How development drives eCommerce success
eCommerce businesses know that user experience and revenue go hand in hand. When users find shopping hard, slow, or confusing, they don’t convert and you don’t get paid.
That’s why your eCommerce site should be working hard for you – streamlining your business and making shopping effortless. But without a well-developed site, you’re trying to build a great experience on shaky foundations.
With over 17 years in the business, Blue Fountain Media has developed more than our share of high-performing eCommerce sites. We focus on delivering an experience users love, so you can get products off your shelves and into buyers’ carts.
Pillars of a great eCommerce experience
An eCommerce site is not just another website. Multiple business-critical elements need to be executed properly in order to ensure a strong return on your investment.
A seamless shopping experience.
An eCommerce build must make shopping easy and secure. Pages must load quickly and reliably, with a consistent look and feel, compelling content, and search functionality that meets users’ needs and expectations.
The right integrations.
A static site that’s disconnected from your business ecosystem creates data entry work for employees, and irritates customers with out-of-date information and limited features.
Interaction and personalization.
Customers expect sites to “remember” them with features such as product recommendations, promos, and a tailored, content-rich experience. And as a customer-facing channel, the richest eCommerce experiences offer ready access to real-time support such as live chat.
Our process has been tested in eCommerce builds across industries over many years, efficiently delivering great sites.
Technical Discovery
Assessing the situation
We start by building our understanding of where you are and what you need. We draw out that information by speaking to your technical leads and major stakeholders. This helps us distill the business requirements that will inform the choice of technology.
Platform Assessment + Recommendation
Laying a strong foundation
Our solutions architects apply a proprietary framework to assessment and recommendations, optimizing your tech stack for your needs.
We take into account technical requirements, integrations and customizations, as well as non-functional factors such as scalability, security, vendor profile and, of course, cost. In eCommerce, a key area of focus is ensuring the front-end stack can deliver the quality of experience your customers expect.
IA, Design + Copywriting
Collaborating for success
As an end-to-end eCommerce development agency, we regularly strategize, plan, design, and write outstanding eCommerce sites. When doing so, we start preparing for development in the planning phase, so that our entire team of experts is thinking ahead to how the site will be built.
Front- and Back-End Coding
Creating a website built to sell
An eCommerce site build is overseen by a technical Project Manager, who collaborates with project Account Director to keep the timeline, budget, and work quality on track. We work effectively in either Waterfall or Agile (using Scrum methodology) as the project demands.
Our different development teams have skills in a large number of languages, such as PHP, .Net, Java, HTML5, CSS and Javascript. We also have a range of CMS partnerships and certifications, so we can make a CMS recommendation without fear or favor and complete the build properly.
QA
Running through over 100 checkpoints
After we build the site, we try to break it. Specialist QA teams run through over 100 checkpoints and identify and resolve any issue that arises. Before the site goes live, it’s hosted privately on a development server, so that your team can join in the QA effort.
CMS Training + Launch
Getting ready to go live
CMS training ensures you’re ready to run a thriving eCommerce business and handle everything from adding products to applying discounts, to administering returns. When everything is in working order, it’s time to launch – and let the sales begin.
