Online Store Development and Promotion: What Drives Sales
Online shopping has grown dramatically: from 2018 to 2021, global e-commerce sales reached $2.8â4.6 trillion. Economists predict that by 2040, 95% of all purchases will be made through online transactions. Sales are growing on marketplaces and in B2B e-commerce. This growth in online sales has been driven by online stores, websites where people can find goods and services in many different categories.
Marketing research by the consulting firm Gartner confirmed that in 2020, 85% of commercial transactions were completed without human involvement. In other words, businesses worldwide are actively automating sales, attracting new customers and expanding B2B and B2C e-commerce for consumer services. This means an online store lets you sell your products and services through automated product search, order forms and delivery arrangements. Turnkey website and online store development from the Moveiton web studio will help you get such a system up and running. Our experienced developers build online stores of any complexity, promote them and provide technical support at every stage of building a successful online business.
How Does a Standard Online Store Work, and What Are Custom E-commerce Solutions?
To a customer, an online store is an ordinary website where any product can be found using filters and categories. The chosen item goes into the cart, where the customer arranges delivery and pays. A shipping notification arrives on their phone, and the customer waits for delivery. To make the store easy to understand, it uses a standard structure and layout, so it works simply and clearly. Such stores usually sell products from a single seller or manufacturer. They are the easiest and most affordable type of online store to build.
If your company sells products from different brands that set their own delivery and purchase terms, a customized online store model is used. These stores may also operate as marketplaces or sell products with complex configurations.
This kind of store relies on automated product search, and manual work is kept to a minimum. The site provides detailed real-time information on products and services, orders and shipments, customers and suppliers. In this case, Moveiton specialists can offer standard and custom solutions, including online store development tailored to your needs.
What Are B2B and B2C E-commerce Systems, and How Do They Work?
B2B and B2C online stores serve different types of buyers. B2B involves wholesale suppliers and customers who use services regularly and buy materials in large volumes. Such stores focus on maintaining mutually beneficial relationships with wholesale customers. B2C serves shoppers who make impulse purchases. This business is driven by advertising, attractive promotions and offers on related products. What sets these stores apart is their structure and the way they interact with users.
If you want to open your own B2B or B2C online store, it should include the following features:
- easy navigation, access from mobile apps and desktop, filters, and product cards with descriptions;
- a PriceLock feature that lets customers get a personal discount and buy at a special price;
- integration with a CRM or ERP system;
- seminars and training on products and services for the target audience;
- a convenient interface for repeat purchases;
- a choice of payment methods;
- delivery orders from warehouses (by truckload or pallet);
- 24/7 order placement;
- order tracking through a personal account;
- a customer profile with past and current orders and their status, access to customer support and the option to repeat an order;
- third-party tools for convenience: a chatbot and a mobile version.
Our team can build an online store for both wholesale and retail customers. To give customers constant access to products and services, our developers add a companion mobile app built from a single codebase as a hybrid app for iOS and Android. Integrations let the online store work with software that automates business operations and accounting, such as 1C or Microsoft Dynamics.
If you want to order an online store, or have decided to order a turnkey one, we will integrate the following systems:
- accounting, inventory, transportation, order and delivery management (ERP);
- product information management, with simultaneous updates of product cards and descriptions across all your stores (PIM);
- automated handling of customer inquiries such as discussions, questions and complaints (Helpdesk);
- automated order location tracking and other logistics operations performed by the company, intermediaries and customers;
- systems required for your specific industry.
For turnkey online stores, we recommend a custom system built on our CMF Atom, with the features the client needs.
What Are Must-Have Features for an Online Store?
If you want your online store built as professionally as possible, you should come to us. We build online stores with new technologies in mind, including digital assistants. For example, chatbots that run on the site around the clock and connect to the messengers your customers use (Viber, Telegram). They help users place orders, answer practical questions and provide full details on promotions, special offers, and shipping and delivery times. This reduces spending on managers' salaries and cuts the time needed to place and pay for orders. In the past, to learn about a product, a customer had to call a company representative, who would advise them, help find the product, take the order and arrange delivery. Today a chatbot handles all of these tasks. Recognition features automatically identify the request and speed up customer service.
Today, chatbots are widely used when building online stores in projects such as:
- Visual search. Customers search for a product by image when they don't know its name or brand. This type of search is used on Pinterest and on sites selling furniture, clothing and car parts, and it can cut search time to 1 minute.
- Audio search. Customers search using voice queries.
