E-Commerce Website Design

We like to help businesses sell more for less. And there’s no more effective use of online marketing than e-commerce.

A recent study from MasterCard Worldwide – conducted in late 2010 – revealed that 51% of South Africans who have access to the internet are shopping online and 75% of them have done so in the past three months.

Which is a fairly compelling argument for traditional bricks and mortar retailers to build their offering out into a full e-commerce operation.

The same survey identified two key recommendations – that e-commerce operations must enhance payment security and make their website development is straightforward and their sites easy to navigate. Both of which reinforce the value of building e-commerce sites on a Drupal backbone.

An ecommerce site is a very different beast to a standard corporate website. At 2Stroke, we have a very clear process we follow when planning an e-commerce website design project.

It starts with strategy. It’s only by understanding our clients’ products, value proposition and audiences that we can provide inputs on driving and converting traffic. And bear in mind that the strategy for a ecommerce site in Cape Town where bandwidth is still an issue and relatively few consumers have credit cards, would be totally different to that for a US-based project.

By adopting Drupal's native Ubercart shopping cart and integrating this with a solid site architecture and navigational experience we can optimise the website for maximum conversion and sales.

We’re also very aware of the unique hosting requirements of e-commerce sites and ensure that all our e-commerce sites are hosted on dedicated Linode servers which provide an optimal Drupal web development environment. Much as we beat the drum for South Africa at every opportunity, high data costs mean most of our sites are hosted in the States.

For examples of some of our e-commerce sites, take a look at our website portfolio or better still, drop us a mail.