Does your E-commerce Web Designer have the right skill set?

The best e-commerce websites are secure, aesthetic appealing, functional and user-friendly. Developing successful websites requires a team of professionals that are experienced and knowledgeable in web design and development. You can see these skills if they have them in the work they have done. The web designer’s responsibility is to create the site’s look and feel while making it user friendly, responsive and aesthetic appealing. The web developers focus is on the functional aspects of the e-commerce website. Web developers must be equipped with specific skills to be able to deliver. What are some of the skills necessary to being a professional e-commerce web designer?

Proficiency in developing the critical features of e-commerce sites

An e-commerce web designer must have a flair for visual design and proficiency with technology. He/she must be capable of creating aesthetically-pleasing website designs and also have sufficient coding skills in HTML, CSS, XML and PHP to implement the design using any number of web platforms or tools. Unlike a web developer who creates tools or applications to develop or enhance a website, web designers are responsible for creating the visual aspects of a site and using the right tools for success. However, some e-commerce web designer roles may call for a bit of development knowledge/experience.

The critical features of an e-commerce site that a web designer must be proficient in, include:

Shopping cart and merchant gateways: Extensive knowledge of shopping carts and gateways and purchasing application into your site, that is secure and it allows visitors to browse, search for and buy your products. Besides having hands-on expertise with shopping carts and merchant gateways, designers must also ensure that all aspects of the shopping cart and checkout process are secure.

Web design: An e-commerce web designer must ensure that the site has an appealing look and feel, while also providing intuitive responsive navigation, strong branding and a compelling call-to-action. The designer must be able to incorporate search features and easy-to-use menus that deliver a good user experience and encourage browsing.

Often, an e-commerce web designer will need to make a decision about the images and that are part of the website. High resolution images are very important to sites, but slows down the site’s loading time. So optimizing images along with good hosting can help speed up the load times. A gallery slide show with good messaging emphasis on a strong call to action  as opposed to just plain images, are some of the multiple options an e-commerce web designer must explore to deliver results in line with expectations.

Social media and blog integration: An experienced e-commerce web designer will know that social media and blog integration can be done in different ways. He/she must collaborate with other key stakeholders to understand and translate design and integration requirements into solutions that drive business results.

Some qualifications/skill-sets of a seasoned e-commerce web designer

• A comprehensive understanding of the internet in relation to e-commerce websites, cross-browser compatibility, web 2.0 standards and image optimization
• Working knowledge of PHP, CSS, HTML, JQuery and JavaScript,
• Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator
• The e-commerce web designer must have an understanding of interactive user experience, typography and content management systems (CMS) as well as responsive web design. At Miami Web Design Agency all of our website include responsive web design as part of every website development.

As part of all the skill-sets we have listed the most important is for you to do your homework. It’s critical that you see samples of past websites they have built. Also contacting client references and reading their client reviews is so important. Another detail that goes unnoticed is, do you like your web agency’s website? If you do, you are sure to love your new website. For more on E-commerce web design or visit our portfolio.