According to statistics, 62% of surveyed millennials will soon prefer visual search. In social surveys, 85% of respondents said they look for new clothes or furniture only through visual search, and most people (about 93%) buy only after seeing the product. Finally, this feature has increased the overall revenue of online marketplaces by 30%.
The growing use of text and voice queries affects SEO practices. Keywords are built around FAQs.
In the US, 43% of users use voice search; in Ukraine, by comparison, 36% of voice queries come from people aged 20 to 35. This trend suggests that within a few years voice search will take the lead in its field, and in the near future 30% of queries will be made by voice and image alone.
Many systems, utilities, private businesses, security firms and insurance companies now use new capabilities. They apply RPA document recognition solutions powered by artificial intelligence and computer scanning, which are also used to issue insurance policies, modern documents and travel papers. These tools reduce errors and the need for human involvement in control processes. New data input and output systems let people complete documents, insurance, certificates and receipts through chatbots and mobile apps, which tech-savvy users really appreciate.
Another marketing strategy for promoting your sales platform is using tools that send messages, pop-up notifications, ads and text messages by email, phone or messenger. This is one of the top 3 uses of artificial intelligence in online store development, and it is what makes the most successful and profitable projects possible. The system recognizes the user, remembers the products they were interested in and suggests similar items. AI personalization brings online marketplaces 38% in additional revenue. So the better personalization is set up, the more effective your customer relationships become, increasing profits and attracting new buyers.
Major global companies use personalization in their marketing every year. So if you want your product to become a sales leader, your website and online store development should include AI personalization right now. Moveiton specialists will help you with this. Before you build an online store, we recommend consulting our managers so you don't throw money away.
What Is User Categorization?
Online store development can include dividing users into categories, depending on the audience's interests and needs. Regular, wholesale and one-time buyers can get different terms of cooperation, prices and payment methods. Your store can look different for wholesale and retail buyers, or combine B2B and B2C customers. Pages will differ in the number of offers, product price range and functionality. The "Categorization" option helps identify wholesale buyers you can build profitable partnerships with. You can see a ranking of customers who bring high profits, who works with you and how much, and with whom cooperation is not worthwhile.
How Is an Online Store Built?
Before we start building a new platform for selling your products and services, we study the competitive market and develop a custom strategy. That's why ordering a quality online store is not as quick and easy as it may seem at first. We build online stores with a view to generating profit and growing your customer base.
Our web studio offers two types of website development: custom and out-of-the-box.
When creating custom commercial solutions, we don't rely on template schemes; instead, we offer profitable strategies and new solutions. We aim for a result that makes you say "wow."
A custom online store is a fully individual project with a unique design and architecture. We actively use modern technologies: PHP and its frameworks, CodeIgniter and Yii. We use every available means to set up scaling and plan protection against overloads. That's why an online store that costs several times more than another differs not only in development speed but also in quality.
Features of custom development:
- the capacity to handle requests from millions of users;
- non-standard technical solutions;
- standardized and systematized protocols, documents and tasks.
For small and medium-sized retail businesses, the best choice is a turnkey out-of-the-box online store built with a cloud website builder or messaging tools. Such projects are completed quickly using ready-made modules, and new features and options can be added for convenience. This model suits small, growing stores with modest traffic and only a few thousand products.
What Should You Consider When Building an Online Store?
To order a turnkey online store, the client provides information about the company and its product range, shares the concept and chooses the type of project. There are three options for building an online store:
- launching from scratch;
- improving an existing store;
- relaunching on a new platform.
You can order an online store from Moveiton using any of these options.
Development principles:
- defining business objectives;
- choosing the right architecture and platform engine;
- writing the technical specification;
- creating a practical design;
- responsive HTML5 coding of design mockups to web standards;
- launch with a content management system (Atom, WordPress, OpenCart);
- filling the store with well-planned, high-quality and unique content;
- using available integration tools;
- developing an SEO strategy;
- setting up automated marketing tools (loyalty programs, bonus offers, promotions);
- ensuring reliable and secure operation;
- testing the turnkey online store.
At our web studio, you can order website development services and an online store whose price depends on the number and complexity of tasks. A Moveiton specialist will help you build an online store professionally, with a well-thought-out concept and a custom design, and will code the pages correctly using up-to-date technologies. Every client gets an official warranty that the project works. If bugs or failures occur, our developers fix them quickly. We build turnkey online stores of any complexity in Kyiv, and clients can also get maintenance, support, promotion and further development of their site.
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