Ways For Interior Designers To Start Their Online Business

Start by understanding your unique needs and goals

Firstly, let us start with understanding the needs and goals of your website. It is important to know what you are aiming to achieve with the result of your website.

         You could be a new interior designer who is trying to build their first online business by building an efficient website.  

         You could be a business owner who is trying to expand their business by building an efficient website.

Building an efficient website to represent your business will benefit you in many ways such as reputation, brand recognition, and revenue.

To ensure that you build the most effective and efficient website, you must work with many different components to achieve the results that you seek, this includes both front-end and back-end development of the website. Let me briefly explain what the front-end and back-end development of a website is.

So,

What is front-end development?

Front-end web development, sometimes referred to as client-side development, is the process of creating HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for a website or Web application so that a user can see and interact with it directly. The difficulty with front end development is that the tools and techniques used to produce the front end of a website change all the time, necessitating the developer's ongoing awareness of how the field evolves.

Now that I have briefly explained what the front-end development process is, lets now look at back-end development.

What is back-end development?

Back-end development is concerned with the server side of things, where you are mostly concerned with how the site functions. Your major role will be to make updates and changes to the site, as well as to monitor its functionality. A server, an application, and a database are commonly included in this form of web development. Back-end developers write the code that conveys database information to the browser. A back-end developer is responsible for anything that can't be seen with the naked eye, such as databases and servers. Positions for back-end developers are frequently referred to as programmers or web developers.

Begin by assessing your company's needs and goals, as well as your team's strengths and shortcomings. The developers on your team, costs, and time to market will all be influenced by the decisions you make when creating your website, you can avoid difficult adjustments in the future by carefully analysing what your team need in the process of developing the website.

What is the goal of your website?

Let’s start with the user experience and user interface as it is very important when making a website.

What do you want the end-user to see and do on your website?

·         Such as a user can navigate through your website and find the right product for themselves to make a purchase on your website.

·         A user can view your collections of exquisite interior design products and they may be able to purchase them from your store.

What features will you be using on your website?

 Will your website be able to function on other platforms such as different browsers, mobile devices, tablets, and so on?

Programming language, data management systems, and other considerations are influenced by the type of website you're constructing and the capabilities you require. Take into mind future requirements while keeping things simple for the time being.

What are your security needs?

What types of data will you be collecting and maintaining?

This includes customers’ personal information such as name, contact details, delivery address, bank card details, and so on.

Are there any industry regulations you need to consider or security standards you need to follow?

For instance, if your website is collecting important information such as customer details then you as a developer of the website must be able to show that your website complies with the regulation laws such as General Data Protection Regulations, Data Protection Act, and so on. This is to ensure that customers’ information is used accordingly to the law and no customers’ information is at risk of theft or loss. 

What’s your budget?

What is your current budget, and how will it evolve as you prove the concept and grow?

Because of higher pay and recruiting expenses for developers with certain skills, technologies that are less widespread or harder to learn will be more expensive to maintain. The design of your application is significantly influenced by frameworks and programming languages, which has an impact on its capacity to scale cost-effectively.

Once you outline those important aspects of making a website, we can now start looking at ways to make the website.

Before the development of a website creating tool software, businesses had to hire a team of developers or outsourced website creating company to create their own website for their business. Although this was an easy process of making a website for a small business, it had a lot of drawbacks such as time consumption, expense, and communication as it could be limited as they would be communicating with many other clients.

Time consumption – hiring a team of developers or an outsourced company to build your website can consume a lot of time, although you will be giving deadlines to the developers, there is a chance of going over the deadline or they might ask for extra time to complete your website.

Expense – one of the biggest drawbacks would be that it will be very expensive to hire a team of developers or an outsourced company. This is a huge disadvantage to the small businesses that are looking to build their website as they will have a limited budget. There will also be a lot of hidden costs with the bills by the web developers for making your website.

Communication – the hired team of developers will be working on many different websites as they will be working with many other clients including you. This would mean that there is a chance of miscommunication which could result in the team of developers making a mistake in developing your website. The hired team will not always be available to communicate as they will be busy on other clients’ websites. 

So, what is the easiest way to make a website for start-ups?

Let’s have a look into the global website builders’ market

According to the 2019 research, the website building market has over $1.40 billion net worth. And the expected market revenue is growing up to $2.62 billion by 2027. This is just an estimation of the current value of the website building market, the real amount could be way more than it is here. As the market is continuing to grow every year as the technology is slowly developing. This shows that future businesses will be getting involved with website builders, hence increasing their market value by every year.

