Monday, December 29, 2008

Designing Your e-Commerce Website

By Ethan O. Tanner

With an increase in consumers using the internet to shop and perform business transactions, e-commerce has become the future of the online community. Benefitting completely from the e-commerce boom can be achievable. To keep consumers coming back, you need to create a unique e-commerce site, one that reaches beyond all levels of excellence. When designing your e-commerce website, you should have a welcome or introduction on your home page. This statement should establish the advantages of your site, and assure those visiting that they should be comfortable doing business with you. State your purpose, express your beliefs, and let the consumer know why business done at your e-commerce outlet is always secure.

A practical website navigates smoothly. Categories to skim over and visible search boxes on the site are substantial. Design a simple site with big, readable fonts and images that will come up right away. You should definitely have a page with popular inquiries about some of your staple business policies, for example, shipping and returns. You may additionally want to make a link on your home site that guides visitors to a privacy policy. This insurance will assure customers that you will never supply a third party with information they have confided in you. It is nearly inherent for all e-commerce shops to expose this proclamation someplace on their site.

Just like during offline shopping, customers desire for checkout to be as quick and easy as possible when going to your online store. If your online store is equipped with a secure server, make your customers knowing of this fact. This will put them at rest and keep them coming back. Your checkout or "shopping cart" needs to be merely one click away so the customer can be in and out without a great amount of steps. Today, it is best to offer diverse payment options, including PayPal and other online payment sources, credit and debit cards, online checks, and money orders. Provide a contact phone number for customer support so the customer has confidence that they will have help if there are any issues with the order.

Organize a special section of your e-commerce website dedicated completely to special discounts and current sales. If you have an extraordinary amount of sales items, create a separate webpage devoted to the ones that are most preferred, and have another page with a complete listing of all discounts. During the holiday season, have a certain portion of your website set aside for customers to purchase gift certificates.

Setting up a lucrative, worthy e-commerce website can be an uncomplicated task with a well constructed site plan, some time, and patience. Take your time and develop your e-commerce site to be user friendly, secure, and rich in information about your business. Taking full advantage of the e-commerce phenomenon, you can attain your business marketing aspiration.

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