What to look for

1. Scalability

Your ecommerce solutions provider needs to demonstrate to you how they will support the growth and development of your business.

Look for a provider who:

• Is in it for the long term - not simply to sell you a website and move on
• Has a vested interest in your site selling more products, e.g. in their pricing model
• Offers the ability to extend and enrich your ecommerce site as your business needs change,  without the need for expensive redevelopment
• Offers the flexibility to redesign and revamp your site design periodically without the need to build a new site from scratch

2. Integration

Even if you don’t require a lot of integration right now, the chances are your ecommerce site will need it sooner rather than later.

Look for ecommerce solutions that offer:
 
• Payment gateway integration as standard (so your customers are not taken to a different site when they come to pay by card)
• The flexibility to integrate affordably with your back office systems
• The flexibility to integrate with email marketing

3. Content Management

Content is king on your ecommerce site. So look for an ecommerce solutions provider who lets you manage your website content as much as possible, without the need for the involvement of designers, developers, web masters or your IT department.

Look for ecommerce solutions that:

• Include a powerful, flexible and easy to use Content Management System (CMS)
• Are flexible about the number of web pages you can add
• Enable you to add new pages easily
• Enable you to add content and images to existing and new pages
• Enable you to add pre-built features and functions to existing and new pages
• Allow you to upload and link to downloadable documents
• Enable you to create and edit page URLs and URL masks
• Enable you to insert RSS content feeds
• Enable you to build and publish your own branded campaign microsites to help drive campaign conversions
• Cater for optimising content for mobile devices (e.g. smartphones)
• Enable you to add signup forms, surveys etc. to capture and segment visitor data



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