How to Create an Online E-Pharmacy Store for Pharmaceuticals Industry?

Being among the fastest growing industries, pharmaceutical and healthcare are now providing hundreds of opportunities to the people who work in the industry. With increasing demand, you can find numerous pharmacies across the street. To get ahead in the competition, most of the biggest pharmaceutical companies and sellers are heading to digital platforms to sell medicine and health care products online. Just like any other eCommerce business, you can sell medicines online and make a profit with an enhanced brand reputation. However, before getting started, you must understand the entire process of developing the online pharmacy website and its latest trends for better business growth.

When we talk about eCommerce website development for the Pharmacy marketplace, the first thing that comes in mind is what are the options, and how does it work for business growth? 

Well, pharmacy stores and applications are operated through the admin panel, where you can put your products with the description, and buyers can purchase the prescribed medicine online by uploading prescription or by adding it directly to the cart. It works like any other eCommerce store and on-demand delivery model. However, a license for selling medicine and shipping methods comes through your efforts and knowledge.

Popularity and Market Analysis 

As per the recent report for global online pharmacy, the market of online pharmacy is predicted to grow around 20% between 2019 to 2024. The report represented the increasing demand, opportunities, market size, and trends in the online pharmacy marketplace over the years. Between 2016 to 2020, the online pharmacy market has witnessed around 13% of increased online stores in the USA and Asian countries.

Why Do You Need an E-pharmacy Store?

Online stores and eCommerce applications are getting more and more popular with the world getting smarter and digital. Having ease to get everything at doorsteps with discounts and online payment options, and increased demand plus business growth for the seller make it a win-win situation for both consumers, and the store owner. If you have not started your e-commerce pharmacy store yet, here are the main reasons why getting a pharmacy web app is a great idea.

* Increased Business 

Whether you are into pharmaceutical manufacturing or you have partnered with a reputed brand, introducing your customer with a digital purchasing option will help your brand become popular among buyers. With the proper promotion of your store, you can create a brand reputation that directly leads to an improvement in business and brand awareness. When your customers choose to buy medicine online, they can easily go to your store and get the medicines at their doorsteps, which saves their time and effort.

* Reduced Warehouse Cost

With an online pharmacy app, you do not need to have big warehouses at all the regions to stock and manage the products anymore. You can list any of the brands on your website and dispatch directly from a single location to all your buyers. The central distribution location cuts down the unnecessary maintenance and warehouse cost, and makes the distribution much easier.

* Other Benefits

1) People living away from their parents love these eCommerce pharmacy websites where they can order medicines as per their convenience, and send it directly to their family.

2) Time-saving option for a customer who finds it difficult to visit medical stores for a particular medicine.

3) Recorded medicine and prescription make it easier for a customer to purchase medicine in the future even when he doesn’t carry the prescription.

4) No infrastructure or order management charges.

5) A local pharmaceutical company gets to explore with a digital marketplace.

Features of Your Online Pharmacy Website

Before planning to develop an online pharmacy website, you must have an idea about how the e-commerce store should look and what features should be included. Apart from the shopping carts, shopping methods, and payment gateways, here are features required to boost your pharmacy website.

• Online Prescriptions: A simple prescription solution for smoothing the customer experience with record keeping. 
• Add to Favorites: Users should be able to ‘add to favorites’ so that when a product is available, they get notified.
• Promotions & Offers: An online pharmacy website should contain a separate section for promotions and offers to keep the customers attracted to your stores along with useful articles related to health.
• Medicine Reviews & Ratings: Enable your buyers to add their experience while purchasing medicines from your website.
• Mobile App: Redirect link to your mobile app download page.
• User Account: Easy user account management and password reset settings for better user experience.
• Order Tracking and Advanced Search Options
• Payment Gateway Integration
  

How to Develop a Pharmacy Website?

Once you have understood the features required for your eCommerce store, you need the most experienced eCommerce website developers who are aware of the latest trends and tools. Here is the process of developing a pharmacy store online.

1. Admin Panel

Your website’s admin panel is the place where you can easily manage the user details, products, accounts, and other sections of the store. Whenever you want to update a new product or create featured listings, you can manage the entire store from your admin panel dashboard. Make sure you have asked your developers to create a less complicated dashboard so that you don’t have to ask for technical help over and over again. 

2. Features

Apart from the features mentioned earlier, you need to create a wide range of purchasing options for your customers by listing products from online and local brands that helps in creating customer loyalty and better buying experience. Ask your developers to set up the multivendor marketplace so that several pharmacists can reach you to sell their medicine through your website.

3. Quality Content

More than 80% of the online buyers research before purchasing medicines from any online store and that is when you need an informative content-rich website, where users can read different articles and product reviews before making the final purchase. Pharmacy stores need to add information about the brands, and should add ratings for trustworthy pharmaceutical products.

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4. Initial Purchase

To get started, you need to make the initial purchases like domain name, web hosting, and the platform, which you want to choose for your ecommerce store development. Some of the popular e-commerce platforms are WooCommerce, OpenCart, Magento, Bagisto, Shopify, and more. Once done, you can choose any of the web hosting recommended by your developers, be it dedicated or shared hosting plans as per your budget and store size.

5. Payment & Shipping Integration

Once you have set up the menu and store pages, about sections, search bar, upload prescriptions, and other features, now the most important part comes in; to choose the best payment gateway for your customers. Get the one that offers split payment options, in case you are including other sellers in your online pharmacy website.

6. Chatbot

Just selling medicines online is not what makes you stand ahead from the competition. You need to make sure that visitors can easily reach out for their queries and troubleshoot the whole making a purchase from your store. Chatbots are the most popular and effective element of modern pharmacy website development as it increases reliability due to the 24/7 support feature.

Chatbots are your virtual assistant to support customers whenever they want. There are hundreds of plugins and chatbot development techniques available which your developers should be experienced in. Appealing medical professionals answering questions through chatbots would be a great idea for a pharmacy store.

7. Project Budget

Depending on your requirements and pharmaceutical services, you must create a budget before getting started with the development as there are integration and development charges included apart from additional functionalities. The overall costing of your online pharmacy store depends on the complexity of your web app including, platform functionalities, app size, development cost, integrations, and more. The cost may go around $15,000 to $90,000 varying from one company to another, but the estimated budget should always be on the table to get a smooth start.

Get World-Class Ecommerce Website Development for Your Pharmacy Business

As pharmaceutical companies continue to spread their wings, they should also consider the quality and on-demand delivery in the priority list to succeed in the digital marketplace. Apart from this, having a fast and seamless website is highly important for better customer experience. There are hundreds of eCommerce web development companies, offering the same techniques and designs for years. So, you might want to do some research and find the best in the business.

If you are looking to provide your customers with a fresh and feature-rich pharmacy store, then Maven Cluster is the name you can rely on. With the unmatched quality of service and professionalism of our team, you can expect user-friendliness, quick response, hassle-free tracking, and quality content for your Custom eCommerce website development, which cannot be found anywhere else. Our results-driven approach and advanced development techniques will bring unlimited digital opportunities for your online business at the most affordable cost.