Webshop developer Hungary - some tips to building a great online store

If you were looking for webshop development company in Budapest Hungary, please read on. Online store development in Hungary has it's own special moments.  We would like to highlight a few important aspects of running a webshop in Hungary and online shopping site development in general.

From our experience, running an online store in Hungary has always been beneficial. In most cases, with proper management it always appears to be a profitable business online. 

An online store in Hungary is a great way to make online sales of your products (no matter what country it's from) and especially if the supplies are Hungarian or take their origins from the EU.

We will provide an overview of the most important aspects of online shopping from Hungary, or dealing with an online shop in Hungary from the shop owner's perspective.

First, there's the question of "online shopping site development cost". How much does it cost to develop a webshop in Hungary? Who can build me a webshop in Budapest Hungary? Is there a good web developer company whom I can trust? Who is going to be my long-term partner that can help me develop and maintain the  online store in Hungary? Who can host my webshop in Hungary completely securely and at a reasonable (and acceptable) cost? Those are some basic questions that people are asking even before diving right into developing a new online shop.

Online shop Hungary? We're here to help: Over the years we have built and maintained multiple webshops in Hungary and are proud to take part in our client's success and increasing their profits. That's what we're here for! To serve our clients and drive their success.

What is a webshop?

A webshop, online shop or an online store is, techincally speaking, a special type of a website that fulfills a purpose of selling products or services over the Internet. It is available to clients online at any time of the year, any time of the day and of night. A webshop is a specially crafted online application, a set of modules and information organized in the best possible way to fulfill it's purpose of selling the goods. Webshops are great and convenient invention for both the consumer and the shop owner and operator. The consumer is free to find the product that he is interested in without spending time and a lot of energy on visiting multiple physical stores. Online stores are allowing the clients to find exactly what they are looking for within minutes, right from the comfort of their homes. Customers are able to find any product, in any size, shape and color they need. Then order it with a few clicks of the mouse or taps on the touchscreen. The shop owners are going to receive orders online 24 hours a day, 365 days a week, not excluding the holidays. That's based on our own and our clients' experience.

What's a successful online store in our view?

A successfull online store operating in Hungary should rank well in the search engines for all the terms and types of products that it is trying to sell. A great online store is convenient for the customers both on desktop computers, on tablets and/or mobiles, enabling the largest surface for possible sales. A good online store makes it easy to find products, read product reviews, view pictures of the products, search and browse the entire selection of products, easily order the products and quickly and without any obstacles to finalize the order in the most friendly way. Obviously a great online store is also being powered by great people behind it, offering honest and ethical service, good customer support, all contributing to a terrific online shopping experience without a hint of negativity or possible losses (of money or time) for the clients. What do you think ? An online store like this is the dream of the happy client. A model webshop like we described is going to enjoy loyalty of their customers and many returning visits and further purchases.

A successful webshop "just works", without bugs or mistakes or technical errors, server outages, loss of data or connectivity, enabling to finish the shopping transaction in the most possibly secure fashion. That's where the webshop developer comes in the picture. Online stores that are built by professional and experienced web developers are going to enjoy the higher levels of security and integrity.

How many people are needed to run an online store in Hungary?

It depends of course on your audience, whether the online store is in Hungarian, in English or in another language completely. Whether you have the capacity of maintaining the list of products, writing new articles and product descriptions, running a customer support service or at least being able to communicate with your clients via an email or phone. In our experience, the least amount of people it takes to run an online store in Hungary is, 1. A one-man operation. But this has it's own limitations. Then, more successful and larger web stores are being run by a couple of family members (again, an example from our experience). Larger and more complex online stores in Hungary would require anywhere from 5 to 50 or more employees to maintain it's online operation.

Widely accepted shipping methods in Hungary

"Magyar posta", or the Hungarian post office service is great! We've been using it ourselves and can say from experience that it is highliy reliable, responsible, friendly and professional.

There are many professional courier services in Hungary as well, that will deliver your goods to the customers for a small fee. Delivery pricing is usually based on the distance, the size of the product and weight. Shipping prices are usually included as an added price. Or, in many cases, when the order exceeds a certain amount, the shipping is free. 

Payment methods in Hungary

Paying online with credit cards and/or debit cards in Hungary is a common and widely accepted practice nowadays. People are accustomed to paying online with the credit cards by using the specialized credit card processing services from the local, Hungarian banks like OTP, CIB, K&H and alike, or other payment methods like, for example PayU or PayPal. It is considered safe to use credit cards on most Hungarian webshops. (Just make sure that your browser connection is secure and encrypted with SSL/TLS - the "green lock" should be there)

Other widely accepted payment methods in Hungary are a bank wire transfer, personal payment to the delivery man or paying in person at the physical facilities (if available) representing the online store. (Pay in the store)

What are the essential parts of an online store system?

