Archive for the ‘eCommerce’ Category

In the UK alone there are more than 11 million Smartphone users and this number continues to grow daily. This has led to a complete change in how users access the internet services and buy online.

Do you have a mobile version of your web site and is your business in a position to benefit from this rapidly expanding and evolving sector? If the answer is “No”, you need to get in touch with an expert right away.

Why do I need a mobile website for my Ecommerce store?
In these rapidly changing times, all your potential customers have started surfing the net while they are walking, travelling on a bus, train or tube or whenever they have time to spare.

The internet has essentially started to move from desktop PCs, Laptops to mobile phones and tablets. Already more than 15% of all web searches come from mobile devices. If you cannot offer a mobile friendly site then you could potentially be losing business as a result of the very poor user experience from trying to access a standard website on a Smartphone.

Most mobile user’s experience of websites even on the best devices leaves a lot to be desired and companies need to be aware of this and need to optimise their sites for the small screen and limited bandwidth.

Among the major mobile usability issues that can be identified are:
Slow load times – The majority of pages take much too long to load, especially on non 3G phones, but even on iPhones and Blackberries the browsing is a lot slower than an average PC because of bandwidth restrictions on a GSM network. This can lead to the user being reluctant to request additional pages.

Too much scrolling – Small mobile screens can increase the amount of scrolling and this means that users can miss things on the websites. Moreover, they are likely to skip scrolling down the site and miss important parts of what you have to say.
Bloated pages – This can lead to big pictures, long pages etc and all these cause issues for the mobile internet user.

Javascript crashes – A lot of rich media features and videos cannot and do not work on mobile devices.

We have a team of highly qualified web professionals, who can design you a Mobile Website. We can deliver a mobile solution for your customers by designing for you a mobile enabled website for your ecommerce solutions that specifically keeps the Tablet and Smartphone user in mind.

The site will provide the essentials of your business to the mobile website visitor, offering a better user experience and making it easier for users to navigate and buy through your site. This will ensure good sales and customer loyalty. Your new m-Commerce site will allow your customers to buy online and allow you to keep your site fresh and up to date with products and information.

A common question we get asked and generally we tell people that making money via an ecommerce website is hard and if you have a ‘traditional’ business brouchure website it may not be cost effective to have a ‘add on’ ecommerce system to sell products you may want to sell. Obviously if you have unique / bespoke products then it may be a great idea to sell products online by adding a ecommerce system to your website but generally the cost / admin / effort of setting up an ecommerce system and promoting and running it will put off all but the dedicated especially if ‘selling’ products isnt the main part of your business. The following exchange demonstrates this:

Q What are the implications if we were to add an e-commerce page for the existing website? Is it worth doing in your opinion and what costs are involved?

A If you simply want to sell the sundries you sell to clients once they visit you then I would probably suggest the costs involved make this not worth it for you but you can have a ‘full ecommerce’ system where you can control all products / prices / stock etc as an add on to your current website for between £1250 – £1750  or you can have a ‘static ecommerce page’ if you have a limited number of products where we can manually add them to a page for you (there will need to be manual changes for new products / changes etc).

Example of full ecommerce system example page www.jk-wedding-rings.co.uk

Example of paypal ecommerce system www.perfect-skin.co.uk/shop/

The cost of the paypal ecommerce system depends on how many products you have and you will need to have a business paypal account and provide us with a spreadsheet of products (the spreadsheet would need to prodide all product ids, titles, descriptions, prices and photos of your products) If you have over 20-30 products then a full ecommerce system would be the only one I would suggest.

Just for interest here is an initial draft proposal for a website design project for an e-commerce website.

We propose to take your existing website, transfer it and redesign it (using the current ‘look’ ) to be a standard website (non-flash) with a customised blog, it will have a master gallery and 2-3 photos galleries including contact form and customised blog, the website will be optimised for the search engines.

Your project cost  includes hosting / transfer / design / website setup / ecommerce / support / seo.

Will give you the site access / and confirmation of deposit / project commencement shortly

We love doing ecommerce websites and here is an example conversation to demonstrate what you may be thinking and our responses to your queries to get your ecommerce website online and earning you money.

[Giftware Company] We run a  giftware company. Trading for 1 years so we  are a new start up company based in Billericay in Essex. Can someone please contact me to discuss our requirements on a new website our product range is cufflinks and wedding accessories. We are looking at Up to 2000 products, so no restriction on pages. Will require full payment facilities. Please advise styles and costings. Examples would be good

[Delicious Webdesign] Thanks for the email and your questions. It sounds like you need a full ecommerce website, giving you full control over stock, orders, customers, prices, shipping and inventory. The ecommerce solutions we can offer you have virtually unlimited categories and products and gives you a variety of payment options, we use industry leading solutions ensuring you get a ‘search engine friendly’ ecommerce site that is easy to use and administrate.

