Choosing a Gold Coast Ecommerce Website Designer

First Define Your Ecommerce Needs

You are good at your business and want to take it online. But with the miriad of Website Designers promoting themselves, how do you choose a Gold Coast Ecommerce Website Designer that is right for your business? Lets face it, anyone can install a cms and load a theme to create a "website". Designing and developing an ecommerce website to meet your business needs and the expectations of your customers requires a whole different level of skills. The difficulty for a business owner is identifying who has those skills.

So you are a Gold Coast business looking to sell products online. How do you choose the best ecommerce website designer for your business? The answer unfortunately is, you can't. At least you can't until you define what your ecommerce website needs to do for your business, now and for the life of the website.

Define Your Ecommerce Website Needs

Remember your business needs and the business environment can and will change with time, sometimes in a very short time (remember Covid). Don't restrict you website to what you need right now.

Not all website platforms will meet all of the needs of a business so you do need to be quite granular in defining your needs. eg. Do you have a particular courier that you want to use for delivery of your products and do you need real time shipping calculations at checkout? If you choose a website platform that does not have a shipping plugin for that courier you may end up spending thousands of dollars extra to develop that functionality if it is even possible.

Document all needs, including things that you think are obvious because they may not be to someone else. Anything you don't tell your website designer at time of getting a quote could become an expensive variation of your contract later. Try to avoid end of project conversations along the lines of:

Q. How do I..........

A. You never told us that you wanted.......

Considerations for your ecommerce website

Shipping is often the hardest part of an ecommerce project yet it is usually the last thing the website owner thinks about.

Shipping considerations you need to consider include:

Size and weight variations in products
Do you need real time price calculations?
Is fixed price or Free Shipping an option?
Do you have a preferred carrier?
Do you need different carriers for different destinations?
Do you need different carriers for different products or product combinations?
Do you want to offer Click and Collect?

Other aspects of your ecommerce website that need to be defined and documented include:

Sales platforms - will you only sell from your own website or will you be selling from multiple platforms such as Amazon, Ebay, Social Media, Markets, or a traditional brick and mortar store?
If selling at markets or from a physical store do you need real time updates of available stock on the website or POS integration?
Stock Control - will your stock control be managed on the website or another platform integrated to the website?
Do you need sales to be integarted with an ERP or accounting system?
Product Range and variations - how many different categories of product will you be selling and what variations are possible (eg. sizes, colours, packs etc)
Do you have product images available?
Do you have different images for each colour variation?
Are you selling customisable products - eg. Tee shirts or coffee mugs with custom print
Do you want to display product videos or 360 degree images?
What payment methods do you intend accepting?
Will you be offering discounts to specified user groups - clubs, wholesale customers etc
Will you offer discount coupons?
How do you want customers to contact you - email, live chat, messenger etc
Do you have needs specific to your business?

Once you have documented your needs you will have a checklist to go over with potential website designers. Remember, not all website platforms will be able to meet your needs so be wary of single platform developers (ie. developers who only use Wordpress or Wix or Shopify etc). We regularly are called in to rescue failing projects because a wedsite designer has over sold their skills or has used a platform not suited to the project. Look for a developer who has experience developing ecommerce websites with the features you need. Ask what platform they would choose for this project and why. Also ask what additional features they may suggest. For example at Websites With Purpose we now always recommend including WCAG Accessibility features.

Websites With Purpose have a history of successfully ecommerce website design in Wordpress, Joomla and Shopify. Projects range from simple one product sites to complex sites with multiple user groups, pricing levels and multiple integrations with other systems. We are Gold Coast based with customers all over Australia as well as the Philipines, Middle East, UK and South Africa. Consultaions can be online or if you are a Gold Coast business owner and are more comfortable meeting face to face we are your local Gold Coast Ecommerce Website Design choice.