If you are looking to create an e-commerce website at an affordable cost, WordPress (WooCommerce) could be a great choice for you.
Using WordPress for developing an online store can help you save more than 30% of the usual website development cost.
Moreover, you can easily shortlist & hire a WordPress developer to design or redesign your e-commerce website.
There are plenty of options for you to hire e-commerce web developers who use WordPress to create websites.
Yet, hiring a qualified, experienced, yet affordable WordPress developer could become challenging sometimes.
Now you may be asking “What are the qualities that my WordPress developer should possess?” or “How can I make sure that I hire a qualified WordPress e-commerce developer?“.
In this blog post, I’ve shared 5 essential qualities that you must look out for in your Singapore WordPress developer who will create your e-commerce website.
#1 Strong WordPress Knowledge
Strong working knowledge of WordPress CMS is of course the most important pre-requisite of your e-commerce web developer.
You can easily find hundreds of web developers who know basic WordPress website development, but when it comes to delivering a professional, SEO-friendly & secured online store, you definitely need an experienced Singapore web developer.
Only experienced WordPress developers know:
- How to correctly set up WordPress CMS.
- Which WordPress plugin(s) should be used to create a profitable e-commerce website.
- What norms should be followed to develop a secured & SEO-friendly website?
- What kind of WordPress theme should be used for your e-commerce website development.
- What kind of web hosting should be used to deploy your website.
- How to deploy your website correctly and how to take care of necessary files such as “wp-config.php”, “sitemap.xml”, and “robots.txt”.
#2 Theme customization skills
Although you can easily choose & install a pre-defined WordPress theme for your e-commerce website based on your business requirements, you may need some changes or customizations to your chosen theme according to your own preferences & business branding.
Here comes the expertise of your WordPress designer.
Not all WordPress developers can customize WordPress themes according to their clients’ requirements.
It is therefore, very important for you to ensure that your developer possesses necessary coding skills and is able to customize the WordPress theme for you.
#3 Plugin customization skills
When you create an e-commerce website using WordPress, you may need to use several plugins to incorporate different features to your online store.
Most of the WordPress plugins are free to use. So, finding an appropriate plugin for your website shouldn’t be a problem.
But here’s the thing.
Not all the plugins may suit your precise requirements. It means that you may need some modifications or customizations to be done for your plugins in order to match your desired features.
Again, an experienced WordPress developer in Singapore can help you to not only customize your existing plugins, but can also develop new plugins for you from scratch.
If your shortlisted web developer possesses the plugin customization & development skills, you won’t face any kind of issues during your e-commerce website development.
#4 SEO skills
SEO (search engine optimization) is an integral part of your WordPress website development if you are really serious about getting organic traffic from search engines like Google.
We all know that one of the major goals to create an e-commerce website is to increase sales.
SEO is perhaps one of the efficient yet cost-effective mediums to get targeted traffic to any website.
Therefore, before hiring a WordPress developer to create your online store, you must check & make sure that he or she possesses the required SEO skills.
Here are a few ways in which your website developer can make your website SEO-friendly.
- Adding a provision for you to define a unique meta title and description for each webpage.
- Ensuring that there are no broken links on your website.
- Ensuring the optimized loading speed of your e-commerce website.
- Creating sitemap.xml and robots.txt files for your website.
- Installing necessary trackers such as Google Analytics with your online store.
- Installing an efficient SEO plugin such as Yoast SEO with your website.
#5 Website security
A website’s security is as important as its development.
If your WordPress e-commerce website is not secured, you may face several consequences such as:
- Loss of reputation.
- Loss of search engine rankings.
- Loss of overall sales.
- Loss of customers.
But sadly, not all website developers take care of the security while developing a website.
Therefore, before you hire an e-commerce developer for your website development, do ask him about his plans to secure your website.