Category: E-Commerce

The ultimate goal of an e-commerce website is to lead customers to buy products from your site. If you are looking for an edge over your competitors, then it is time to get serious with e-commerce website design. By putting in effort in designing your website, not only will you increase your sales and customer satisfaction, you will also gain valuable information about your products and customer preferences.

Here are a few tips for e-commerce website design: Effective e-commerce website design will help the customer find, purchase and pay for a product easily. The gold standards for any e-commerce website design are simple navigation, search engine facilities and online payment schemes. A website should not be complicated to go through – products and services should be neatly formatted and accompanied with suitable pictures, information and prices. Customers should be able to find products easily incorporating a search engine makes it easier to find a desired product. By incorporating advanced filters, the visitor will be able to filter products by various attributes, thereby narrowing options and finding precisely what they are looking for. Customers should be able to purchase and pay for their products using a shopping cart functions and online payment processor. All charges should be included in the initial prices and this process should be secure.

Other features that will improve an e-commerce website design are:
Multicurrency and language support – going online, means that you are going global, which means that you are dealing with customers from all over the world. By incorporating multi languages and currency options, you will be expanding your market base and getting more sales.
Help and support options to answer queries about your products quickly and efficiently.
Frequent promotions of products – discounts, free delivery, and special offers will all help increase sales. These can be easily set up online on your e-commerce website.
Additional marketing avenues integrating your website with other websites such as Google will expand your marketing. E-commerce website design not only helps you increase sales directly; you can find a mass of information via your website. There are features so you are able to keep track of stock easily – with full stock control features and low stock level alerts. In addition to replacing necessary stock, you can keep track of how many and which products are being sold, which in turn will give you insight on your customers preferences, popular products and online buying habits.

Website analytics is probably the last thing an online business owner wants to worry about. With 15 things to do every day before 10 am and another 50 to do before you can call it a day, sitting down in front of a bunch of web traffic stats seems like a waste of time. While I agree with the sentiment, it’s completely wrong. In fact, website analytics should be the first and last thing you review every day and I’ll give you three reasons why:

1. Web Analytics Help You Detect Fraud and Incompetence

Have you hired an SEO expert? PPC marketer? Social media guru? If you have people on staff or retain contractors to help you with your site, website analytics are your best friend.

Forget about the reports these experts create because all stats and data can be manipulated or ommitted. What you need is raw, reliable data to calculate the ROI of the services you are paying for.

Specifically, programs like Google Analytics can help you quickly isolate specific traffic streams and provide a host of useful data to calculate ROI, including:

Conversion Rate of Specific Traffic Channels
Conversion Rate for Specific Targeted Keywords
Average Time on Site for Specific Traffic Streams
Bounce Rate for Specific Traffic Streams

Of course, the conversion rate data for specific traffic streams (or Internet marketing experts) will help you calculate the ROI. But the average time on site will also help provide a rough gauge of overall traffic strength. If a specific traffic channel can’t keep visitors on site for more than 2 minutes, the traffic is either weak or you have significant issues on your landing pages.

2. Web Analytics Help Assess Site Health

To put that another way, web analytics essentially help show you where you need to invest your money most to boost online profits. Specifically, website traffic analytics will help you assess:

A. Traffic Strength
B. Sales Funnel Effectiveness
C. Shopping Cart Function and Conversion Rate
D. Website Conversion Rate and Rates for Specific Services/Products

For instance, high bounce rates and low average time on site typically indicate weak traffic or exceptionally poor landing pages. You can confirm which by looking at the data for specific traffic streams to see if there are significant variations in performance. If there are, then the issue is likely a weak traffic stream but if all channels are doing poorly, it’s more likely to be landing page.

The point is, the data tell you what’s wrong with your site so you can best channel your investment dollars to the most critical areas.

