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Five Keys to E-commerce Success
By Edward Castro
edward.castro@hqpublications.com
Business Programs Columnist
A recent Shop.org/Bizrate.com study found that 98 percent of merchants expect online growth this season. That same study also found that 32 percent of the consumers polled expressed plans to do more of their holiday shopping online this year. A solid ecommerce Web site design can improve your chances of converting clicks into cash.
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Taking advantage of the growing consumer confidence in online shopping is harder than posting a few images of your products on your webpage. Today's fickle online consumer isn't immune to the distractions, confusion, and worries that kill sales before they start in traditional brick & mortar retail environments. To grab their attention and convert clicks into sales, you'll need an ecommerce web site design built to capture them. Five keys to building a sticky website are:
- Training
- Research
- Planning
- Promotion
- Optimization
Training: The Essential First Step in Ecommerce Success
Knowledge is power, and this phrase rings especially true for Ecommerce. Without the proper training in Ecommerce Web site design, you will be lost in a sea of millions of other entrepreneurs. Luckily, there are dozens of courses offered at online business colleges that will prepare you for this competitive - yet rewarding - business.
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Ecommerce Research: Know Your Prey
Online sales are expected to reach 6.6 percent of total retail sales in 2004, up from 5.4 percent in 2003 according to a Shop.org study. The first question anyone any online retailer should ask is, "What am I trying to do?"
Whether it is selling products directly, pre-screening potential buyers, or promoting requests for more information from a sales associate, your ecommerce web site design should answer that question. Identify your customer and build your site accordingly.
Ecommerce Web Site Design Planning: A Blueprint for Sales
Draw a flowchart sketch of your ecommerce web site pages and links (once completed, the sketch should resemble the roots of a tree). It should never take more than three clicks to get to any page and one click to get back home.
Ecommerce Web Site Promotion: Crawling for Clicks
Search engines use the information they find on your ecommerce web site design HTML files to categorize and order your site in their lists. If you have navigation or extraneous information on the left side of your web page, it will be at the top of your HTML file. Placing your keyword rich content on the top left assures search engines find your most relevant content.
Keywords are also important. Make sure you use keywords your potential customer might use in search engines as much as possible in your content pages.
Optimization: Building for Speed
Nothing turns a potential customer off faster than slow load times. There are various ways you can prevent your Web pages from being bandwidth hogs:
- Use SSI (server side includes) in your layout for repetitive content like navigation, headers, and footers. Developer web sites like WebMonkey (www.webmonkey.com) can teach you about SSI and CSS.
- Use CSS (cascading style sheets) to set font settings for your pages. Font tags increase load times for HTML pages.
- Optimize images to download quickly. Use fewer colors, smaller sizes and compressed or interlaced image formats.
Designing a successful ecommerce web site is easier with a little planning. This article is meant to help anyone unfamiliar with ecommerce web site design with some pointers for success. To go beyond the keys discussed in this article, check out ecommerce web site design programs available on this Business Programs site, or at your local college or university.
About the Author
Edward Castro has an extensive experience as a creative media writer. His client portfolio has included such notables as Hewlett-Packard, Sony Computer Entertainment, Shockwave, AtomFilms, GameBlast and Mervyn's California. In his current position, Ed is developing the marketing strategy of an Internet startup company specializing in Japanese trade goods.
Sources
- Shop.org Online Holiday Mood Study [http://www.shop.org/press/04/052504.asp]
- News.com Ecommerce: Holiday Online Study [http://news.com.com/Study+Online+holiday+
sales+merry,+but+not+very/2100-1017_3-5415670.html]
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