Roadmap for Website development for an online business

In the current era, almost a 6.6billion people are using smartphones. The whole world becomes a global village. The Internet connects everyone. So, for starting a new business and targeting maximum clients with the minimum cost at this time, an online website or webshop is the best option. But one question arises, What should be the roadmap for website development for an online business?

Choice of Framework/Platform:

One important question arises, how can we craft a new website? There are several frameworks for website development for an online business, but which platform is best? We have Laravel, NodeJS, core PHP-HTML-CSS, CodeIgniter and many more. We also have a few more easy-to-use platforms or CMS for web development like WordPress, WIX, Shopify, Magento-2, drupal, square and more. Before choosing a platform/framework we should know a few basic things:

• What type of website are we building?
• What customization will we need in future?
• What maintenance do we need?
• How many people know this platform/framework?

We need to know more things like cost, time, user interaction, and security.

Best Choice for E-commerce & Business Websites:

Shopify is the better choice for E-Commerce websites, especially for online stores and webshops. WordPress is for static business websites. Frameworks like Laravel, NodeJS and many more are complex and need a highly experienced developer. It will take a lot of cost and time. In future, its customization will take a lot of time and cost. We can find many developers for these frameworks but finding a good developer is quite hectic. However, WordPress and Shopify are highly customizable, easy to use, and in less time and cost. We can create a complete website. Also, there are multiple forums where we can get answers to our queries related to these platforms.

Best among Shopify/WordPress:

Shopify – For Online Stores

Shopify is the well know e-commerce platform. In a few minutes, we can develop an e-commerce store. It has paid and free themes. It uses the cloud to host multiple websites. It is the biggest and well know platform for webshops. The best thing about it is its marketing features. With a few clicks, we can integrate multiple advertising and management tools with it. Let’s discuss the pros and cons of Shopify:

Pros of Shopify:

• It is easy to use
• A layman can create a webshop
• Have a good customer support
• No need for hosting
• Highly Secured

Cones of Shopify:

• Paid tool
• There is limited customization for lay-man
• An extremely experienced expert is required for customization because it uses a unique language, LIQUID.
• A little bit difficult to data entry
• Only specialized for eCommerce website

WordPress – For Business Websites

WordPress is the well know CMS. Almost 30%+ websites are designed on WordPress. Due to the open source platform, it is commonly used for business websites, e-commerce websites and web apps. It is known for its design builders like elementor and wp bakery. Let’s see its pros and cons:

Pros of WordPress:

• Highly customizable
• Free
• Easy data entry
• Best for SEO and Blogging
• Many developers are available
• PHP is used in the back end, which is a highly-known language
• Need less time and cost
• Easy to manage

Cones of WordPress:  

• We must make it secure to some extent (Build security is also available)
• We must optimize it 
• We must buy good hosting for the WordPress website

Our Choice:

  After analyzing everything, I prefer WordPress for business websites and Shopify for eCommerce.

For starting any project, we should follow all the following steps for website development for an online business and marketing:

1- Research the Competitor’s Websites

   First, we should analyze all the competitor websites and choose the best websites for design and SEO.

2- Audit the top competitor’s websites

Audit the best websites and note how we can make the best website, which will be good in design, easy to use, easy accessibility and SEO friendly.

3- Define the basic requirements for our website

Write down all the basic requirements of a website.

4- Search the best free and paid themes

Now research the Best website themes according to audit reports and our requirements. First, finalize three free themes and three paid themes. Then create a complete report on all articles: what customization do we have? What type of design it has? Is it SEO-friendly and light? Is it optimized? Reviews of people and Downloads. After getting the answers to all these things finalize one theme and start work on it.

5- Finalize free and paid plugins

Finalize the plugins according to the requirements and then download all of them. 

6- Keep all things easy and minimize the clicks for users

Design a website that should be simple, attractive and mobile/tablet responsive. Make everything easily accessible, and minimize clicks for the user because it will decrease the bounce rate and increase convergence (from a marketing Point of View).

7- Compress every image and optimize the whole website

Compress all images (it should be lossy compression) and optimize the website.

8- Integrate all social media platforms

Integrate all social media platforms with your website, so google can easily recognize your business on all platforms. 

9- Integrate all Marketing tools

Integrate all tools and plugins like Facebook pixel, Tiktok pixel, CRM, Mailchimp etc. 

How to find the best Website Development Services for your online business?

As we have discussed the complete roadmap for website development for an online business, it is time to find the agency with the best web development services. There are many agencies in the world, providing similar services. It is hard to find the best agency for business. We are suggesting the right choice for this step. Mindcob is the best web development agency in Canada that provides services globally. If you are looking for website design or development services for your business or e-commerce store. Just contact Mindcob – Digital Marketing Agency Canada.