3. Web Analytics Eliminates Needless Split Testing

In most cases, optimization of landing pages and product descriptions is completed via split testing. That is, decide what sales tool you want to test (like a headline or CTA) and then create a new one to split test against. If your new sales tool performs better, conversions will increase and your hard work rewarded. However, this is rarely how it works.

You see, the thing people always forget about split testing is it’s sheer expense. To statistically verify even a lead gen site with a non-monetized CTA, you need at least 1,000 visitors or more to each version.

So if you think a landing page or product description might have problems with the headline, value proposition, and credibility tools, that’s at least 3 tests you need to run at 2,000 visitors per test. At even $1 a click, you can see how that would get very expensive, very quickly.

And the worst part: You have no idea if the headline, value prop, or credibility tools are even suppressing conversions. You are just split testing one sales tool versus a new one and hoping for the best, seriously.

But with web analytics, you can pinpoint the issues and eliminate the guesswork saving loads in unnecessary testing costs and content creation.

In conclusion, web analytics really are vital to your online success because they provide you with an accurate assessment of site health and your investments in traffic generating services. If you don’t know the true health of your site, then how can you possibly know what it needs to grow and be more profitable?

There are many different options available when it comes to setting up an E-commerce website, but no matter how you go about it, you will need a full array of options when establishing your website in the beginning.

It goes without saying that before you can even begin to think of the setup and design of the ecommerce website, you need to have a business plan drawn up to cater for your product, your marketing plans, and your outline for future growth. Once you have a suitable product and plan to generate traffic and direct it to your website, you can then outline what you want for a fully functioning ecommerce website.

Of the features available, you will need the following, at the very least:

Hosting

Layout and Design

Logo creation (if you don’t already have a company logo)

CMS (content management system) for your products and listing and pricing

Shopping cart integrated into a payment gateway

Order tracking system / database

System reporting

For any ecommerce website that is selling physical (or non-physical) goods, these are the items which you will need to consider when setting up your site.

For hosting, you can either approach a hosting company directly, or approach a decent web designer. The web designer will be able to handle the logo creating for your company logo, and will integrate this into your layout and design for your website as well. They will, usually, also know where the cheaper options are for hosting, and will be able to direct you to a suitable company for this, often being able to set it up for you. Alternatively, often hosting companies provide the same services (by having an in-house developer and designer) as a package, and you will be able to use one of their website templates for your site.

The shopping cart system can either be done by yourself, or by hiring a developer, or by getting a ready-made shopping cart system integrated into your site (your web designer/developer will be able to do this for you). The cart will generally integrate into a payments processing provider, so you’ll need to discuss with a provider about having credit card payments made on your site, and about having the provider take payments and settle with you directly.

Any decent ecommerce website will keep track of its own stock and orders, and will integrate its own stock and sales reports with those that are returned by the payments processing provider. You will then need to do reconciliations with the provider to make sure that all the orders that are processed were paid for, and that the provider settled all payments to you by the required date. The providers are usually quite strict about you maintaining your own records, so keeping track of your own orders is a good idea.

Overall, it is quite simple to do the entire ecommerce website yourself (or with the help of contracted IT professionals), but there are also alternatives out there, where you can purchase an entire, ready-made package. It’s just a matter of looking, and gauging what works best for your situation.

About Webmama

Webmama.co.uk is a leading provider of ecommerce website and shopping cart website solution in the UK. We have packages that suits every budget, with industry leading client centric service and competitive, honest prices, it’s no wonder 1500+ worldwide customers look to Webmama.co.uk for all their ecommerce solution needs.

Were excited to offer you a completely free 14 day trial to evaluate our software with zero risk (no credit card required). Were sure that once you see what our E-commerce website can do, youll know its the right choice for your business and your online success.

