eCommerce Online Stores
Do you need an online store that’s easy to use?
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The spend on internet advertising in the UK has now overtaken television advertising, and with the average internet shopper in the UK spending over £1800 online each year, it’s not difficult to see why. With widespread broadband availability (3G and 4G) and a positive consumer attitude to online purchasing, e-commerce can a bring huge competitive advantage to your business, allowing you to position your business alongside the likes of national retailers, creating a far more level playing field.
As a WordPress house our preferred platform is WooCommerce. Woo was acquired by Automattic in 2015 (the company that owns WordPress) which means WooCommerce is now part of the WordPress family. This has resulted in massive growth over the past year with WordPress and WooCommerce now powering over 37% of all online shops.
WordPress and WooCommerce
WooCommerce is a feature rich ecommerce platform based on WordPress. It can handle most of the requirements needed from an eCommerce platform. The advantage of it being built on WordPress is that, If the specific functionality a client needs isn’t there, it’s normally available through the WordPress community, where there are plugins for everything from accounting to marketing. Integration is also super simple, with plugins already available for all the major payment gateways and banks in UK and all major shipping and logistics companies.
WooCommerce is used by 1,ooo’s of major brands, including Subaru, The All Blacks, Singer Sowing Machines and Airstream Aeroplanes. It and can scale easily, meaning that as your E-commerce store grows, you don’t need to change platform. With over 1 Million WooCommerce stores in existence and the backup of the WordPress support community, Woo is the best option for SME’s who run WordPress as their website CMS. We are Shopify experts, if you would prefer to use Shopify to run your online store find out more here
Our ecommerce websites follow the same path as our normal website projects, but there’s a little more planning required to ensure we’ve captured all your requirements before we start, but don’t worry, we’ll take you through it step by step.
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Step 1. Hello and ListeningSome clients come to us with a brief, some without, either way the first step is listening to your ideas and the outline of your proposed project. After the "Listening" phase then it's working out what you need based on your commercial objectives. From here we can offer you a firm quotation.
- Step 2. Planning (but still listening)
What are you selling? Is it being offered domestic or International or both? We love the details so we delve into your product range, product options, online pricing strategy, shipping and postage requirements and possibly discount voucher schemes. From here we can give you an idea of timescale to start and complete your store launch.
- Step 3. The Layout Concept
Our designers get stuck in creating the concept of your site. If required we get a photographer in at this stage to photograph your products. You have total input to change the layout, design, colours etc.
- Step 4. Development
Once the website design is signed off we go to build, we pull together copy, images and any necessary code into a fully working website ready for integration.
- Step 5. Sandbox Testing
Extensive "Sandbox" testing is carried out. Copy, pricing and images are checked. Your customers expect a smooth experience so we integrate with proven 3rd parties for shipping calculations and secure payment collection. Once all sandbox testing has been complete we run tests with live transactions, we then go through our internal snagging process to ensure your site is in perfect working order.
- Step 6. Client Preview
Once we're happy with the site, we ask you for your feedback and we prepare the site for going live. We go through a detailed procedure to ensure a smooth successful transition for all.
- Step 7. Support & Training
We'll train your team, so they'll be able to update your site, manage products and orders and be competent at running your online store. We'll back you up all the way until you're 100% happy. Alternatively we can part manage or fully manage your store.
- Step 8. The Future
Woo Commerce is modern,flexible and future proof so adding functionality in the future is not a problem. As well as providing support we'll help you develop the site further as your business grows online. We also offer a range of marketing packages to promote your new business virtually anywhere online or via email newsletters.
