The best E-Commerce agencies are those who master the main CMS of the market, and who are able to advise you on the most suitable for your digital strategy of online sales.
A digital agency is usually limited to the unique technology mastered by its developer and its project manager.
However, an Ecommerce agency must be able to adapt the tool to the size of the project, depending on whether you will need to interface your Front with your Back office.
Do you have inventory management software to link to the website? Do you have a CRM, an ERP to interface with? And which ones?
A good E-Commerce agency must first analyze the global digital environment of your organization before proposing the best solution, and launch the project management.
Obviously, all the other aspects will also be taken into account (visual identity, graphic charter, user experience, traffic acquisition, estimated conversion rate, customer journey, browsing experience...), but first, it will be a matter of finding the best CMS "for you".
Only then can we start writing the specifications for the site itself.
Wordpress is the world's leading CMS and Woocommerce its extension dedicated to ecommerce. Although the CMS was not designed for e-commerce unlike the other 3 below, it powers more than 70 million online stores and represents 22% of sites using e-commerce technologies.
This Open Source CMS has the merit of being mastered by most web agencies, and allows you to easily set up an online store with its well-known module Woocommerce.
For small online stores of craftsmen, traders, it will probably be the CMS to prefer because in terms of development and maintenance costs, your digital agency will be able to produce a quality site without developing complex modules and with secure online payment systems either provided by most banks or by third parties like Stripe.
The best E-Commerce agencies trust Prestashop. Without doubt THE reference CMS on the market today, including for very large sites.
Prestashop provides the code and makes you the owner and independent of the management of your site. No particular monthly subscription, unlike CMS like Shopify (see below), which will charge you a monthly subscription, or even a percentage of the turnover you make online.
The big advantage of Prestashop (as well as Magento), is that it was designed specifically to address E-Commerce issues.
Therefore, the themes (or Template) that Prestashop offers are already thought and designed to optimize the UX related to online sales.
In principle, the proposed navigation is already optimized so that the Internet user can easily move from the navigation to the purchase act.
Like Prestashop, Adobe Commerce Magento is the second major CMS operator specialized in E-Commerce.
It is clearly a direct competitor, with the reservation that fewer digital agencies master this CMS than Prestashop.
If you want to "switch", you may have a more limited choice of providers to switch to.
Here again, Magento provides today very large E-Commerce sites, and is equipped with numerous and very efficient modules (banking, logistics, web marketing...).
Shopify is a bit like "Wix" of E-Commerce. Within reach of everyone (or almost), this CMS allows in SAAS mode to create very quickly its own online sales site.
Some online merchants are even making a very large turnover with Shopify today.
However, as soon as you want to ultra customize, you are quite quickly constrained by the limits of the SAAS mode.
So here again, given the commissions to be paid on the turnover generated, Shopify is in principle rather for small or medium-sized E-retailers.
Whatever your activity, and the CMS you will have chosen to develop your sales on the Internet, the e-commerce agency and yourself, must be vigilant on some other aspects.
Mastering acquisition levers, multimedia content, campaign management, product personalization, etc. and many other aspects will be taken into account.
Unless you choose a CMS like Shopify, which de facto hosts its own solution, for other CMS, you will have to choose your host.
In any case, choose a host capable of securing and creating regular backups of your website and its content...
Depending on the size of your site and the desired response time, you should also choose a specific hosting mode (shared for small sites, own for very large sites in order not to affect the performance of your site).
Theoretically predefined, the purchase path of some templates will not be as efficient as others.
Choose templates with the shortest possible number of clicks between the product page and the payment.
The longer your buying journey, the more you risk losing users along the way (and therefore sales).
A window that is not found, however beautiful it may be, will not generate any sales. Especially in E-Commerce, where the field of possibility is potentially global.
It is essential to plan for natural and paid referencing from the design of the site.
Optimizing the writing of product sheets for SEO purposes is also key.
Too many product sheets of the main E-commerce sites are weak...
Look at Amazon's product sheets... and you'll see the importance of the copywriting around the product sheet itself.
This is a big starting question that should be asked... Because many aspects have to be taken into account. Especially logistic, language, currency, etc.
Nowadays, the brand strategy must necessarily take into account the E-Reputation aspect.
Specific platforms are dedicated to E-Commerce, and to consumer product reviews (Avis Vérifiés, Trusted Shop, TrustPilot...).
Turning prospects into customers of course... but at what cost and what ROI?
More than anywhere else, E-Commerce sites have the absolute necessity to track sales performance vs. Google Ads or Social Ads investments.
Not to be neglected in E-Commerce, because websites are "alive" and must evolve constantly.
Management of ranges, management of promotions, but also incentives, online contests.
To have hours of TMA in E-Commerce is really to be taken into account from the creation of the site.