This month we meet Charles Chen, Regional Director of TheCodingMachine in Hong Kong.
Tell us more about you!
I founded TheCodingMachine in Hong Kong 2 years back - to enable more ideas to come to life with our digital advisory, project management and technical capabilities.
Prior to opening this subsidiary, I had been working in France for over 4 years at TheCodingMachine’s headquarters in Paris as a full-stack developer and project manager.
At TheCodingMachine, we specialize in open-source development for mobile apps, web platforms and e-commerce, we always enjoy providing first-hand advice with our free consultations.
Following our latest e-commerce release is a sportswear and lifestyle brand, I am happy to share some insights: https://dreamswear.com/en/
Must-have for a good e-commerce website?
1. Mobile first
The mobile e-commerce penetration reaches more than 50% on average, across Asia. This figure is expected to grow to 73% by 2022.
Besides, Google primarily indexes mobile sites since September 2020.
We believe it is highly critical for e-retailers to think and design their e-commerce website with a mobile approach in mind.
Mobile responsive means that the website display adapts to the screen size, reduced text content, clear call-to-actions, and easy navigation with a menu bar.
2. Visuals - Few text, More product visuals
Include eye catchy professional visuals rather than long and boring text. Add the option to zoom in on images, so customers can be more confident with their product choice.
It must be complemented by call-to-actions to convert interest into action with very limited friction.
Different angle
Texture
Colors
Custom combination
Product demo (with Augmented reality integration for a better conversion and a smaller return rate)
You don’t have to invest thousands in freelancers or Agency, there is a lot of new online services that help create simple and efficient content easily, Numerized.com being one of many.
3. Performance
Make sure your website is fast to load as this will affect the bounce rate as well as the website indexing on search engines.
What is a good functional design for an e-commerce project?
When it comes to defining your project scope, you must first start with your sales strategy.
Beyond all the basic features that an e-commerce website has including browse products, select color and quantity, add to cart, check out, you may also want to consider including features that will increase sales and linearize your sales peaks over time.
Such features include: Referral system, Flash Sales, Membership Discount, Bulk discount
Those features are often found in more advanced e-shop. With the explosion of e-commerce during the pandemic, competition is more fierce and thus conversion rates are decreasing which affect the user cost of acquisition.
What is your best technical advice?
There are 3 main types of technical solutions which allow different levels of customization.
Choice of technical solution will vary depending on the business workflow:
CMS e-commerce (Shopify, WooCommerce, Prestashop)
This solution offers a lot of advantages, let’s name a few: low cost to set up, easy to build and supported by a large community, access to a large number of plugins for additional features.
On the other hand, it may not fit your business if you have a specific workflow or specific requirements regarding security.
Headless CMS e-commerce (Sylius, Magento)
Fits a specific workflow since it offers a layer of existing features on which additional features are easier to build.
The base offers the functionality of a traditional CMS and e-commerce. It is then simple to add bricks for an infinity of functionalities (with the plugins already available, or even by creating your own plugin).
This allows you to have a light base, a back office adapted to your needs, without unused functionality and a more responsive front because it is less heavy to load.
Custom Dev
Full proprietary code, no subscription required
Long development time
Specific workflow
Your best recommendation when looking at a third party integration?
Compare different third party services:
Pricing (Monthly subscription)
Services
Customisability
Make sure there is a proper documentation of API.