not to purchase a hosting plan until you’ve spoken to a rofessional web designer and they have given you an idea of the best solution to implement.
7.Bank Accounts:
Bank accounts are required for Payment Gateway services to handle the payment transactions and get the customers money into your bank account. You can use personal Bank accountsas well, but in some countries like UK, you need to have a business bank account to legally trade as a business.
8.Payment Gateways:
A payment gateway is a service offered by a company that handles the payment part of the eCommerce application when a customer proceeds to the checkout to purchase an item. The payment gateway collects the customers details and payment information securely and contacts your business bank account to complete the money transaction. This is great for security too as your customers banking details aren’t kept on your eCommerce website, so that’s one less thing to worry about securing. There are many different payment gateway services with different features and options and they all charge a fee for their use. This fees includes a setup charge and a % commission of the total price of a transaction.
9.Securing The Data
If you’re using a payment gateway then the good news is it’s unlikely you’ll be storing sensitive customer payment details on your eCommerce website.Those types of data will be kept securely in your payment gateway account. Of course you will be collecting a whole lot of other important and confidential customer information such as name, email, perhaps address, likes, dislikes, a username and password for your site. All this information needs to be kept secure and your eCommerce application will help with that. The Administration Dashboard will have lots of sections that control who and what can see parts of the collected data.But that’s not the only security you’ll have to think about. Do you know what happens when you fill out a form on a website and click on submit? If you have a look at the top of the web browser in the address bar you’ll see the website’s URL address.
Most sites will start with http:// (For those that want to know, URL stands for Uniform Resource Location and HTTP stands for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol) Any web page starting with http:// is transferring data to and from a web server in Plain Text. This means, that the web page contents, code, images, text, form data are all sent in a format that’s readable to humans. OK, it may not be that readable, but in essence all the information is there in English characters (or whatever language character set your website uses).
When your web page is sent to or received from a web server, there isn’t a 1-to-1 direct connection between your website and the server. The web page data is transferred through hundreds of networks across different countries and through thousands of routing computers and other network devices before arriving at your computer.This means that at any point during it’s travel, your web page data has the potential to be intercepted and read by whomever. There isn’t much you can do about the interception part but there is something you can do to make it a darn lot harder for somebody to read and use your eCommerce web page data.
So you need to buy an SSL certificate and install it into your eCommerce website and it encrypts your web page data. You’ll now notice that parts of your website, likely those that require personal form data to be collected and sent, now start with https://.We would strongly advise you buy an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate and get this installed and configured for use with your hosting account and eCommerce website.
Finally,
Creating an eCommerce website requires a fair amount of planning. You’ll need a good web design and web development team to implement your business venture.
Progressio is a leading ecommerce website development agency which have created over 100 ecommerce websites. We help you start your eCommerce website journey today. Contact Us now today to get a free consultation now. Click here.