This market involves today’s biggest website building software companies such as Shoplify, Space Square, Wix, Go Daddy and so on. The whole idea of these website building software is that it solves the problem of requiring the user to learn or have experience in coding to develop a website as the fundamental of a website resides on thousands of codes. This has limited many businesses from having an online presence; therefore, these website development tools allow you to develop a website without having to do the actual dirty work of coding. This market is called Low-Code/No-Code and it is very beneficial to many users.

For instance, let’s have a look at Wix and see how easy it is for you to start up your online business.

So, what is Wix?

Wix is a website builder, an easy-to-use tool that allows you to quickly construct an online presence using a drag-and-drop interface with no need for coding or FTP experience. To get started with Wix's web hosting, all you need is an email account.

With its easy user interface, you will be able to create a website by simply using the drag–and–drop tool to include important features in your website. Wix is also one of these successful companies which had adopted the idea of creating a website for users who have no knowledge of programming.

How does Wix build you a website?

It is very simple Wix ADI (Artificial Design Intelligence) will quickly construct a unique website just for you, complete with custom text and photos after you answer a few basic questions. Choose a style, alter the layout, and add any services you require for your business, such as an online store or a reservation system.

With that being said, using a website development tool software such as Wix will not only save you time and expense, but it will also be easier for you to create an efficient website within weeks' time.  

 Let’s look at other website-building software

BigCommerce as a software solution for interior designers

BigCommerce is very similar to Wix; however, the way it builds a website is different than other website-building software. It provides amazing features for interior designers to build their websites on. Let me show you a few examples.

BigCommerce offers great services and features for interior designers such as Theme customization, Mobile Optimization, Page Builder Visual Editor, Digital Wallets, etc.

   To find the best website building tool, we will be comparing these eCommerce companies.

BigCommerce vs Wix

Wix – First things first, to run an eCommerce store on Wix you will need to subscribe to either the eCommerce or VIP plans, which connect you to Wix Stores (their eCommerce and payment processing add-on. Once that is sorted, you are ready to start building your site.

On the other hand, BigCommerce is not so quick to start setting up, as soon as you sign up for BigCommerce, you are sent an introductory email containing your store’s web address as well as a link to a store launch guide and control panel tour to help your site launch.

Both companies offer great templates which could be used by an interior designer to start with their website.

Wix offers an impressively large number of templates (over 500), with many specially optimized for eCommerce stores. These templates have been designed with eCommerce best practices in mind, such as simple customer navigation options, meaning these templates are designed to sell. This is a huge time-saver as you can simply choose a template and then edit it as you see fit.

Whereas BigCommerce themes might lack the eye-catching pizzazz of Wix’s templates, but because it caters exclusively to users who want to build eCommerce websites – its themes reflect this.

So, many BigCommerce themes come kitted out with online trading features that you would either have to add to a Wix template by yourself or forgo entirely, so this can save a lot of time if you are keen to start selling, or don’t have the time to fully design and develop a store from a more basic template.

Hundreds of clever e-commerce add-ons (Wix)

Wix bundles a number of useful eCommerce tools and apps with its eCommerce templates.

This kick-starter kit of essentials can help you to –

·         Track orders

·         Configure taxes

·         Set shipping costs

·         Connect payment methods

·         Get your store found online (by improving your website’s SEO)

This may sound a bit basic but the vast majority of interior designers who are starting their online business will require these essential tools which will help towards managing your business and boosting your business’s presence online.

You can also find more advanced features by third-party features by hunting through the Wix App Market.

Every selling tool an interior designer needs, built-in (BigCommerce)

BigCommerce templates might be lacking on the design front, but let’s not forget that besides grabbing the attention of potential customers, we also need to be selling to them too!

BigCommerce themes nearly contain all the sales and marketing features your interior design website needs. This will save huge time and money as you don’t need to spend a lot of time trying to find extra features for your website in the marketplace.

Some of the Core Features of BigCommerce include –

·         Integrations with platforms like Amazon, eBay, and Google Shopping – ideal for reaching a wider pool of potential customers

·         Inventory tracking and warranty information

·         Stock management – including product description editing

·         Abandoned cart recovery settings and analytics – great for targeting customers who haven’t finished their purchase

·         Coupon code creation – a great way of reaching out to old customers or reeling in new ones.

So, which of these software is the most suitable for new interior designers?

Well, it really depends on the type of website that you are trying to build and the result you are trying to achieve with it.

After our little comparison, based on the given information I will be giving my personal opinion on which software is best at which.

In terms of templates, I believe Wix has the advantage as it has over 500 templates that can all be customized extensively without knowing a letter of code. However, it does have the little disadvantage of not being able to switch your edited template later on.

Conversely, BigCommerce offers a smaller selection of templates, but nearly all of them are specifically e-commerce-focused. However, the quality of design is lacking when compared to Wix and with eCommerce becoming more driven by eye-catching designs that keep customers on pages, BigCommerce really needs to offer more.

