It’s no longer a luxury for local businesses to have an online store. Whether you’re planning to launch a new e-commerce business, you already have a successful brick-and-mortar store and think it’s time to extend your reach online, or you’re a maker selling handmade items and are ready to showcase your work to the world, an eCommerce website will help you expand your customer base and grow your business like never before. But let’s get real: Creating an online store can be a real pain, particularly if you’re concerned about costs. The good news? Even small businesses that are on a tight budget can find affordable ecommerce website development services.
In this guide, we’ll show you how small businesses can get started on an affordable and professional-looking eCommerce shop. Balancing the human with the (sage) advice, we’ll cover everything from how to decide on a platform that’s right for you, to how to get discovered through a digital marketing company in Bangalore. Let’s put your business online and working for you!
Why Local Businesses Need an eCommerce Website
How people shop has shifted. Nowadays, more than 70% of consumer’s shops online before buying a product and local businesses without online exposure are liable to miss the boat. You can do the following with an eCommerce site:
- Find more customers: Sell beyond your neighborhood, city, and yes, country.
- Keep your doors open 24/7: Sell while you sleep, without maintaining a storefront.
- Compete with larger brands: A website that looks great lets you to compete alongside the largest companies in the world.
- Build Trust: Create trust in a world where the vast majority of the planet has moved online, having a professional online store that speaks directly to this savvy customer base has become a necessity.
The best part? And you don’t need a fortune to get started. Cheap ecommerce website designing & development services can provide you with an amazing looking, functionality web store, which delivers sales.
Real Talk: I personally know a small bake shop in Bangalore, India, that set up an e-commerce platform for just a few thousand rupees. Within months, their delivery orders tripled, a clear example that small investments can pay big dividends.
- Establish Clear Goals for Your eCommerce Site
Before you get into development, make sure you spend time deciding about your online store objectives. This will help you make decisions, and it will keep costs down. Ask yourself:
- What are you selling? Do you sell physical products, downloads, or services?
- Who’s your audience? Local versus national or niche?
- What features do you need? Simple cart and checkout, or more advanced features, such as product filters, customer ratings and reviews, or loyalty programs?
- What’s your budget? Settle upfront what you are willing to spend on ecommerce development services so that there are no surprises.
For example, a local clothing store might need a simple site with ecommerce website design service to showcase products and process payments, while a grocery store might require inventory management and delivery tracking.
Pro Tip: Begin with what you must have and scale out. This keeps your upfront cost low but allows room for growth.
- Select the Best E-commerce Platform
Your chosen platform is the base of your online store and contributes a lot to affordability. Here are three great options for small, local businesses:
- Shopify: A well-designed, one-stop-shop service with plans from as low as $29/month. It’s beginner friendly and comes with hosting, payment gateways, and elementary SEO tools.
- WooCommerce: A customizable free WordPress plugin. You’ll have to pay for hosting and a domain, but it’s good for those businesses who want lots of options or flexibility.
- Wix eCommerce: Best for small shops, featuring drag-and-drop design and starting at $17/month. A good option if you’re looking for an easy setup with few tech skills.
Pros and cons to every platform and do what feels right for you and your technical comfort level. There are so many features that you can have on your online store and GMCSCO Media group being one of the website designing company in Bangalore can additional features that will be tailored as per your liking.
Quick Tip: Never pay for a custom-coded site (unless you need something very complex for a specific reason). Off-the-shelf products are less expensive, have a shorter time-to-market and require less overhead.
- Prioritize User-Friendly Design
Your website’s design is the first thing your customers see that can either make or break a shopping experience. ‘Affordable’ doesn’t translate into ‘cheap-looking’—here are our top tips to get ecommerce website design service just right, on a budget:
- Keep it simple: A straightforward design that’s easy to navigate will help your customers find products quickly. Don’t use the congested layout which might irritate users.
- Optimize for mobile: Over 50% of eCommerce traffic originates from phones, meaning your site absolutely needs to look and perform great on small screens.
- Utilize good images: Spend a little on nice product photos or sparingly use stock images. We are a professional website design company Bangalore that can give you a professional looking website at a reasonable price.
- Incorporate Clear CTAs: Your Call To Action (CTA) buttons such as “Add to Cart” or “Buy Now” should pop and gently steer your users toward the checkout.
Many platforms like Shopify and Wix also have free or inexpensive themes that look professional. Wondering how much to give your blog a unique design you like… don’t do a whole new redesign.*hire a website design company in Bangalore and spend an ample amount of money to give your blog that custom little tweak you’ve always wanted to make on your site.
Human Touch: Consider it like walking into a disheveled store for which the products aren’t properly organized and the cashier’s hard to find. That’s what a bad website is like. Give your online shop a catchy look and feel!
- Focus on Essential Features
To help keep costs low, concentrate on the features that bring in sales and make operations simpler. What you need for a local business eCommerce site:
Robust Payment gateways: Support for local ones such as UPI, Paytm, Razorpay, alongside cards and COD.
