Owning an e-commerce website opens up new perspectives for entrepreneurs. An online store allows them to enter new markets, build a loyal customer base and, in addition, acquire customers at a lower price. However, building a website is not easy. You often need to spend a lot of time to choose a reliable website company, that is, from the wide range of software development service providers.
To find the best technology partner for your e-commerce business, you therefore need to know what the fundamentals are about choosing a web development company.
How to choose a good web design company
When starting your business online, finding the right agency and spotting bad IT teams is essential. Bad web development agencies are characterized by poor design as well as poor coding, offering customers wrong e-commerce solutions, failure deadlines and costly project estimation.
Working with the wrong team can result in missed deadlines, poor quality of work, and you will waste money and time. There are important criteria you need to consider to protect your business from potential mistakes.
Here are the best practices for choosing the best e-commerce team you can ask for your online business success. Let's start!
Why is it difficult to choose a website company?
Choosing the best website company for your future online business can be challenging as there are thousands of options on the market.
In most cases, e-commerce agencies either target a particular business sector or accumulate their experience working with a specific platform or e-commerce solution.
All e-commerce teams are very different, offering different services of varying quality.
How do you choose the best agency? For this, it is vital to know what kind of services and solutions you need.
Such an understanding will help you narrow your search and increase your chances of finding the best technology partner.
What do website companies offer?
As we said above, each agency typically has a narrow field of technology and expertise. To make your search easier, at least you need to be aware of what they can offer you.
Template-based websites
A web template is a collection of HTML web pages. Anyone can add their text and images to these pre-designed web pages to create a website. These websites are usually built with CSS and HTML.
The main advantage of these websites is that anyone can set up their website or shop online without any help from developers and designers.
Some developers also use this solution for web development. With a template-based website, you can tell the world about your business or services as it will be ranked by search engines.
WordPress website and a purchased template design is the most popular way to set up a pre-built website. This approach allows you to develop a website or an online store on a limited budget and in a short period of time.
Customized solutions
Some development companies specialize in custom websites. This means that they create a website from scratch according to their needs.
The development process is complicated as it involves target audience research, custom feature development and design.
Custom website development requires significant time and budget. Still, a personalized website is an excellent solution for developed brands and large companies that want to provide visitors with a unique experience.
e-commerce sites
E-commerce sites allow owners to sell goods or services online. Online stores can work on existing platforms or can be customized. In the IT market, companies that only deal with the development of online stores are called e-commerce agencies.
Your experience can include many e-commerce platforms, payment gateways and other solutions from the online retail sphere.
The online store can offer basic features like a shopping cart, product catalog and payment gateways or include more complex integrations like social networking, CRM Integration or online marketplace and so on.
It takes more time to create e-commerce sites, even based on templates, compared to regular sites. Because? Because the team adds a product catalog and tests all features to ensure the online store is bug free.
full service companies
Full-service agencies consist of several departments. For this, they offer a wide variety of services. A typical full-service company includes development, design, management and quality control departments.
In this way, they can create not just a website, but also design, mobile apps and custom features with further maintenance.
Thus, the customer receives an “all in one” solution. It is more convenient for future site owners to work with a full-service team than to control the workflow of a self-employed developer and designer.
Also think about web design
A custom website design gives online businesses a competitive edge over generic website templates.
If you want to develop a custom design for your website, you should look for an agency that specializes in UI / UX design. Below, we share tips for finding the right web design company.
The usability of the online store is very important, that is, it influences the shoppers' experience in your online store.
Ecommerce site usability affects many critical business metrics such as conversion rate, time on page, and bounce rate.
Choosing the right web design company for business or the best B2B Website Design Companies the help of Design Rush can be even easier, it's worth checking it out!
More importantly, many of these metrics affect your online store's SEO. To do this, ask your future e-commerce team what approach they take to provide your prospects with the best experience possible.
Steps to Choosing a Web Development Company
It's not as easy to choose a development company as it sounds. We can compare the development of a website or an online store building a house.
If you hire the wrong experts to build the foundation, who will use the wrong materials, your future project will fail and then you will be dissatisfied.
Thus, to avoid such situations when developing your website, we share the most important aspects in choosing the best e-commerce team.
1. Check out the company's work portfolio
Assessing the experience of an e-commerce team is the central aspect that the future website owner must do. Knowing the expertise of your e-commerce team will help you understand if this agency can meet your needs for your next project.
Thus, the first step is to check the team's portfolio. In most cases, IT companies share their projects on their websites. By checking the portfolio, you will then assess the functionality and usability of your projects live, estimate development and design skills.
An agency's portfolio may include similar work that can meet your needs and expectations. In addition, you will receive insights into the company's experience in a particular area.
2. Read customer reviews
The best way to find out about a company's IT competence is from ratings of its past customers
These assessments will give you information about the agency in relation to projects similar to yours. That is, such a survey will give you an idea of your ranking among others in the industry.
3. Ask for customer references about the website company
All established web development companies have past clients. It is good practice to contact a team's customers and ask about their experience.
If former clients are satisfied with the services provided, you can trust this agency. If previous customers are not satisfied, then you should look for other options. A brief interview with past customers allows you to get a clear idea of your future IT service provider.
4. Assess the website quality of the website company you want to hire
You can learn more about the e-commerce team's quality standards by checking their overall digital presence. Therefore, you need to analyze your social media profile, website and content.
Pay attention to website design, features, as well as the quality of the content they post. The website design must be up to date. If the company doesn't follow best practices, they may not be able to handle your project.
5. See how fast the website company responds to your contact
Responsiveness is one among other factors to consider when choosing a web development company. If you've decided to work with a small team, they may not have a sales team.
In this case, you can contact the owner, but also the company assistant. You can give them 24 to 48 hours to respond to your request. If the company is interested in learning more about its web design, then that's a good sign. Also, remember that without an understanding of your goals and needs, it is impossible for the team to provide an accurate estimate.
Conclusion on choosing a good website company
Your new website should be a reflection of your strategic business goals. It's important that the web development company you select is on board to help you reach them.
Taking the time to ask far-reaching questions before hiring a company will ensure that you retain a results-oriented partner who will help you achieve tangible results that translate into a measurable return on your site's investment.
Na Colors Agency, we guarantee much more than just an attractive look as well as a modern layout for your website and blog.
Our main focus is to offer companies around the world effective solutions to generate visibility on the internet.
Our agency develops SEO strategies, but also brand positioning for multinational companies, large, medium and small, all projects are important to us.