• The Ablecommerce store design should be aesthetically pleasing as well as user friendly. An Ablecommerce! store which is user friendly is likely to convert more visits into sales.
 

• The Ablecommerce custom store designing should be search engine friendly. This is done by making the store to have search engine friendly urls, css based design, categories and product pages. By default ablecommerce does provide for search engine friendly urls for categories and products which help in SEO.
 
• The store should be designed based on a marketing viewpoint. It should be built considering the competition,  It should fit into the customer requirements and budget and also allow for maximum product visibility and ease of use. There are many features in Ablecommerce which can be configured to do just that. For example you can make popular products visible, related products visible, one page checkout, gift option, volume discounts, wish list and other such marketing and merchandising options.

Let us tackle all of these aspects in detail and how we implement them

1. As Ablecommerce based ecommerce site designers, we first have to see whether to go in for a hosted solution or cart- only with hosting separate. Both the options have their benefits - The hosted solution allows for a quicker implementation and ensures smooth functioning of ablecommerce compliant payment gateways etc. The basic reason is since the hosting (and provision of integrated shopping cart) is done by ablecommerce itself, they have checked and verified all aspects of the store would function. Moreover hosting support is likely to be more conducive and favorable than the ones you may get at other hosting providers who may argue that they are not able to provide this and that feature which is required for functioning of the shopping cart properly. On the other hand the non hosted version allows you a better control on database etc. (for example the win starter package of the hosted solution does not allow you direct access to database as it is not on a dedicated server), which means you may have to put in a support ticket each time you wish to modify something. And of course you may save monthly costs if you go for own hosting.
2. The photoshop document of the designs should have been generated by this time and these should definitely cover the critical pages such as product listing , product detail, home page, advanced search, cart related page etc. Two things to be kept in mind here are the usability aspect of the site as well as search engine friendliness. The store should have an intuitive navigation and banners and maximization of available visual space to drive sales. Still it must be clear and simple.
3. The psd's need to be configured into the design and this is where you make use of features such as creating conlibs, modifying them, creating html elements known as scriptlets and also JavaScript related coding. This does require a fair bit of analysis. The trick is to decide and finalize what you need to do before you start doing it. There may also be involved a fair bit of customization of your store. Creating custom features would not be that difficult as at times you are able to use parts of code of existing conlibs.
4. Once the critical pages and design aspects are done, the payment and the shipping aspects should be looked into. A good ablecommerce ecommerce development firm will ensure that client feedback and analysis is there before deciding on shipping and payment gateway related points. It should be noted that sometimes there is a separate agency to which big clients outsource fulfillment . In such a case we designers would need to coordinate with them on shipping aspects. Google checkout is fast becoming a popular payment gateway and ablecommerce supports most if not all well known gateways.
5. Needless to say, the ecommerce store would by now have undergone a  fair bit of testing. Testing should incorporate usability suggestions as well as removal of functional and performance bugs. Testing should be done so as to ensure that the store provides a simple and pleasant shopping experience.
6. Once the store is complete and has dry runs it is important that the client is made aware of the various features of the control panel and how he / can manage the store. At Creative Spark we include post delivery tutorials and guidance notes as part of our service and the client is made aware of how he can vary various things within the store ranging from products to categories to changing shipping rules.