E-commerce – How to make a site successful
Q. What factors do you need to consider to ensure that an e-commerce site is as successful as possible?
A. There are a number of areas that really help an e-commerce site.
The main one you should focus on is really concentrate on the shopping basket experience as this is where you can lose most of your customers. Don’t make it too complicated or have too many steps, make it simple and easy to create an account, so minimum information and let them fill out the rest later.
If you look at one of the most successful e-commerce sites (Amazon) they have got it down to a fine art. 1 click purchasing, people who bought this also bought these items, customer feedback with ratings.
Sometimes they could do with simplifying a page mainly because if you’re not used to the layout there is a lot that hits you all at once, but they make a lot of money as they have really perfected the art of reducing shopping cart abandonment.
Other 10 key areas are:
- Really understand who your customers are and what details they want to see in the descriptions.
- Have large and many images of items being sold, customers like to be able to see the detail of the thing they are buying. This helps convince them that the quality or value is as advertised
- Have a most popular list of items you sell and do regular special offers to people who sign up to your newsletter.
- Have an FAQ and update it as much as possible, if you get a complaint or a question put it up there, show your customers that you are trustworthy and fair to deal with.
- Make sure that the site is secure with SSL (the little padlock you see on secure sites) and has logos or information easily accessible proving this.
- Have a good support system to deal with customers quickly, this will help your reputation and make sure you have multiple ways for them to get in touch.
- Do a lot of PR to help build the trust in your brand, why should people shop with you even if you are a little bit more expensive.
- Run loyalty schemes for your top buyers to keep them not only coming back, but recommend you to others.
- If you have the right products you can create an affiliate program so get others to do the selling and effectively pay them a percentage of sale.
- Measure and test often, try different headlines, look at your stats, keep trying to make your site better and easier to use for your customers.
There are many more factors, too many to mention here, but the list above are some of the main ones to consider.
I hope you find it useful.
