web design & web development services in London for your business - ecommerce specialists
moustique design, web design in London, ecommerce specialists, online shops
Web design: Online Shops
We want to do it right and help you get your perfect online shop. Have a look at our portfolio for some examples of E-Commerce web sites that we have built.
The future of retail is e-commerce
Having an e-commerce web site work for you when you sleep, lunch, network and do your accounts is not only nice, it is the way forward for every trading business. From £11 billion in 1999, internet-based retail spending jumped to £73 billion. In order to be a part of this change in consumer behaviour, you should be aware of a few things before you get your online shop started.
Costs of an online shop
When we started our e-commerce building career, we built shops on Actinic. Actinic is one of the most widely known online shopping cart that can be bought off the shelf. However, it needs to be bought before we can even start customising it to the look of your site, and to the way you want the shop to work, and it has its restrictions.
Nowadays, we build all our shops on an "Open Source" product. "Open Source": Instead of re-inventing the wheel every time a shop is needed, a few programmers created a community to create an online shop system together and fed their solutions back into that community. So every time one of them needs a shop, they use the basic system and add the customer's specifications in. That means that the basic system does not cost you anything. All you pay for is installation and testing it on your server (we can provide hosting) and then our customisation to your specific needs. That usually reduces the cost of your shop by nearly half, and allows your budget to ask for these little specials that an off-the-shelf product just wouldn't allow for.
What we use is called OsCommerce, if you would like to check it out before you commit yourself. We will create a quote for every customer but generally, you can expect such a shop to start at a price around £2,000 + VAT.
Online or on your desktop?
We suggest strongly to have your shop administration on the internet. We all know how often computers crash these days, and instead of being scared of whether the latest update of your shop will be retrievable from your dead hard drive, you could go onto the web with any other computer and log in, organising your sales for the day while somebody sorts that broken machine out. Our system is online based, so all you need is Internet Explorer or Firefox, a computer and a connection, and off to an internet café in Thailand with you...
Usability of your e-commerce system
Our shops are easy to use. Often, we only hand out our eleven page manual to people and they don't even require training. However, we do offer training - by telephone or at your premises, whichever you prefer. And don't you think that the shop doesn't have many options because it is easy to use - it just gives you them step by step - you can ignore the more difficult ones like vouchers for your customers until you got to grips with entering a product and so on.
Customisation of the look and functions of the e-shop
We will give you a quote that we stick to before we proceed to creating your online shop. You may be surprised how many of your special requirements are already covered by our software.
Time to create your web-based shop
Please bring time. We don't only need time to create a perfect shop and enter a first set of products to give you your shop ready to launch. Moreover, you will need to do some preparation: collate your products, write descriptions, and get images of them. You need to compile your web text (about us, home page), your terms and conditions, and a "how to buy" section - ideally also a 'Frequently Asked Questions' section.
Often, our customers want a web site, online shop, logo and stationery designed. That takes time: To create a company out of thin air is not done in a week. Most often, these projects run over three months, especially because we offer unlimited changes to both your web shop design and your logo design: we take the time to get it right.