Some of the most essential parts that a webshop should have, in accordance with modern and widely accepted standards: 

1. An online store should have an ability to categorize products in multiple ways. Customers want an easy way to find the products they're after. For example, an online store has to be able to organize products by their special features, brands (manufacturers), types of products, group them by size, color and shapes, etc (weight, length, and what not). 

2. Ability to list products with multiple images, clear and easy to read product descriptions, easy way to add products into the shopping cart. A good shopping cart is required for a good online store.

3. A great webshop should have an ability to provide special individual discounts to their customers as well as discounted prices for various groups of your clients.

4. A customer retention system of some type would be highly benefitial, the simplest of which is the "Newsletter management system", that we all know and respect, allowing the shop owners to keep in touch with their clients, send product updates and special promotion materials. 
The newsletter management system, of course must comply with European regulations and provide easy means for unsubscribing and refrain from sending unsolicited proposals and offers to customers.

5. The great webshop should save the history of orders made by the cusomer for his further reference as well as for further statistical processing by "the crew". We all have to see which orders were successfully fulfilled, which orders were canceled or failed for the various reasons.

6. Again, a webshop needs a flexible way of setting product prices (Brutto and Netto,  special discounts)

7. An ability to provide complimentary articles, with additional information, enriched with images and file attachments.

8. Ability to register users and sign in to user profile pages,  customer account, purchase history, special page for the users and contact forms.

9. Ability to finalize orders with or without registration and with the smallest amout of possible obstacles in the way of your clients. 

10. A great online store will enable the owner to keep stats for analytics and modern business intelligence methods to further increase the effectiveness of the online store.

Our own online shopping solutions are implementing the best of the features mentioned above.

How many visitors are the good webshops getting?

Traffic figures of the good online stores in Hungary are varying from 500 visitors per day to tens of thousands of visitors per day, of course depending on size of the shop and the various investments that were made into developing the brand, the marketing campaigns and search engine optimization efforts.

What products are being sold in online shops in Hungary?

Online shops in Budapest and in Hungary are selling online the widest unimaginable variety of products. Soon we are going to provide a list of sample products that are being sold in Hungary online, via the Internet and webshops. For now, please see a translated example.

So, how much does it cost to build a webshop in Hungary?

We're not going to mention all the internal additional costs that go along with running the online store and maintain it in the long term. Just how much does it cost to start a webshop? To build a completely new shop online? The answer depends on how unique it should be. How many new additional features the client would like to implement or how much custom development (programming and web design works) are involved. 

The cheapest and fastest way towards launching your own webshop in Hungary is to purchase a ready-made template that comes with a special CMS system with it, buy a domain name, set it up on the server and off you go!

For more complex and custom implementations on your webshop in terms of purchasing logic, design and even the smallest changes you would have to hire a web developer that may charge either an hourly rate for his service or take on the job as a "project" with agreed-upon price in advance.

Our company, as of May 2015 is able to provide you with both the cheaper version of a pre-existing webshop template with some basic initial customizations, for the lowest starting price or other ways of fruitful collaboration in terms of hourly rates or "project"-based prices. Please contact us right now without hesitation to discuss any questions or comments.

How to market your products and drive even more traffic to your Hungarian webshop?

Word of mouth (do a great service, as described above), enable comments and rating on your webshop.
Specialized product search websites like Arukereso, Argep, etc. (There's many new ones appearing, like Kirakat.hu) These websites will take a feed of your products directly from your online store and would list the products within their search results. They would charge per click when redirecting the customers to your webshop.

Some say that it really works for them and is helping to drive more traffic and sales. You can also create a Facebook page dedicated to your products or the webshop in general with a community of people around it. It is also known as a very benefitial way of supporting the online store and keeping in touch with it's customer base, while earning more trust and more visits.

Another great way of getting more traffic and sales on your webshop is via proper search engine optimization and search engine marketing efforts. We recommend our clients to build online shops with SEO in mind. That means technically correct structures from every sense, properly planned information architecture, great content in terms of exciting and informative product reviews, additional informative articles about your niche or the products.

Writing great articles may result in a significant contribution to your readers and help in receiving more traffic and sales. Some of the best SEO consultants in Eastern and Central Europe and Hungary are at your service,  if you need an assistance with SEO copywriting or an SEO audit of your online stores, webshops. 

Online shop Budapest and beyond! :) (Oops, Why did we say that? Too much of some great sweet Hungarian wine?) If you are still looking for your best webshop developer in Budapest Hungary, contact us now.