Consequently, getting an eCommerce website nowadays is a must. It is a challenging task that requires a lot of time and energy. Let’s have a brief walkthrough of the website development steps.
Before anything else
Several decisions must be made before any development planning starts. In case you are an established off-line brand this stage significantly easier – the majority of these decisions have already been made in the past.
However, in case you are a start-up, you need to ensure you have a good understanding of what is the core of your brand, what are the products and services you are selling and who are you targeting them at. Until this is not crystal clear investing in development is going to waste time and money.
Decide on the basics
Once you are ready to progress onto actual website planning you need to get more specific on HOW you are actually going to do it. What is the budget for your website? What are the options available on that budget? For example, the budget can be a deal-breaker on deciding whether you want your website custom built or built from a template.
The timeframe is another crucial factor. It is impossible to make reasonable expectations without some dates in mind.
The final element that can affect further decision-making is related to your audience. Which platforms do they use, specifically? Are you targeting mobile users, or browser shoppers, or tablet customers, or all the above? Understanding these aspects is directly interrelated with the time and budget allocated for the project.
Development planning and design
After all the decisions in previous stages have been made the actual eCommerce development process planning can begin.
Purchasing a domain name is a good starting point. It is something that can interfere with design so it is a good practice to get this decided at early stages. Hunting for a good domain name can be done at previous stages – at the end of the day, this is something that can be replaced in the future.
It is now time to decide which design and functionality you want for your eCommerce store.
Both template and custom design websites require a lot of decision-making on design and technical specifications.
The design stage gets underestimated sometimes – as people tend to forget it also covers fundamental hardware and software decisions, the way data is stored and handled, structure, and future development considerations. Bringing in changes after this stage can lead to tremendous backlogs, so it is crucial to ensure you and your stakeholders are happy with the decisions made.
Development and implementation
This stage is where everything that has been planned and documented turns into written code. This tends to be the longest phase as development is always full of complexities and unexpected surprises.
To ensure smooth movement over the coding phase it is necessary that all the previous stages were fulfilled, and the development team has a clear view of specifications on what they are building.
Integration and testing
After the software has been built it goes into QA testing stages. There are multiple ways of doing it, but the idea is the same – the code base should pass the tests and prove to be clean, function well, coping with traffic volume, and meet business goals. This is also the stage where final bug fixing gets done.
Implementation and deployment
This is a release phase where the application gets moved into production. It is usually strictly followed in accordance with the deployment plan. Some eCommerce websites can be deployed straight away, whilst some require step-by-step implementation.
Maintenance and updates
Now that your eCommerce site is deployed and running, it must be constantly looked after. Polishing, bug-fixing, updates, and security patches are all elements of this phase. From now on, you have a perfect eCommerce store functioning, and now it is up to you on how and when you want to change it. You get a much better understanding of what needs to be modified and updated once your eStore is in operation and you can get real-world feedback.
Conclusion
As you can see, eCommerce website development is a complex and demanding process. Whether you have not started yet or are stuck at any of the stages, we at Wiserbrand are happy to help with eCommerce development services.