Contact: 44 (0) 845 634 4586

Source: webmama.co.uk

RELATED LINKS: www.webmama.co.uk

Your business is flourishing, now you want to develop by establishing yourself an online store. So when you want to procure any e commerce package, you have countless options of having them. Right from the solutions of free shopping cart to other effects which can charge you thousands of bucks, you find a amount of options for the online store shopping solutions. If you looking some instructions or ideas to get a proper product for your online store, then make sure you have landed at a suitable position. The following are the factors which need to be considered while buying them for your online store:

Understand the Programming language: Don’t get confused, you do not need to be an professional to know the programming language involved in the e commerce package. A simple understanding of few effects around the scripting language of HTML is additional than enough. This is important because it will allow you to do a couple of changes or editing part at your end as and when required. In this way you will recognize that your e commerce package is working perfectly. Hence superior choose for the one which comes through html way out or somewhere likewise thing. Avoid doing any kind of hard product as you cannot pay for to learn them all while being busy in your business functioning.

The support factor: The other point to consider is to count upon the holdup factor. The e-commerce package whether you operate from your floor desktops or your laptop or carry out via mobile POS, it must hold up some limited amount of products and the pages. Therefore you can sell any amount of products which should be very well supported by the software which you purchased. So you need to be specific while selecting any package around your set limits.

The compatibility factor: The third thing which you need to look is the compatibility factor. The web hosting corporation to which you are registered might be using different software which may not be compatible to your e commerce software. At such juncture, wearing to fix the problem with few additional money cannot yield you any result, until you take some most important steps. Hence it is important to understand the software in this perspective as well so that you do not face such issues while installing the product. Ensure that you consider these effects with seriousness instead of working out simply on the basis of some wrong assumption.

These are some basic factors which need to be counted upon while procuring any kind of e commerce software for your web store. Indeed the selection process of these packages or software happens to be scary often. You can find countless of options before you while searching them over the internet which can be pretty confusing charge at the start. So at such point of time, the above said points can be a guiding source for you. All you need to check is the amount or budget you have allocated for the thought package along with a couple of positive feedback and testimonials. If you consider these points, you are all prepared to get the one as per your necessities.

Naturally, there are many components that come into play when you’re addressing with developing and then maintaining a strong traffic flow to your business website. Principal amongst these considerations is acquiring the trust of potential purchasers or clients when it comes to your how they view your website. I’ll provide you with an overview of tactics and strategies that you can apply when it comes to acquiring the trust of potential customers or clients for your eCommerce website.

Prepare and Design an Attractive Site

Among the most crucial steps that you’ll need to take in order to acquire the trust of potential purchasers or clients is to assure that your eCommerce website is appealing. Consumers of course are more disposed to put their trust in an eCommerce website that’s professional in its visual aspect. Business is lost each and every day in cyberspace attributable the unprofessional appearance of some eCommerce business websites

Recommendations can be Valuable and Helpful

Another method that you are able to employ to instill confidence and to gain the trust of potential customers or clients is the inclusion of testimonials from satisfied purchasers or clients at your eCommerce website. Past performance frequently is the best indication of future performance. Consequently, including testimonials from satisfied clients or customers at your eCommerce website, you’ll be taking an important and meaningful step in acquiring the confidence of future customers or clients. Encourage clients to leave feedback and have a specific way or place for them to do so on your business website.

List Associations at Your Website

If you are part of any association or establishment, you should include those affiliations at your site. For instance, if your business is part of a Chamber of Commerce or some kind of accredited Internet organization or association, you would be well served by listing this information at your eCommerce website.

“Contact Us” – Be Sure The Clients Actually Can

All over many eCommerce website you can see links to a “contact us” at the site. However, it’s surprising how often these “contact us” devices, links or pages don’t work correctly. You need to make certain that any mechanism that you are using to permit for contact between a prospective customer or client and your eCommerce website really works. You need to make certain that the “contact us” mechanism is user friendly – that a consumer doesn’t have to jump through hoops to connect with you. Finally, you need to make sure that when a potential customer or client makes contact with you that you respond in a punctual manner. This will help to foster a sense of trust between a potential customer or client and your eCommerce website.