It is great that users can edit templates with HTML to add custom features, but unless you have a very specific idea in mind, Wix more than covers your eCommerce design needs and is generally much easier to use.

Features comparison

In terms of features that were offered by both companies, BigCommerce has an advantage here.

Both tools offer a large number of add-on apps to give your store a professional edge, but BigCommerce offers far more built-in eCommerce features than Wix eCommerce does. This not only massively helps in getting your store online sooner but should also save you time and money as there’s no need to hunt for additional features in the app store.

Final Verdict between Wix vs BigCommerce

Wix is more affordable and easier to use than BigCommerce. This makes Wix the obvious choice if you are a new interior designer looking to start from scratch. Wix’s editor is easier to use, more intuitive, and more supportive thanks to its tooltips, while the eCommerce plans on offer work out significantly cheaper than BigCommerce’s

Wix also offers a larger range of eye-catching templates that will give your storefront a polished but creative edge.

BigCommerce, on the other hand, is a more serious eCommerce platform aimed at growing and medium-to-large businesses.

If you are an experienced interior designer in HTML as well as other features in eCommerce then BigCommerce is worth the extra investment; however, many of our interior designers are likely to run small or independent eCommerce stores, we have to put Wix eCommerce ahead of BigCommerce in this particular discussion.

Which of these software provides the best features for an interior designer?

For an interior designer looking to build their website, it is important that one of this software can provide any of these features such as marketing, CRM (Customer Relationship Management), and project management. These features are vital as they are often used by many modern interior designers’ websites.

So, let’s see what Wix has to offer for their interior designer users.

For marketing – Wix allows you to showcase a product (through video, slideshow), promote a sale, design an inspiring quote, or create other interesting content on social media in the simplest way possible.

Just for marketing, Wix has one of the most powerful tools such as the Video Maker, and this feature available within your user dashboard under Ascend’s ‘Marketing Tools.’ With it, you can create a promotional video for your business, announce a sale, or tell an inspirational story by adding your content, design, and music. If you don’t have much in-house content to work with, utilize the free visuals, templates, and sounds already obtainable within the product. In less than a minute your video will be generated and ready to upload to your website, social platforms, or saved for later.

This is very important for interior designers as they would often have to showcase a video of their product or service. 

Another marketing feature that is offered by Wix is the “Automations”.

From welcoming new email subscribers to thanking customers for purchases and more, you can set up an automated email response to those actions. Just imagine how much time you’ll be able to save, leaving you to focus on everything else you have going on with your business. The answer: a lot of time! And plus, these personable messages are extremely important for retaining customers and helping your brand look professional.

SEO Features

There’s no point in having all of these other strategies in place if no one can find you online. And proper SEO is the result of all the hard work you do to improve your position on search engines’ result pages. An SEO strategy involves many things, like keyword research, implementing those keywords into your title, description, alt text, and throughout your site, and more tasks in order to get your website ranking higher. Luckily, to help you keep track of all of these steps, Wix SEO Wiz provides you with a customized checklist.

Coupons, Price Quotes, and Invoices

If you’re a Wix user, you can take advantage of the seamlessly integrated Ascend Coupons tool available from inside of your website’s user dashboard. Here you can choose to offer customized discounts on specific products and services by price value or percent, a buy one gets one deal, sale price, or free shipping. Choose your limits and dates and you’re ready to go.

Another way to reel in more customers is through Price Quotes (you’ll find this in your user dashboard). You can create these and send them to your customers individually. Then, once an agreement is made, turn a price quote into an invoice with one simple click. You can do this for every new order - allowing you to collect payments while saving time.

You can also send invoices using the invoice generator, which can be used with or without a Wix account. After entering details such as your contact information, client details, and billing options, you can create a custom invoice for your business to either printout or email to your customers directly.

Using this free business tools, you can bring in even more happy customers and take a leap forward towards succeeding at your marketing goals.

There are many more features in Wix made just for marketing for your business, I have included the main ones that might be of great interest to you.

Now, does Wix have built-in CRM features for interior designers?

The short answer is YES, we will now look into those features that Wix has to offer.

Very recently, Wix has started using CRM as their solution by Ascend.

Wix gives you a complete customer management solution. It’s designed to help you capture leads, convert them, build lasting relationships with your customers and manage your workflow. Your CRM suite is already connected to your site, so you have everything you need to grow your business. 

Capture Leads

Wix users who use their site’s built-in lead capture solutions get up to 20 times more leads.

Live Chat

With the Live Chat feature, you can communicate with your site visitors in real-time to answer their questions, provide them with information and turn them into customers.

