What You Need To Know Before Building An Online Store

Sometimes agencies change prices in the process of project development. Depending on the features they implement, the cost can increase astronomically. Сlients are not satisfied with such an approach.

Fortunately, you can easily avoid this problem by choosing an experienced agency that is driven by professionals. Take a closer look at who you work with. By the way, if you don’t know where to start searching for an agency, go to the DesignRush resource. It’s a B2B marketplace, which connects brands with agencies, categorized by their areas of expertise.

A development company has to be interested in the details of your business. First of all, it has to ask you about how the issue you want them to solve influences your business. It is the main characteristic of a good company. A good company provides solutions that help merchants to grow and earn more!

How do such agencies communicate with customers? First of all, a seasoned manager contacts you and tries to figure out all your requirements, challenges, and ideas. They compile all of them into a single document called “Project Requirements.”

Before starting a project, you will verify all the details in it as well as have an opportunity to make changes as necessary. After this, the final cost will be calculated. If you’re not going to expand the requirements, be sure that the price stays the same.

Usually, several specialists are working on a project. Besides front end & back end developers, there is a QA (Quality Assurance) engineer whose primary purpose is to ensure that all the features work correctly.

QA engineer finds bugs, checks the quality of the interface, views an online store on different browsers and screen sizes, examines how the functionality reflects business logic. If something fails to meet expectations, it will be remade. A project is considered done after requirements have been fully implemented.

So, you can be sure of the high quality of the website if there is a QA specialist on a project.

When it comes to eCommerce, the time it takes your website to load is crucial. Visitors are not going to wait until they can see a list of products. If this process takes more than 3 seconds, most users will leave your online store and go to a competitor. That’s why technologies such as AMP and PWA have been developed. They are aimed to significantly reduce the time people spend opening web pages.

QA engineers have a range of tools to check page loading times, and if they turn out to be too slow, you will get suggestions on how to change this.

According to eMarketer’s, 59% of eCommerce transactions are made through mobile. It makes smartphones important for your business. You have to take into account that the majority of your customers visit your website via mobile. In light of this, you’d better have a flexible website that adapts to any device and screen size.

You can ask an agency either to make a responsive design or to implement PWA technology. The first option means that your online store will be developed so that it adapts to any screen size. No matter if a customer uses a tablet, smartphone, or desktop. The second option has several advantages. It allows your website to act like an app, which also enhances its performance. This technology enables users to reach your online store even in case of a poor internet connection.

There are dozens of development agencies offering their services on the market, and choosing among them is quite a complicated task. You’ve probably already worked with an agency and found yourself unsatisfied with the result, working process, communication, etc. Next time you want to find a company you can rely on.

First of all, make a list of what you didn’t like about the previous agency. When you contact the representative of a new one, tell them about all the things you expect. You both have to choose the most convenient way to communicate and plan out a workflow.

Pay special attention to what the representative says. General phrases like “we have the best team,” “all our clients are satisfied,” don’t mean anything. A real professional will recommend solutions to you that will grow your business. Also, they will suggest how to avoid the problems you’ve faced formerly.

You may think that if you are not acquainted with programming languages, you won’t be able to keep the project under control. How can you know that the implemented functionality was the best choice? Could it be replaced with something better? Could it cost less? These are the questions business owners frequently ask themselves.

In truth, knowing technical terms can simplify communication since you understand the words programmers use. Otherwise, always ask an agency to develop ubiquitous language. It is a universal dictionary that includes all the words that are used within a project and their explanations. Developing an internal guide will help you to not confuse terms and clearly understand others.

Generally, if you make nothing in programming, there are two ways to solve the communication issue:

1. ✔ Hire somebody who has a deep understanding of a web store development process. This person will stand for your business goals and not let anybody bypass them. But this approach has a disadvantage. You will have to pay one salary more.
    
2. ✔ Rely on a project manager that will lead your project from an agency side. This specialist will become a mediator between you and developers. Typically, they can explain why you need a specific solution, know how to reach your goals, and have your best interests at heart. Everything you need to do is defining whether you are okay with working with a particular person.

Don’t be afraid of website promotion if you build it on Magento 2. The platform is highly optimized for SEO. It supports a range of features that increase your Google position so that it’s not hard to break into the top. Magento 2 allows for creating SEO-friendly URLs, adding alt attributes, filling metadata. Also, it enables you to come up with rich snippets, customize 404 pages, change robots.txt, etc.

Moreover, Magento 2 supports filter optimization. This feature automatically fills in checkboxes and displays matched products when a user submits a specific search query like “Black laptop Dell 17 inch screen.”

Building an online store is a time-consuming and complicated process that requires the support of specialists from a variety of different areas. Sometimes their collaboration has its weaknesses. Generally speaking, to avoid all the problems you could face while developing a web store, you should find a customer-focused agency that is interested in reaching your goals.

The article has been prepared with the professional help of Nikolai Vasin.