A very common question we are asked by customers is what is the definition of an E-Commerce style website. Put quite simply an E-Commerce website uses the internet as your marketplace, meaning you can buy and sell physical items, services, and digital products conveniently on a single website.
The word Commerce as a definition is a broad term that encompasses all activities related to buying, selling and exchanging goods and services. It includes the physical exchange of goods and services through retail stores. Commerce also includes financial transactions such as payments for purchases or sales as well as the movement of capital.
E-Commerce takes these principles and brings them online. However, unlike a regular brick & mortar store, your online E-Commerce site never has to close meaning customers can purchase items or services at any time. In addition to having a wider scope of customers available to you.
A brick & mortar store is a physical retail outlet that allows customers to purchase goods and services from the operator. It offers an in-person shopping experience, with staff being available to assist customers with selecting items and providing general assistance. Brick & motor stores typically have an extensive selection of merchandise, ranging from everyday household items to luxury goods.
E-Commerce websites are designed in a way in which to engage customers with their visuals and showcase the items/services that they have to sell. The website would be designed in an easy way to guide potential customers around the website, just as a brick & mortar store would in the physical world.
An E-Commerce site also needs to be able to convey trust in it’s colours along with the ways that the items are displayed. Together with SSL certification security which encrypts data flow, this ensures that the online shopper has the most secure way to shop online.
Running a traditional Brick & Mortar store can be really expensive, with insurance, council tax, maintenance and retail assistants to manage the space. An online E-Commerce store removes these problems. All you need is a space to store your products and then you can ship these out by yourself or with a small team. (Depending on the size of the business)
E-Commerce style websites normally sit within three categories:
Lets discuss standard E-Commerce style websites. This will usually consist of a simple store in which clients can add and remove products which in turn facilitates the ability to receive orders and money from their product/service sales.
The front end of a website is often called a UI which in short stands for User Interface. This is what the customer sees and the back office system namely CMS (Content Management System) is where the website content is developed.
It is important when creating an E-Commerce website that all products are created within a category structure. This helps to ensure the website is easy to navigate and items are easy to find for customers.
Our E-Commerce sites give you control of adding and removing products, in addition to adjusting prices and all other aspects of the product base. This gives our customers free command of their own store and means they don’t need to wait for changes to be made by us as their web designer.
There is no limit to how many products there are on an E-Commerce website that we build. This in turn means that our customers can take advantage of the unlimited pages that can be used on WordPress. The more products you have, the more chance you have of a visitor finding something they need.
This style of website can often include additional elements such as software integrations to help manage your store with data import and export of products and or categories.
Another key element to our advanced e-commerce style websites is the data entry aspect. This is a service that we provide which takes the pain away from our customers having to enter data manually.
Software integrations are a powerful tool to enhance e-commerce sites and create an optimal user experience. Integrating software solutions into e-commerce offerings allows businesses to reduce costs, increase efficiency and improve customer service.
Data entry is an essential part of e-commerce. It involves creating and editing product information, such as item descriptions, pricing details, images, categories and other content that needs to be published on the e-commerce website. This data must be accurate and up-to-date in order to ensure customers have a positive experience when visiting the e-commerce store.
Product import & export is an important process for e-commerce businesses. It allows us to add, update and remove products from our customer online stores quickly and efficiently. By utilizing product import & export tools, e-commerce website owners can save time and resources by not having to manually upload, amend or delete product information on their website.
At Brown Booth, we can greatly influence and improve your online business and presence working with you. This is usually done in a consultative way, whereby project-based websites are designed following an intricately planned out process that thoroughly considers all necessary factors related to the organization’s objectives. With this method, every element of the business will be accounted for onscreen along with content created specifically tailored to those goals.
A typical type of project based E-Commerce website would involve us providing a variety of different products & services when designing and building a client website. For example the client could have an existing website which needs to be migrated over to a new site. A lot of work goes into doing this, especially if the data is in a different format than the new website development. Some common services we provide for project based websites could include:
Crafting a project-based website for any customer requires an in-depth understanding of their business. With larger institutions typically offering multiple products and services, it is essential to have comprehensive knowledge before beginning the design and development process – one that is always conducted through meaningful consultation with the client every step of the way.
When creating a project based website, Brown Booth frequently collaborates with PR Agencies, Graphic Designers and other professionals to guarantee that the end product meets our customers’ precise specifications. Working together with external organizations will ensure that you not only get the job done but we do so in a way that is faithful to our customer’s vision.
Unlike standard E-Commerce style websites, project based sites are boundless in their capacity. Depending on a business’s size and complexity, they can range from hundreds to thousands of pages! With this sheer amount of content to deliver, the menu system associated with these types of websites typically extends three or four levels deep. And best yet – as business requirements evolve over time so too can your website scale up accordingly without any limitations.
Below you can see our web design and development prices from basic through to more complex e-commerce style websites.
If you have any questions about anything on this page, please feel free to use the contact form below or call us on 01202 937080.
Our package prices are listed below; however, if you’re looking for something a bit more personalized to fit your exact budget and needs, we specialize in creating custom web projects that meet all of the criteria. Allow us to craft the ideal website for you!
Nothing is standard about what we do, each website is designed to our client design remits or we can design from scratch. Includes multiple pages, built on WordPress which is the number one content management system used world wide. You will have the ability to add your own categories & products for your store.
£1250+vat
Everything that is included in our standard service but can include additional functionality that you require to run your business. We can intergrate software to help manage your online store better, or we can help important & export all your products from a previous site.
£2750 +vat
Our service provides a comprehensive web presence solution, extending from customer journey flows to full branding and video content. Our website will be created with SEO in mind, providing well-crafted copy that is sure to boost your search rankings even before the site goes live! We make sure your online presence stands out for all of the right reasons — let us show you how it’s done.
£POA +vat
Once your website is built and live on the web, we offer comprehensive support from simple day to day technical support through to on site content and design updates as and when required.
We offer two levels of support:
Fixed monthly cost which allows our customers to budget this in to their business. This includes all technical support and changes to the website depending on what fixed cost is agreed. Hosting and SSL security certification are also included.
Standard E-Commerce £60+vat per month
Advanced E-Commerce £99+vat per month
Project E-Commerce POA +vat per month
Ad-Hoc support can be provided, but as with all of our services we like to be fully transparent with how we work. With Ad-Hoc support we will provide technical support for the website and changes to the website on an as and when we can get to it basis, dependent on our contracted customer demands at that time.
£45 +vat per hour (Minimum 1 hour)
£99 +vat per year hosting
£99 +vat per year SSL Certificate