Forms

Create custom forms with Wix’s form builder. Collect details, get feedback, take payments and follow up at the right time for you.

Inbox

With the Inbox feature, you can check, manage and reply to messages from every channel, like Facebook Messenger, your email, contact & lead submission forms, and more.

Contacts

When you get a new lead through your site, it’s automatically added to your Contacts. Add labels, filter to find specific info, or create mailing lists.

With the CRM tool by Wix, you can also streamline your workflow

Workflows

You can create custom workflows so you can track leads, set priorities, and follow up from one place.

Tasks

With the tasks feature you can stay on track with what needs to be done and never miss a lead with a task manager connected to your workflow.

For project management, Wix does not support this tool. Therefore, we will now be looking at BigCommerce to see if they have got any of these vital tools for interior designers.

Similarly, BigCommerce does provide important features for marketing, and this includes –

SEO

BigCommerce, SEO features allow you to get more traffic with customizable, SEO-friendly URLs, out-of-the-box Metadata, and robots.txt editing. This way, your website can be displayed as a result of a search on top search engines such as Google and this is a very important marketing strategy for an interior design business.

Coupons & Discounts

Big Commerce also allows you to create over 70+ native discounts and promotions — no scripting required. Coupon codes are a great way to convert visitors to shoppers and can help you reward customers who have signed up for your newsletter or left feedback on your contact page. Coupon codes are different from other promotions like sale pricing and automatic promotions in that they require shoppers to enter a predetermined code or phrase at checkout. Coupon codes can be more focused than other promotions since they can limit by country and shipping method.

BigCommerce also offers cross-channel feature

This includes the Social Commerce feature and what it does is that it allows you as the user to capture more customers on social channels with Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram integrations. This way, you can increase your audience and obtain a higher number of customers.

BigCommerce also offers a Complete CRM tool

A BigCommerce CRM is a way for online retailers to build better relationships with their customers. To accomplish this, the CRM connects to all their sales channels, importing all their order data and creating customer profiles from the eCommerce order activity. Using this data, retailers can identify trends, send better marketing messages, improve email marketing campaigns, and use business intelligence to improve their online stores. These are just a few of the many ways that a BigCommerce CRM helps a retailer create longer-lasting relationships with new and existing customers that serve to improve their bottom line and long-term ROI.

How does BigCommerce CRM work?

A CRM for BigCommerce works by connecting to your online store from within the software using something called an API. This allows it to sync with your BigCommerce account. It’s then able to instantly import all your order data. From there, it creates detailed customer profiles and contacts, complete with an order timeline, shipping and tracking information, customer-focused notes, tagging, filters, and an event calendar.

This same BigCommerce CRM software also works with your marketplace accounts, like Amazon and eBay for complete synergy with your cross-channel presence. With all of this organized data contained in one hub, you now have a complete picture of the customer journey, with powerful relationship-building features that also include things like task and team management for your back-office team and premium plugins that can integrate multicarrier shipping and returns software.

Benefits of BigCommerce CRM

Knowing what your customers are doing across all your sales channels is mission-critical in today’s competitive eCommerce universe. Being able to determine trendsetting products, return rates, and shipping cost help you reduce your overhead and improve your bottom line. The ability to filter customers and cater to new marketing messages and real-time responses helps you improve relationships from day one, while simultaneously reducing marketing cost and its associated labour and improving return on investment.

For project management tools, BigCommerce has another solution

BigCommerce was lack of project management systems and they were looking to resolve this issue. BigCommerce selected Wrike as the collaborative work management system that could help it streamline processes, simplify reporting, and scale the business. Because BigCommerce selected the most versatile work management system, its professional services teams and customers can follow its preferred workflows and processes. Therefore, if you were to use project management tools at BigCommerce, you would have to register with their collaborated company “Wrike” which will be offering project management systems for your needs.

Finally, which of this software is the best for interior designers?

After careful research, I have made a verdict of Wix as being the best website development software for interior designers. This is because Wix has proven itself to be the best platform for interior designers due to its offered features as well as tools. Despite its lack of project management systems, Wix has arguably the best features for marketing and CRM which are vital for interior designers who are looking to build their website. Although BigCommerce has features that are very similar to Wix, BigCommerce is limited on a lot of things, whereas Wix has provided an all-in-one tool. This is important for new interior designers as they would need those features to build their professional websites. I recommend you to check out both web development software to see whichever is the most convenient or suitable for your needs, but generally speaking, Wix will everything that an interior designer may need when it comes to building their website.

If you are still unsure of which one to use, I have made a table that contains the Pros and Cons of Wix and BigCommerce.

BigCommerce usage statistics

 Versus Wix usage statistics