Case Study: Multifunctional Online Store Development
Our cooperation with the Client, owner of the kids’ shoe store in the Czech Republic, began with a one-page business card website development.
Later, a full-fledged online store with an individual CMS was built based on the landing page.The main Client’s requirements for the website were the ease of use and conciseness.
The web project was developed from scratch
and included the following website development stages:
- technical specifications development
- logo development
- design
- front-end coding
- back-end coding
- testing
- support and the website promotion (SEO)
Today our development team continues working on the resource.
We’re promoting and supporting the website, as well as expanding the functionality of the online store.
About the main stages of website development
Online store design
25+ hours
Since the main requirement of the client was simplicity and conciseness,
we didn’t overload the website with colors, patterns, complex animations. We tried to make the online store as practical and convenient as possible.
Design for mobile devices
Menu
We placed all the main categories into the menu to simplify the website navigation. It is also possible to change the menu color from the dashboard.
Search
The online store is optimized for quick search. To find the necessary product, the user doesn’t need to make more than two clicks from the homepage.
Catalog
- The catalog itself is divided into categories and subcategories. Thus, the person can switch between a male and female variant of the shoes only in one click.
- The structure of the catalog is not too detailed. This is done so that on both a smartphone and a desktop all groups of products fit into one screen and the user don’t get lost in a long list.
- Plus, the division into items like here is considered the most favorable for website promotion, including SEO.
Product card
The product card is not overloaded with the text and has a logical arrangement of the elements. It’s designed to simplify and speed up the buying process.
A no signing up quick purchase option available in the online store.
CMS development and coding
160+ hours
It’s a turnkey project.
The visual part and the program part of the online store were developed from scratch.
Why did we decide to hand code it and not use a ready-made CMS?
- the ability to create
your own unique functionality - planning the future promotion
of the online store
The advantage of a hand-coded website is that it can have any functionality you want.
If the ready-made content management systems (OpenCart, WordPress, Joomla, and others) already has a basic set of functions that can be expanded with the additional modules, the hand-coded website allows you to create the unique functionality needed in a particular case. This is why large portals, e-commerce websites with non-standard functionality are usually developed from scratch.
Another big advantage of the hand-coded website is that you can plan its promotion even at the stage of structure development.
We can build a website the way we need it. For example, we’re free to place the important SEO meta tags on any page.
BUT!
Developing a website from scratch takes more time than integrating the design with the ready-made CMS. In order to speed up the development process, programmers use frameworks*.
The SoloMio website was developed using the powerful PHP framework YII2.
The high speed of work which is one of the characteristics of a good online store is also a benefit of a hand-coded Yii2 website. It does not contain excessive functionality. Moreover, the framework gives us a clearly structured architecture which certainly increases the efficiency of the resource.
SEO and online store promotion
At this website development stage, we completed the entire internal optimization of the online store
- set up set up the modules that allow you to add meta tags to any combination of the URLs and products . Thus, potential buyers can find the products on the website easily;
- supplementary pages designed to improve the filtering and search inside the website are closed from the index and don’t affect the ranking;
- canonized all pages, so that there are no duplicates;
- made a clear sitemap — a file with information about the site pages designed for the search engines etc.
Instead of conclusions,
tips for those who want to order their own online store development.
A full-fledged
online store cannot be made in a week.
If, you are told that it’s possible, know that this is just a marketing move of a development company. As a result, the website development will take many times longer or you will be sold an unfinished product. It will take at least a month to develop a hand-coded online store. Please, note that after testing, you may have additional wishes and comment Fixing bugs, improving or adding features are the part of a normal website development process. If you don’t have much time, you don’t plan to go beyond the standard e-commerce functionality, you can order an online store on a ready-made engine development. For example, CMS OpenCart is designed specially for online stores. Examples of the OpenCart websites can be seen in our portfolio.
Be sure to
plan the future promotion of the website,
even if at the beginning of website development you think that you won’t need it. You will win a lot if at the time of developing the technical specifications you’re advised by an SEO specialist.
If you think that your online store may be large or have the non-standard functionality, consider the option of building a website
from scratch with your developers or project manager.
Sometimes you will win more if you decide to order a website development from scratch Yii2, Laravel, Symfony are the perfect choice for the e-commerce websites development.
Source: Multifunctional online store development by Web-Systems Solutions
