As a web developer on my account, I noticed that many customers do not realize that creating a website entails a significant investment. Many believe that creating an e-commerce website is easy, fast and does not require a large budget.
This is how we sometimes see people coming to meet me with a big smile and full of hope by saying: “I want a website selling online, I have a big budget … .1000 €” So in this article I will try to explain to you why this is unfortunately not so simple.
An online sales site is like a physical store:
Your physical store must be beautiful and attractive so that your customer is in good shape to buy and feel comfortable in your store. For an online store, it’s the same. The design must be well thought out, the important information must be clearly visible, the user must not get lost in your website and the navigation must be enjoyable.
Your physical store must be well placed in the city. It must be located where there is passage so that there is the world that passes in front of and between. An online store must be well referenced on search engines so that customers can easily find the website and make purchases.
Your physical store, you must take care of it. You must manage inventory, manage promotions, highlight products, process orders from your customers, manage returns, manage the after-sales service … All these tasks, you also find them in an online shop.
For all these reasons (and there are still many more), creating an online store is an important investment both in time and money. In the same way, it is not possible to open a physical store with an investment of 300 €, it will not be possible either to open an online store.
You understand an e-commerce site is not a website like any other. When we launch a website, there are two parts, the “technical” part and the “marketing” part.
The technical side:
These are the solutions necessary for the proper functioning of your website.
– Hosting the site
– The online payment system
– Logistics (supply management, storage space, order processing, ..)
– Commercial management (supplier management, …)
– Technical and evolutionary maintenance of your e-commerce solution.
The marketing side:
These are the solutions needed to generate traffic to the site and improve sales.
– Commercial animation (updating the catalog, cross-selling, promotional codes, …)
– Customer e-mailing campaigns (writing, sending newsletters)
– Analyzing the statistics of your website (thanks to web analytics).
– Possible creation of a blog to improve the communication of the brand
– SEO optimization
– Adwords campaign
– Price comparison management
– Affiliate campaigns
– Management of brand reputation in social networks.
The site is not a small item next to the business but becomes a part of the business itself. It is, therefore, necessary to adapt the whole enterprise to this change both in the organization of work and in terms of its human and financial resources. This also necessarily requires going through one or more external providers because this type of site requires many skills that you will rarely have internally in a small sme;)
In short … in summary: An e-commerce site requires qualified people as much for the creation as for the maintenance and to make live the site. That’s why you will need to spend time and a large budget.
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