Ecommerce web design industry needs more web site designers

With so many businesses realising the future lies in ecommerce and many already struggling to maintain a healthy profit in the offline world, the ecommerce web design industry has grown significantly in the past five years.

With business owners responding to steady annual increases in the number of consumers turning to the web for shopping, the online retail boom is naturally causing increased demand within the industry for web site designers and developers.

In Australia the number of web development jobs quadrupled in the space of two years between 2006 and 2008.

The increase in demand for web site developers is very much a global trend. In the United States it increased 30% between 2010 and 2011, or 127% from 2009.

These increases reflect ecommerce’s increased popularity arond businesses and consumers. Ecommerce is no longer viewed as a novelty – it’s quickly becoming the preference for many shoppers and for some businesses is now the primary (or only) way they connect with their customers.

For developers, Java, PHP and .Net are among the most sought after for expertise. It’s fair to say that the broader a developer’s skill-base, the more flexible his or her talent, the greater the number of options they’ll have available and the more sought after they’ll be.

In terms of ecommerce, developers need to cultivate an understanding of user experience and learn how to apply the techniques used by businesses to market and sell into their development work.

Ecommerce website design is all about connecting with visitors. While copywriting and marketing does much of the work in encouraging people to buy from or do business with a website, online stores have to be developed with a view to providing a simple, logical and easy-to-follow process for visitors and buyers.

While demand for developers has increased in recent years and is likely to continue to do so, employers are likely to be pickier about who they work with given the increasing importance of ecommerce to modern businesses.

For this reason, web development professionals need to keep up to date with new technologies such as HTML5 and maintain an understanding of the demands of the ecommerce world in particular, not just the online world in general.

The power and the profits will rest with those whose understanding of ecommerce makes their development skills an asset to online businesses.