Setting up an online shop is easy; setting up one that converts is harder. If you are selling from Sri Lanka, a few considerations come up again and again. This checklist covers the ones to settle before design starts.
Payments
Decide how customers will pay before you pick a platform, because it constrains the options. Card payments run through a payment gateway that your bank supports, and the right one depends on whether you sell locally, overseas or both. Some customers will still expect cash on delivery or bank transfer, so check whether your market does.
Whatever you choose, test the whole checkout, including failed payments and refunds, before launch.
Delivery and returns
Be clear about delivery areas, costs and timing on the product page, not just at checkout. Surprise shipping costs are one of the most common reasons shoppers abandon a cart. State your returns policy plainly; it is a trust signal as well as a legal matter.
A genuinely good mobile experience
Many shoppers will arrive on a phone, often on a mobile connection. Product pages should load quickly, images should be sized properly, and the checkout should work with a thumb. If it does not, no amount of advertising will make up for it.
Language
Think about whether your customers would prefer Sinhala or Tamil as well as English. Multilingual content has to be planned from the start, since layouts, fonts and navigation need to cope with different scripts. We built exactly this for Eshyra Clothing, which works in all three languages.
Trust and story
Shoppers buy from brands they trust. Clear contact details, honest product information and a page about who you are all help, as does the brand story. The Ceyora Cosmetics case study shows how a restrained design and a journal sit beside the shop.
Being found
Individual product pages should have unique descriptions, sensible URLs and good images, and the site should load quickly. These fundamentals do more for search visibility than tricks. If you are weighing platforms, read WordPress vs custom website development, and for the build itself see our e-commerce development page.
This is how we approach e-commerce development projects.
E-commerce Development