- Shopping Cart & Checkout: A seamless, one-page checkout process eliminates cart abandonment.
- Product Pages: Clear descriptions, prices and good quality images are a minimum.
- Beginner SEO: Have Meta titles, descriptions and alt text on your site to rank on Google.
- Contact Info: Include phone, email and WhatsApp for any customer inquiries.
Fancy things like AI chatbots or product recommendations can always be added as your store grows. There’s so much your ecommerce website development company can help you out with by guiding you through this process.
Pro Tip: Inquire about integrations with tools such as Google Analytics (free) to monitor visitor behavior and fine tune your website over time.
- Increase Visibility with SEO and Online Marketing
What good is an eCommerce site if no one visits it? Enter search engine optimization (SEO) and digital marketing. Cheap ways to get noticed include:
- On-Page SEO: Optimize product pages, using keywords such as “buy [product] in [city]” or “affordable [product] online.” An SEO agency in Bangalore can definitely assist you to rank better on Google.
- Local SEO: Claim your business on Google My Business and put in your store’s address, hours and reviews to attract customers near you.
- Content Marketing: Create a blog post with tips for using your products (i.e. “How to Style Handmade Jewelry” for a boutique). This will help to bring organic traffic and establish trust.
- Social Media: Advertise your store on Instagram, WhatsApp or Facebook via attractive posts and adverts. Even a digital marketing company in Bangalore can plan low-budget targeted campaigns.
SEO is a long game, but it’s an excellent form of cost-effective traffic. For a quicker return, start with cheap Google Ads or social media promotions.
Real-Live Example: How about a spice retailer in Bangalore I personally know. Now, this spice retailer in Bangalore had his shop’s website readopted by a Bangalore-based SEO company. In six months, they were on page one for “buy organic spices online” and had doubled their sales.
- Collaborate with the right development partner
It’s crucial that you find the right team to build your site, both in terms of affordability and quality. Here’s how to decide who to use for ecommerce website design and ecommerce development services:
- Review the portfolio: Ideally, you’d like to see some experience with eCommerce and, better yet, local business. Have they set up stores like yours?
- Check out reviews: Websites like Clutch, or Google Reviews will give you insight into how reliable or communicative they are.
- Inquire about cost up-front: Request an itemized quote that includes fees for design, development and any monthly charges (such as maintenance or hosting).
- Verify support: Make sure they provide post-launch support for updates, bugs or scaling.
Companies that specialize in website design in Bangalore with eCommerce in mind can provide a professional-looking site for anywhere from ₹20,000–₹50,000 (prices may vary depending on your feature list). Shop around for quotes – but don’t make a decision on price alone; value is more important.
Quick Tip: Local agencies know your market the best. Ahead of their developers being hired, a Bangalore based digital marketing agency can also package the SEO or social media services with development for discounts.
- Ensure Confidence in Your Test and Launch
Get your site ready for customers before going live. What a good ecommerce development services company should do for you:
- Test functionality: Make sure payment, forms and navigation are functioning on devices and in browsers.
- Speed up: Utilize tools like Google PageSpeed Insights to make sure your load times are quick (under 3 seconds).
- Secure the site: Add an SSL certificate, and make sure that your payment gateways are PCI-Compliant.
After launch, track performance using free tools such as Google Analytics. Collect customer feedback so you can make incremental changes to the site over time.
Human Touch: Launch day is nerve-racking and exciting! I recall a customer who opened their store, and had an order drop in a matter of hours — it’s an experience worth preparing for.
Plan for Growth
You’re going to be investing in your eCommerce website for the long-haul, so pick a setup that is able to grow with you. And as your business itself grows, you may also want to:
- Create new products or categories
- Implement more advanced elements, such as abandoned cart emails or customer reviews.
- Go global with multi-language or multi-currency support.
- Gear up for marketing with a SEO company in Bangalore or infuse some spending on paid ads.
A flexible platform and an ecommerce website design and development services partner you can trust will make scaling easy and economical.
Final Thoughts
It doesn’t have to break the bank to start an online store. With clear goals in place, a platform that is easy on your budget and a reliable website design partner in Bangalore, you can build an online store that not only sells, but also makes the customer sounds of joy to get their hands on your products. Combine it with smart moves from a digital marketing company in Bangalore or a SEO company in Bangalore and you are all set to compete with the big players.
If cost is what’s stopping you, it shouldn’t GMCSCO Media Group’s affordable ecommerce website development services are made for companies such as the one that you run. Take action now and see your business succeed online.
Ready to Start Your Online Store?
Have questions about platforms, prices or features? If you would like to know how to apply in practice make sure to let me know in your comment below, or contact one of your local ecommerce development services and get a free consultation. That dream e-commerce site of yours is closer than you realize!