Posts Tagged ‘website design’

One of the most popular ways for businesses and individuals to make money online is to own and operate an ecommerce website or an online shop. While you can make money by selling advertising space, pay-per-click marketing, or affiliate programs, selling products offers the highest potential income.

In this article we will take a look at 7 things most good ecommerce sites have in common.

Site-Wide Search Engine

Having an effective search engine on the site is one of the most important usability factors for ecommerce sites. Most of your customers will be coming to the site to look for something specific, so they will want to be able to find it quickly and easily. The easier it is for them, the more sales you will get.

Ease of Checkout

If you want to lose customers to your ecommerce site, one of the best ways to do it is to make the checkout process long and complicated. The shorter and easier your checkout process is, the less abandoned carts you will have. Work to streamline the checkout process so it involves as few steps as possible.

Accessible

Accessibility is important for any website, but if you are hoping to sell something online, you won’t be able to accomplish that if the customer cannot access your site. Make sure it is tested on a wide variety of browsers on all of the major operating systems.

Visited

An ecommerce site can be designed and built perfectly, and it can even sell the greatest products in the world, but if no one is visiting the site it won’t make any money. You should have a marketing and advertising plan for your ecommerce site and, ideally, a budget to purchase some ads and/or hire a marketing person.

Trust

Many visitors who are interested in making a purchase will want to know that they can trust the site/company before making an online purchase. A lot of people are hesitant to provide credit card details on a site that they have not used before. In order to gain their trust you may want to link to a Better Business Bureau report of show logos from payment processors like Verisign or PayPal.

Optimized for Search Engines

Online searches provide some of the highest quality of traffic that you can get to your site. People who find your site through a search are looking for what you have to offer, so they are pretty likely to buy if your site does a good job. Many ecommerce sites suffer from poor search engine optimization. This is a huge topic that cannot be covered here, but if you are not familiar with SEO make sure that you consult with a professional.

Quality Design

While the functionality of an ecommerce site is more important than it’s appearance, good design will always help to make a positive impression and to keep people interested in the site.

Steven Snell is a web designer that enjoys observing design trends of ecommerce web design and development. He has a gallery of the best ecommerce websites.