Importance of Web Development during Covid 19

 
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Over 210 million cases and more than 4.5 million lives were lost. Statistics are a great way to understand the enormity of a situation, as the world has not seen a global tragedy like Covid 19 in a while. This unmitigated disaster has reached and infected every corner of the globe and has been conferred with a pandemic status.

The above statistics are numbers directly linked and related to the virus. The damage to property and economic infrastructure and the socio-economic losses, as a result, throw up much scarier numbers. The year 2020 has seen the deepest global recession in decades thanks to Covid 19 with a 5.2% contraction in the global GDP numbers. This decline is expected to plunge tens of million people into extreme and abject poverty reversing several years of progress and development with planning and goal setting taking a serious hit.

While Covid 19 continues to wreak havoc even today, we all continue to do our best to survive its socio-economic impact. One industry that has not been drastically affected by the global economic downturn as a direct result of Covid 19 is the tech industry. At a time when physical businesses and storefronts including both larger establishments and mom and pop shops have been forced to recalibrate their business ideologies of then completely shut down altogether, tech in every way has evolved almost to form a new world order.

Businesses understood the greater good in being able to sell online. They realized that physical proximity which was largely hampered due to Covid 19 was not a deal-breaker in trying to make a sale. They also realized that they could reach a larger target audience, find newer and more lucrative markets to sell their services and products as well and doing this at a fraction of the cost, while being in the comfort of their homes. All they needed was a digital storefront to do so. In other words, a simple website or a mobile-based application.   

The Importance of Web Development

Sound web development is the foundation to set up a successful E-commerce online business. In one of our earlier blogs titled “How UI and UX will shape your E-commerce online business,” we went into greater detail to understand what interface and digital experience delights the end-user enough for him or her to make repeated purchases from your digital online store. Through the course of this blog, we will attempt to highlight key aspects of web development and its optimization techniques. In today’s context learning web development or being able to at least understand it is almost as important as being able to read and write. This is because it has become such an essential skill set thanks to its ability to transform businesses that may have traditionally operated offline into online profit centers and avenues to earn revenue.

The primary task of web development is to be able to construct optimized websites so that you can start selling online [global pandemic or not] and also be able to sustain them in a world where competition becomes incredibly merciless. According to statistics procured online, there are an astonishing 1.88 billion active websites running on the world wide web as we know it and this figure is remarkably showing a fast rate of increase. There are known to be at any given point of time 4.66 billion active internet users around the globe. The USA alone may represent only 8.2% of the world’s online population but accounts for 56.6 billion web pages from the 1.88 billion globally.  

These statistics very clearly illustrate how much competition your online E-commerce store is up against. That is one of the other primary features of good web development is to be able to sustain your website in comparison to other direct and indirect competitors within and outside your business model. The overall interface needs to be nothing short of fantastic, its performances need to be unhindered, and the user experience has to be flawless all the time. While first impressions of a website are largely design-related as per 94% of global consumers, it is said that people spend an average of only 5 seconds to actually ingest what is written on your webpage.    

To give web users an enhanced and pleasurable online experience, web developers across the globe use different coding languages to optimize the interface of the website. Web development usually has two clear skillsets attached to the profession. There is what is known as the front end where the developer is concerned with the user-facing interface and then there is the back-end where your skill sets are more closely linked to the functionalities and applications of the website that are handled behind the scenes.

How Web Development Can Help You

While we’ve seen the importance and the statistical impact of sound web development, let us also look deeper into the aspects of how web development can help your E-commerce online business attain maximum optimization.

Effective Communication

The most defining role of sound web development is to be able to communicate with the visitors who will make a prospective first-time purchase or repeat purchases of your E-commerce online store. Your online business is highly dependant on these visitors which makes this feature all the more crucial. Having a website that flows pleasantly and easily with its target audience is what will aid effective communication. Also, while a website can have several constant iterations and tweaks performed on it, it is not prudent to do wholesale changes too often. This is why it is important to build a future-ready website in the development stage so that your online business does not suffer a loss of time or revenue due to constantly evolving and upgrading technological advancements.

