Basic ecommerce web
site design and development
Part 1
Introduction
This series examines the many different stages in preparing
your web site for online sales and credit card transactions. It
will assist you in making a more educated decision before
implementing ecommerce software, web development packages and
add-ons, or purchasing commercial web site hosting.
Online sales processing using credit card based transactions is
not quite as straightforward as you may think. Many web site
owners new to ecommerce are under the impression that they just
plug a shopping cart into their site. This can be the case with
third party processing services, but it can be expensive. In this
series we'll also examine the various options - from free to fee.
"I don't want to support credit cards.."
In case you were thinking about avoiding online credit card
transactions to sell your product, think again. The days of 'send
me a cheque or money order' are long gone. Consumers will want
your product, and want it now.
Even if the product or service you are offering is totally unique,
you will miss many sales if you don't implement some form of
online credit card processing. But implementing a processing
service doesn't necessarily mean shelling out big dollars up
front.
The web site
OK, I'm sure you know this one! The web site acts as the store
front for the products and services you wish to sell online. Your
site visitors are, for the most part, window shoppers and
browsers. A commercial web site's aim is to convert these browsers
into buyers.
The web site should be designed to gently lead the client through
the learning and sales process. Your sales text must be
grammatically sound and spelt correctly. Poor spelling loses
credibility points straight away.
Ensure that there is plenty of well laid out textual content on
the site to attract search engines as well as to inform
prospective clients. Use keyword and keyphrase rich text; that is,
utilize copy that includes common phrases that people would enter
into search engines when performing a query.
What search terms are commonly used?
A useful tool in understanding how people are searching is
freely available on Overture. You simply type in a term, such as
'web site design', and it will return all the variations of that
criteria and the number of times it was searched on in the last
month. Try the
Overture Search Term Suggestion tool.
Attracting search engines and targeted site traffic is a huge
ongoing learning curve, and there are plenty of other articles and
tools on our site to assist you with this. View our
search engine optimization articles
page for more helpful info..
Cross Browser Compatibility
Internet Explorer isn't the only browser on the market. There
are currently over 100 different brands of Internet browser
currently available. IE's major competitor is Netscape and what
looks good in Internet Explorer may look terrible or even crash
other browsers! Make sure that you design your site to be viewable
in at least:
Internet Explorer 4.0+
Netscape 4.0+
By paying attention to compatibility issues, you will increase
your sales. Learn more in our
browser compatibility article:
http://www.tamingthebeast.net/articles/crossbrowercompatibility.htm
The use of images
All images used should clearly depict the product/service and
where possible, don't use stock images that come with products
such as Photoshop. Seasoned Internet surfers will recognize these
as they appear on thousands of sites around the world. Use
original photography or scanned images wherever you can.
Ensure that you optimize your images for rapid download. Much of
the world still does not utilize broadband, and no-one is going to
wait around for 2 minutes to see a photo of a "happy customer" or
"successful businessperson who uses our product". All popular
graphics packages support compression for web based graphics,
usually through easy to use wizards.
Images are a wonderful medium to assist in the online sale of your
products/services, especially useful to those clients with poor
literacy levels or who are in a rush, as we all seem to be these
days. But remember, while a picture may be worth a thousand words
in the offline world, it's worth next to nothing when it comes to
search engines as spiders do not 'see' pictures.
Image HTML coding should also contain 'alt' tags. This is a
textual representation of the image which is useful for the
situations where the image doesn't load for some reason. Search
engines spiders also latch on to this content, especially if the
image is linked to another page. 'alt' text will also pop up when
a visitor moves their mouse over the image. Here's a sample of
html code for an image which also contains 'alt' text:
<img border="0" src="../images/iconarticle1.gif" alt="Article
section - Web development, eCommerce and site promotion tutorials
and comments - free for reproduction!" width="50" height="50">
Site Navigation.
Site navigation should be simple and all the questions a
consumer may ask should be answered along the way. Where possible,
adhere to the "three click rule" - that is, a visitor should be
able to access any information regarding your product or service
within 3 clicks of any other area of your web site. Pay close
attention to cross-browser compatibility issues as many menu
systems play havoc with Netscape and other browsers.
Recommended pages.
Along with the home page, your sales pages and the shopping
cart, I recommend implementing the following web pages as part of
your ecommerce site:
About Us Page.
The "About Us" page is crucial to boosting consumer confidence.
It provides a summary of the business, your commitments and
direction.
While we are all protective of our privacy, online business is no
different to traditional business in that we all like to 'put a
face to the name'. When purchasing goods online, I always go to
the 'About Us' or company profile pages before parting with my
money (especially after one bad experience - another story for
another time). The page should also provide other contact details
for your business and your various registrations, associations and
affiliations. View further information relating to
"about us" or company profile pages.
Privacy policy.
What are you going to do with my information? - a question
asked by many online shoppers. Putting together a privacy policy
doesn't necessarily require a legal team! Learn more about
developing Privacy statements: http://www.tamingthebeast.net/articles/reassurance.htm
FAQ's (Frequently asked questions)
No doubt you'll be asked many questions about your product.
Many of these questions will be repetitive. It's these questions
and answers that you'll want to add to your FAQ page. This
promotes customer confidence and saves your valuable time. A
prospective client may be somewhat hesitant in asking questions
and this hesitancy may translate into a lost sale. A well
constructed FAQ will help coax these online customers into
purchasing.
You don't need to spend a lot of money on a basic FAQ system.
Simply list the questions at the beginning of the FAQ in dot-point
format, perhaps broken down into various categories to make
searching easier. Each of these questions should be directly
linked to the answer further down the page with the use of
bookmarks. This basic design also allows for scalability.
You can link to the FAQ not only through the main menu system, but
after every "buy me" type statement. The FAQ should be accessible
within one click of any other area of your web site that is
dedicated to selling the product or service.
Testimonials page
A dollar value can not be placed upon positive client
testimonials; this is some of the best promotional copy around.
Elicit feedback from your current customers and ask their
permission to publish their comments on your site.
Testimonials can be implemented on a page of their own, or
interspersed between your own statements regarding the product. If
you do implement a Testimonials page, ensure that it can be
accessed with one click from any other page on the site.
Ideally the link or button should be placed on your web site
navigational menu, preferable at the top.
If you don't have any testimonials or referees, it may be
worthwhile considering supplying a select group of people with the
product free of charge for testing and feedback purposes.
In our second part of this series, we'll cover other pre-sales
services worth considering as part of your online sales pitch.
Also included is some introductory information about ordering
processes and ecommerce components. View part 2 of
Basic ecommerce web site design and development..
Michael Bloch
Taming the Beast
http://www.tamingthebeast.net
Tutorials, web content, tools and software.
Web Marketing, Internet Development & Ecommerce Resources
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