How to launch a successful online store on Laravel

E-commerce is growing rapidly. According to the latest estimates, the number of people making online purchases this year has reached 2.64 billion, and this figure will continue to grow. Launching an online store not only gives a business access to this huge audience, but also many other benefits:

• Possibility of automation – you do not need to maintain a staff of salespeople, monitor their work schedules, control merchandising and other issues. Up to 90% of routine work can be automated using software.
• Unlimited expansion of the assortment – if offline the number of products is limited by the area of the outlet, then in the online store you can introduce new items almost unlimitedly.

• Increased sales – expanding the assortment, the presence of real reviews, a flexible loyalty program and round-the-clock availability help to multiply sales, and therefore profits.
• Accurate analytics and statistics – online you can monitor the company’s performance in real time, make faster and more accurate business decisions.

Want to figure out how to launch a successful online store? In this article, based on our own experience, we will tell you where to start, how to set priorities correctly and how to avoid common mistakes, and we will consider the popular PHP framework Laravel as the main technology for development.

If you are starting a business from scratch, the first thing you need to do is decide on the business model in which you will operate. There are several common forms of retail organization in eCommerce:

• Dropshipping. You search for buyers and forward ready leads to suppliers or product manufacturers. They, in turn, send the product to your client, and you receive income from each sale. That is, in this case you act as an intermediary. To implement this model, you only need a website and a good marketing strategy.
• Classic online store. You buy products from suppliers, store them in your own warehouses and sell them online.

To work effectively, in addition to the main website, you will most likely need tools for tracking balances and a customer relationship management (CRM) system.

• Own production. This is an option for those who want to take over all processes: production, storage, marketing, sales, etc. Launching such a business will require large investments, and from a development point of view, you will need not only an online store, but also a serious IT infrastructure capable of automating all these tasks.

Regardless of the chosen business model, the basis of any eCommerce project is the company’s interaction with customers. We have selected a list of key functions that will help you build effective work:

• Registration. The success of an online store begins with your personal account. It allows the company to establish individual interaction with each client, organize competent loyalty programs and facilitates communication. The buyer, in turn, gets access to purchase history, wish lists and various personal offers.
• Catalog. Your site will need a search bar, as well as a well-thought-out filter system that allows you to sort products by category, color, price and other parameters. It will also be useful to implement the ability to attach various tags and relevant icons to cards.

• Product page. The product card in most online stores has a similar structure: name, photos, price, description, reviews and delivery conditions. It is important that despite the large amount of content, this page remains simple and convenient, and also motivates the user to make a purchase. UX/UI designers solve this problem.
• Featured Products. Not everyone buys on the spot. Very often, users save their favorite items to “favorites” in order to return to them later or wait until the price of an item from the list drops. Thus, this feature helps to increase sales.
• Payment function. Users should be able to pay for goods online. To do this, payment gateways of banks and popular payment systems are connected to the site. If the client does not complete the transaction, he can later be reminded about the “forgotten” product using a push notification.

Laravel is an open source PHP framework. You can use all its features completely free of charge, without violating copyrights. But that’s not the main thing. The key advantage of the framework when creating online stores is its high performance and ability to withstand huge loads.

With the right approach, Laravel code is capable of processing thousands of server requests per second (RPS) without errors or data loss, which is very important, because eCommerce projects generate a lot of traffic. In addition, the main advantages of the framework also include:

• High security. The framework provides reliable data protection from SQL injections and cross-site scripting using ORM and by escaping prohibited HTML tags.

• Good development speed. Laravel provides many ready-made libraries and functions that you can include in your project, and also gives you the ability to reuse the same block of code. As a result, programmers need to perform fewer routine tasks, and the speed of project release is reduced.
• Versatility. Using Laravel, you are not limited in functionality and capabilities – the project allows you to create custom solutions for any business, including e-commerce.
• Performance. Thanks to the ability to control caching, Laravel ensures the minimum page loading speed. By the way, this parameter seriously affects the ranking of the site in search engines, which means it will be easier for you to bring your online store to the top of search results.

Each team builds processes in its own way, so we will tell you how the development of an online store takes place in our company:

• Information collection and analysis. We study the client’s request, analyze business objectives, the market situation and coordinate expectations.
• Design. We create a prototype of an online store that includes mindmaps and interface warframes, a description of functionality and block diagrams of modules. This allows you to think through the features of the project even before the start of development and make the most accurate assessment of the cost and implementation time.
• Design development. We create an interactive design layout of the project, taking into account current UI trends and characteristics of the target audience.

• Technical development. We start coding and implement the server and client parts of the online store using the previously selected technology stack.
• Testing. An important stage, the purpose of which is to identify and correct bugs, errors and inconsistencies in the work of the project.
• Support and development. We help with the maintenance of the online store even after the release – we finalize new functionality, optimize and improve User Flow, and correct possible problems that were not identified earlier.

By outsourcing the development of an online store, you pay for the result, so the time spent and the final cost are interrelated things. It all depends on the complexity of the functionality and the number of innovative features that you plan to implement.

At AVADA MEDIA, we discuss the most accurate cost and time for project implementation with each client individually, at the design stage.

An online store is a complex project with many functions, the launch of which requires time and serious investment. Therefore, first of all, we recommend creating an MVP – a minimum viable product.

It will help test your business idea, check the response of the target audience and assess all possible risks. And when you are 100% confident in the success of the idea, the MVP can be developed into a full-fledged online store.

As for our team, we at AVADA MEDIA will help you avoid many problems and mistakes when developing an online store. Based on our own experience, we always give the client recommendations regarding the technical part, for example, which features should be implemented and which should be abandoned. Ultimately, this will allow you to save resources and quickly bring a successful product to market.