How to Start an Ecommerce Business – Interview With Yottaa
In the last decade, everyone from big global brands to small, local firms, went digital. This is especially noticeable in the retail business. More and more traditional shops are being replaced with online stores. Why? Because of the many benefits eCommerce provides. Not only does online shopping save time, but it also allows users to save their energy for other activities on their busy schedules. With a single click, people can now buy any sort of item, from any location in the World.
Thanks to modern technologies switch to the online business model isn’t reserved for big brands only. If you run a small firm or a family business, there is room for you as well. Whether you want to start multivendor marketplace or to launch a niche-specific online store, you can benefit from Bob Buffone’s amazing tips on how to start an eCommerce business. Co-founder & CTO of YOTTAA truly understands the mechanisms behind seamless user experience so these tricks really bring the results. Enjoy!
What are the most important steps in making a website for an eCommerce business?
There’s a lot of things that go into eCommerce — there’s the platform, all the functionality, what you want your site to look like, etc., all of which depends on the platform you choose and whether or not you want to go headless. Once you decide on a platform and its functionality, you need to decide whether you want to go in-house or use a system integrator, how big of a staff you will need to support your site, how you will optimize performance, which 3rd party technologies you will add, and how you will secure your site.
What are your top 3 tips for choosing a website design for an online store?
- Mobile first
- Fast as hell
- Visually appealing
What are your top 3 tricks for improving the percentage of customers who complete the purchase?
In the past, there was a school of thought that said you wanted to maximize the number of things consumers did to complete the purchase. Nowadays, many shoppers come from email campaigns, paid ads, SEO, etc., so you need to simplify the transition from engaging with the product to purchasing the product as much as possible to maximize your ROI from these campaigns.
What are your favorite tips for improving the user experience on WordPress online stores?
Improving the user experience on WordPress online stores is no different from any other online store; it just determines how you would technically achieve that. There’s no reason a WordPress store can’t be as good as an online store on Demandware, Magento, Salesforce, etc. if you focus on making the user experience as seamless as possible. You can achieve this by optimizing all of the heavy digital content on your site, such as 3rd party technologies, custom javascript, and high-resolution images, so that your web pages load faster and more consistently while offering an engaging experience.
What do you think are the most important functionalities of WordPress eCommerce websites?
The most important thing is to figure out how to leverage WordPress’ systems for eCommerce. You’ll need to decide which plug-ins, features, and 3rd parties you will add to your site to create the rich, engaging experience shoppers expect from an eCommerce website. Since WordPress is a content management system rather than an eCommerce platform, governing all of these plug-ins, upgrading them, adding additional 3rd party technologies, etc. can be difficult to manage as your eCommerce site grows.
What is the biggest advantage of choosing the Yottaa platform in order to increase the website traffic of an eCommerce business?
Yottaa drives a highly performant, consistent user experience no matter the end-users device, bandwidth, location, or any other end-user variable.
What are the most frequent online store performance issues you’ve dealt with and how did you fix them?
The most significant performance issues I’ve seen, such as slow page load times or site outages, have been caused by 3rd party technologies. 3rd parties are great because they add a lot of features at a very low development cost, but there is a performance impact associated with each 3rd party you add to your website. Another significant cause of site issues is a lack of general best practices around performance for your website. Implementing best practices not only shortens the time it takes to achieve excellent performance but also ensures you have a performance-focused culture, which is what you really want in your organization.
What distinguishes Yottaa from other similar web optimization services?
The biggest differentiator is the governance and prioritization that we apply to third party technologies. Additionally, we provide the ability to manage and control the full application as it is delivered to the end-user. And all of that happens transparently within your organization, which accelerates the implementation of Yottaa. Our team can help you implement best practices within our system, such as compressing or lazy loading your images, if you don’t have them already.
What does your usual working day look like?
As the CTO & founder, my workday is split among a couple of tasks. One is focusing on the architecture of our systems and helping identify things that could be better or defining the architecture for new things we want to do. Another is development — I think for me to be a CTO, I still need to work on development. Finally, I play a role in helping to sell the product as an executive sponsor for deals and talking with other technical executives within customer accounts.
What do you do for fun outside of work?
Most of the fun things I like to do revolve around making Yottaa more successful. Outside of work, I enjoy watching tv, movies, or sports. I’m a big fan of the Celtics, and I also watch a lot of European soccer. I’m more of a movie guy than a TV guy — I’ve watched The Hangover movies about a thousand times.
Let’s Wrap It Up
Knowing how to start an eCommerce business can save you both your time and money. When you’re aware of the best tools, market’s trends, and potential mistakes, you can easily grow your online store. We hope this article brought a new perspective and inspired you to start your eCommerce business soon!
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