Custom website design and development.
We build custom websites and ecommerce solutions that give rise to transformative digital experiences.
Successful ecommerce websites are built with a personalised strategy delivering not only an aesthetically attractive platform, but one that engages visitors to interact with available features and be drawn towards a seamless conversion. Clearwater specialists have a wealth of experience in professional design, development and support for all ecommerce platforms, giving your business the best representation to your wider, target customer base.
With stunning branding and packaging under their belt, we took the reins and did:
- Custom Shopify website design including bespoke country selector
- Built and launched 3 x Shopify stores in difference currencies, in 2 languages
- Curation, installation and customisation of multiple plugins/apps
- Integration with the software used by their 3PL (Third Party Logistics) warehouse, resulting in seamless, hands-off, end-to-end sales
- Digital marketing strategy
We take a deep dive to gain a thorough understanding of your business, your target audience and your brand. We’ll also examine competitor website and discuss timelines and budget details.
Next we develop the complete scope of technical requirements and plot a roadmap to launch. All details are specifieed and agreed upon, in addition to developing wireframes for crucisal pages.
All the details from the previous steps are now applied to applied to a homepage and single product concepts. Any revisions requested are applied before proceeding to design all pages.
Your designs a brought to life and assume the form of a fully functioning website. Integration of fulfillment, POS, accounting, ERP, inventory management, and marketing platforms are completed.
Extremely diligent testing is undertaken to ensure on desktop and physical mobile devices to ensure that all browsers, screen sizes and integrations are function correctly and end-to-end customer journeys are seemless.
In collaboration with you and any relevant partners, rigorous care is taken to push the website live without any hiccups. Additional testing is completed and additional support is always available when required.
A website should always be built around your business’s model and goals. For example, service-based businesses will require a highly informative website demonstrating the problems they solve and provide simple ways for visitors to make contact or enquiries. Ecommerce websites, however, are better suited to retailers selling a range of products online. A high-quality ecommerce website will therefore be built with a strategy upon which design, development and ongoing support are geared to delivering an elevated customer experience reflecting the needs and expectations of potential customers.
Ecommerce websites need to remain relevant and fluid to ensure they are competitive within their industry and user-friendly for potential customers visiting. No-one wants to work harder than needed to browse products of interest, so your website should be structured with a clear architecture, layout and navigational tools for visitors to quickly locate whatever they are searching for. This also must relate to a mobile-responsive design, as more and more consumers opt to conduct their brand research and shopping via mobile devices.
Showcasing products and branded visuals should only be done through high-definition imagery to demonstrate at first glance your brand is credible and invested in their offerings. It can also work wonders to pair these images with appropriate reviews and testimonials to further boost authority with genuine social proof.
A selection of trusted, easy-to-use, payment options is also essential at the end stages of your buyer journey. Allowing people to pay in a manner they feel comfortable and familiar with will be enormously helpful in nurturing them towards making a conversion. Going one step further by outlining shipping information, promotional offers and even a clear returns policy will build on top of this confidence felt by the consumer, encouraging repeat purchases and even them becoming advocates of your brand.
The market is full of exciting options to begin building your ecommerce website, making it often difficult to select which platform is right for your business. First, consider the phase of business you’re in and the amount of budget you have available. At Clearwater, we are big fans of Shopify, given the wide range of capabilities and features made available on the platform, including a variety of plugins, chat support, not to mention ease of use. Shopify websites also perform excellently with SEO and deliver real value for money, making it an excellent choice for entrepreneurs, start-ups, and retailers of all sizes. But they aren’t alone; you can also select from Magento, BigCommerce, or the widely popular WordPress platform for your business, not to mention a range of other alternatives. The key is to truly appreciate the end goal from your website build, and find the ideal platform to deliver it.
Few things in business are truly ‘set-and-forget’, especially if you want to enjoy long-standing benefit from them, and ecommerce websites are no different. Ongoing maintenance is vital to not only ensure there aren’t any malfunctions present on your platform, but to review links that might be broken, products listed that are no longer available for purchase, or other technical points creating friction in a potential customer’s buyer journey. This might also include upgrades to your plugins or ways to improve your site speed, refining the experience of website visitors and giving you an edge over your competition.
Why build an ecommerce platform if you can’t see how it is helping your business? Fortunately, there are loads of tools to help you review the performance of your online store. Google Analytics, for example, is excellent in providing insights on the traffic coming to your website, outlining how they found your brand (search engines, social media and so on), what pages they interacted with, and how long they spent on your website. Depending on the platforms you choose to build your ecommerce website on, you will also have access to a range of information related to sales and the behaviours of your customers, such as average purchases amounts and common products bought in the same transaction.
Together, these tools deliver key data to be funnelled back into your business in the form of marketing strategies, business promotions, and technical additions/alterations to improve customer experience and overall revenue. Our team are more than happy to guide you through how these platforms work in order for you to gain the most value out of your website.
At Clearwater, we know that the best chance of succeeding with an ecommerce website is to build a platform suiting your specific business model and objectives. The scope of a project will therefore have varied requirements and factors based on the needs you communicate to us, making the price and delivery times unique for each of our clients. Naturally, those projects with less complexity and customised features can be delivered quicker and at a lower cost, and it can certainly help expedite turnaround times when we work with responsive, engaged clients knowing exactly what they want in a website.
To ensure you enter into your project with a clear understanding about the process and required investment, our specialists will first conduct a consultation session to understand the unique details of your business, get an idea of your budgets and what you want to achieve, and build a personalised strategy that works towards delivering it.
We are based in Melbourne and work with businesses Australia wide, including Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide and Hobart. Contact us at Clearwater today to get the conversation started.