Good Content Optimization

Being able to regularly publish good content is important in the constant evolution of the website. Giving a loyal and repeat customer something new to consume in terms of offers, discounts, products, and services will allow for your E-commerce online business to thrive thanks to the influx of constant and evolving web traffic. Sales made from E-commerce online business surpassed a mind-boggling 4.2 trillion U.S. dollars worldwide last year, once again highlighting the part that content plays in bringing and then keeping prospective customers to your website. The key is to grab and sustain the user’s attention. Cross-linking this content by publishing it on your blog and various social media channels via SEO and other mediums will also help bring newer customers to your webpage. This is an integral part of digital marketing as highlighted in our blog titled “Give your E-commerce online business the Digital Business Consultancy advantage.” 

Enhance Global Connectivity

Possibly the greatest advantage of having an E-commerce online business is the ability to negate geographical and logistical barriers while trying to source new customer target markets. This is something that an organization having only a physical operation just cannot manage. Even the biggest retail and food chains in the world cannot be present everywhere whereas your E-commerce business can reach even the farthest corners of the globe. Operating from a website enables your online business to gain access to a number of global visitors which helps spur quicker and more diverse expansion. The ability to make a purchase from multiple devices including mobile phones and tablets has also highlighted the role of web development and its ability to optimize your E-commerce online store across several different mediums.

Reliability and Trust

Sound web development will also lead to your E-commerce online store gaining a reputation of being trusted and reliable. In the age of digital fraud, this is an important aspect to delight the prospective and repeat customer with. If the website has been built clumsily or if there are glitches in the signing in, or purchasing process, the user will not be able to show complete trust towards purchasing again of your E-commerce online store. Amazon may have become a global leader in E-commerce business practices but it has done so by encapsulating the trust of its customers. This trust is not easy to gain and a glitch-free and reliable experience stands at the very core of being able to obtain it.

Benefits of Optimizing your Website

A good web developer will not just create or maintain your E-commerce online website for you. They will also constantly work in the back-end to optimize different features of it in a way where the front-facing customer may not notice. This does not mean that the optimization tweaks and updates are not working. There are times when the user is delighted by something that we consider small or basic but is in fact a direct result of optimization.

Optimizing backend tools, inventory, product, and content management processes, and defining an ever-evolving user experience will help your E-commerce online business achieve its sales goals in both the near and further future. Optimization of the website depends largely on who your target audience is and a clear set and defined goal of what that optimization is supposed to achieve with regards to the overall digital marketing strategy. Some of the many several direct benefits include:

Increased conversions

A sound website optimization from a professional web developer almost always leads to an increase in potential target audiences. This could be via so many different methods that include form submissions, sign-ups, newsletter subscriptions, actual purchases, incomplete shopping carts and so much more.

The Right Traffic

While any traffic is great to receive for a generic website, an E-commerce online store in particular needs to attract suitable potential buyers who will be happy and regular to make purchases from it. Optimizing the website correctly and properly helps to bring the right kind of target audience to your website which helps to result in more purchases and an overall increased profit margin.

Correct Processes

Constant optimization also helps the E-commerce online store to tweak, streamline and optimize internal and front-facing processes which play a great role in also enhancing workflow efficiencies. To be successful when you are facing potential customers, the online business needs to have a sound and solid foundation but one that needs to be fluid in its ability to adapt to changing trends. Optimization helps achieve this.

Higher Page Rankings on Search Engines

We have already seen how effective SEO can be in our blog titled “How to do effective SEO for an E-commerce online business”. It is always a constant endeavor to have your E-commerce online store and its web pages rank as high as possible on different search engines such as Google and Bing. Optimization of your website infinitely helps to streamline the SEO process making your website more attractive not only to potential customers but also to powerful search engines that are happy to propel it towards the top of their search results.

Web Development is a profession like any other which means there are several experts who know what they are doing with your online store and how exactly to go about doing it. It is a specialized profession that demands expertise, knowledge and digital experience, which is why developing and optimizing your E-commerce online store is not something that should be done as a side hobby or on your own. It is a function that is best outsourced to digital business consultancies that offer web development and website optimization as a service. AmareSol Global is a digital business consultancy creating innovative change through a team of talented designers, developers, and strategists creating digital experiences for brands and companies around the world. We are continuously fueling growth across constantly changing and advancing digital landscapes, by seeking and formulating newer and better ways to service clientele on a global scale across industries. Look up more about us at www.amaresolglobal.com.

 
 
 
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