Here is some more info on the website you require http://www.delicious-webdesign.com/ecommerce-solutions.html and http://www.delicious-webdesign.com/website-packages.html#ecommerce

Depending on other requirements your costings for this will be between £1500 – £2000.  Hope that sounds simple and easy to understand and look forward to answering any questions you may have

[Giftware Company] I’m looking at a max of £1750. I’m looking for eccomerce site for selling my giftware stuff (cufflinks, wedding stuff, etc) looking at eventually listing 2000 products, so obviously no restrictions on how many pages. would need full payment facilities using paypal  & bank cards etc..Would list all products and other information details, so that may help  reduce the workload and price. let me know what you think.

[Delicious Webdesign] As we have some spare development time coming up in a few weeks and want to allocate this time in advance, We have decided to give you a ecommerce site for £1750 but you would have to add the categories / products yourself and have to  accept less customisation and supply us with clear instructions on your specific website requirements (if you have any) including initial categories and you should agree to having paypal as your payment method and supply us with the relevant details (details of how to do this will be sent after project commences). Please complete the attached document (two formats supplied) and then pay the deposit for your ecommerce solution (deposit is normally 50% or minimum of £750 so in your case its the full payment).  Please ensure you give us your full registration address and website name you require and we can start planning your project within days. Any text (webcopy) you want to give us (about us page?) you need to supply that before the project commences.

[Giftware Company]  I’m currently looking at a few Essex website designers. I’m interested but unfortunately your price is above the budget i have set aside for a start up.  I have couple of other website quotes coming back. Would you have any sample / demos of previous sites you have done, paypal ecommerce business websites would be good?

[Delicious Webdesign] Ok hope you look at quality and SEO for the site long term instead of just cost as it may end up being a mistake, we have taken over lots of sites where the ‘cheap’ and quick builds have ended up not earning the client any money / sales for years. If it comes down purely to cost we may be able to drop if you can commit quickly to fill up our development time.

Here you go, some ecommerce websites:

www.cranberries-gifts.co.uk

www.vintagengland.co.uk

www.dollyrockerkids.co.uk

www.jaykay-blinds.co.uk

www.jk-wedding-rings.co.uk

www.kokyoto.com

These were all started within the last year, a couple are not finished just yet but hope this gives you some idea that we can produce an ecommerce gift shop for you, regadless of what you decide we would be really interested to see how you get on and if you need any advice please ask now or in the future. If we dont hear from you we wont ‘chase’ you for a decision but we simply want to keep in touch and plan our workload for the coming months and won’t be offended if you are not in a position to start the website design project just yet, but if you are, feel free to email or phone us to discuss further.

If you have an existing website that accepts paypal payments online the following factors may be on your mind or affect you:

1 Previously you may have used your instore credit and debit card payments, a debit card transaction is approx 21 pence, credit cards are approx 1 to 2 %. With paypal the charges on a £2000 product are about £26.00, which is a big lump out of the profit margin.
2 Clients can pay via their credit / debit cards using the paypal system but many of them will ring up and think that they have to pay via paypal leaving you to explain to them that if they look they can pay by card.
3 You believe that many of your customers tend to be the more wealthier and do not have paypal accounts and think this might be putting people off.
4 You may wonder if there is a way you can just go to using credit/debit cards in preference of the paypal system,
5, You think you would really like people directed through the card system due to the high charges.

Our General response would be:

To accept credit card payments online you can opt to accept credit card payments directly on your site if you want this then you will need an Internet Merchant Account that invokes a monthly fee plus (normally) a transaction fee. The majority of our eCommerce solutions including our full ecommerce sites and ‘part ecommerce sites’ the client normally opts to use paypal due to the competitive fees and the lack of ongoing monthly fees.

If a client wants to move away from Paypal completely the website would need to be to be a full ecommerce site, but the benefits of that is that it would give the client 100% control over their stock / costings, postage and payment methods but the cost of the new site could possibly not be attractive for a website client that only will sell the occasional product online.

There is another solution which is Paypal payments pro but its recommended only for businesses that have online payments in excess of £1000 per month, it currently costs £20 per month plus a transaction fee. This will allow you to take credit card payments directly on your site.

In general if you have a site that accepts payment via paypal buttons (Paypal – payments standard) you have the following choices if you are considering change:

1, Redesign your website to be full ecommerce website along with an Internet merchant account (£££ plus ongoing £)
2, Implement payments pro from Paypal (£ plus ongoing £)
3, Keep existing system (free plus no ongoing costs apart from cost time time for changes to product prices and the addition of new products)

Had some interesting eCommerce sites go live recently,

1, Contemporary Modern Art Website http://www.duckmania.co.uk/
2, Oriental Umbrellas offering a fabulous range of umbrellas http://www.oriental-umbrellas.com/
3, Kokyoto Textures, giving people that play in online worlds an opportunity to buy graphical textures http://www.kokyoto.com/ (will be completed shortly)
4, Designer Children’s Clothes Website dollyrockerkids (will be completed shortly)

If you want an e-commerce website then we can allow you to sell your goods to the world and make money on the web.