We all know how Online Businesses are replacing brick & mortar systems of yesteryear. Today, once a businessman thinks of setting up a new business with the product selling, he first chooses an online platform where he can showcase the products. Electronics Commerce gives you not only the mileage in the industry, but it also establishes your brand too. Once your online identity is confirmed, your business starts growing. So, even if you have a physical entity of selling your products and services, your eCommerce Applications play a significant role in establishing your business as a brand. With the advent of a lot of eCommerce friendly frameworks and tools, today, creating eCommerce portals has been easy. This article will show you how vital the front-end is while designing an eCommerce portal for your business.
Front End development is immensely significant for your Application, where you are very specific about how the User Interactions, Data Interoperability, and Page Transitions will take place. When you create an eCommerce or Marketplace portal, you have a clear idea of the portions; you would like to build User-Friendly and fun for browsing. Today, you can see, in some of the Online Applications, the Gamification concept is being prevalent. Gamification is all about User Experience where you add a fun quotient in your application, and your online visitors do not get bored with the natural elements. To attain this, you should hire a web developer who must have a stronghold in User Experience and Front-End technologies. At the same time, Cross-Platform applications have more popularity, and hence, while choosing a Front-End framework and an Application type, wire-framing on different device resolution is desired.
Important Elements in an eCommerce Portal
User Dashboard
User Dashboard is something that provides you with a summary view of your Product sales, Categories which are mostly sold online, User Demography comparative chart, Total revenue turn-over based on a selected period, and many such vital & quick Management Information System. The elements in a dashboard vary from one User type to another. When it is Admin, it gives you more information about the overall business and users. When it is a Customer dashboard, it highlights the recent orders, cancellations, product browsing pattern, seasonal offers, and many such. When it is an office-staff dashboard, it is more about individual performances on a selected category, region, or demography. Sometimes, Admins dashboards are nothing but the Merchant dashboards too, where, the entire representation is kept for the Revenue. Hence, while you choose a front-end framework, you must be decisive about:
What all elements would you like to put, like Dynamic Charting, AJAX-based Information Display, Live Data status, etc.?
How to represent the panels and quick access icons?
How to create a transition from one Menu item to another?
All of these above are cohesively related to the User Experience. So, your front-end web developer must do some research before putting a business sense, utility throughout the dash-board. He/she would be the right person to bridge the business expectations and customer expectations through the front-end. To mention the critical attributes of a proper front-end development on the dashboard, please find below the pointers:
Total Management Insight
Preference for User-based Data representation
Reliable Management reminders
Fully customizable dashboard from the Super Control panel with a WYSIWYG editor along with work-flow configurator.
Product Navigation Pages:
These are the core pages in your eCommerce portal, where you need to put the highest level of care & concentration. Say, you have more than 10000 products, and you want them to appear in such a way that your business needs to get fulfilled while your target customers don't have to struggle while browsing. To attain this, you must have a researched wire-frame which will be followed all across the Application. Putting Search and Advanced Search options at appropriate places, creating a Layered Product Navigational Menu, displaying highly searched products, displaying related products – all come under this researched front-end development. Remember, you can’t miss an opportunity to let your Online User go without directing to the payment page.
Check-out Page:
Check out page plays a very significant role in holding your Online Visitor till the payment acknowledgment. In a lot of eCommerce sites, visitors get frustrated even after easy product browsing. And this happens due to the improper User Experience on the Check-out Page. Visitors need to be given comfort while choosing the payment methods, guest signing, auto-filling of the required information, and minimal user inputs while completing a purchase. Here, your back-end functionality must be well synced with the front-end representation so that the visitor doesn’t have to close it from the browser.
With the above things in mind, you need to always prioritize thorough research on current searching trends, latest design trends, and, most importantly, the browser-agnostic performance. Creating a front-end for the Web browsers and Mobile browsers is not the same but, both of these must-have a pattern in place, and none of the essential elements should be missed while your Application gets searched over hand-held devices and smart-phones. So, choosing a Mobile-friendly layout is also a wise decision for your front-end web developer. Now, you have excellent access to global resources of the templates and sample codes, and due to this, you can be sure of, you deliver the best possible eCommerce navigational experience to your Online Visitors. For further deeper understanding you may read this Front-End web development guide compiled by experts.
