January 25th, 2010 by admin
Ecommerce websites has been growing steadily for the past decade already. It is soon going to rival the de facto method of shopping. Why? For the pure simple fact of convenience and being around 24 hours-7 days a week! Does your retail outlet or company sales department work the graveyard shift? No? Why not? There are people slogging it out in front of their desks at weird hours and chances are that they will probably spend some time of the well earned money buying stuff online. Well, it could be your goods!
Festive seasons like Christmas, New year and other local festivities are spaced out every few months but more important than that are minute appreciation gestures like a small gift for your client, spouse, kids etc to show your appreciation. You don’t have to wait for festive seasons to take the initiative!
I am not going to go into the whole showdown on the already much covered aspects of ecommerce…hmm.. Well I might keep it for another cold day. But here are some important aspects of Ecommerce website which you may want to get your team or any Singapore Web Designer or Singapore Ecommerce Website developer to consider before implementing an ecommerce website solution.
1) Give your website a warm presence:
It is not about putting warm colours but it is about ensuring that you are there for your visitors and they feel at home. Contact availability and online chat functions can be considered important so that they know they are talking to humans after all and not some robot! The website can be often perceived as a cold sphere if you are not careful about ensuring whatever information is needed for them to purchase is not there. Shipping, terms and conditions, privacy policy as well as your contact details should be seen easily.
2) Do usability and accessibility testing:
Most web developers avoid this. They create the site, ensures its looks fancy and “wham bham thank you ma’am”! You should ensure that your website can be used by a real un-savvy person as well as to the mavens as well as to people without the normal abilities. It should be cross browser compatible and coded with the proper language so as to ensure it is optimized for the web and to the audience from all spectrum at least to most. It may cost a little more but it is worth it because at the end of the day you want to make more money with your websites and so to ensure that you have to make sure that usability testing is adhered strictly! It doesn’t mean that you need to ensure its AAA W3C because even AAA websites do not satisfy everyone, but do ensure that minimal accessibility is practiced.
3) Know your target market:
If your target market is from overseas then I suggest, get a server or hosting service which is located there. Lots of time is wasted on lagging and it is more than likely in today’s highly competitive world of business, they will move on to someone else if your website lags or has too much of flash! It is a “NO,NO!” for an ecommerce website to have Flash unless it is part of a small banner which is fine. Otherwise, ensure that your web loads fast by doing routine testing especially if your clients are from overseas. If you target market are children, you may want to partner with some maternal sites selling maternal paraphernalia and vice versa to cross link each other’s sites. And if you only have local delivery, state it from onset and not until the shopper reaches the checkout button! It will fry him or her forever and will increase bad ratings for your website… it is a small world my friend.
4) Are you opening up to the world?
Certain websites just want local buyers but many a times we tend to disregard the universal fact that most businesses sometimes can tend to come from outside your own domain. For example, especially businesses in UK and USA and even sometimes in Singapore, they always state their area codes and not country code which means they are strictly looking out for business from their own country and not overseas. I feel that this is wastage because why restrict your business to just a local sphere? Let’s just say I have my wife who is visiting her family or I have a client who is in USA and I am in Singapore with little or no knowledge of calling overseas? And if I directly call the number, there is no way I can call a US number without adding a +1 in front. And if it doesn’t go through the first time, chances are I am moving on to another company to get the gift sent to the desired destination. It doesn’t matter if your website is probably the best looking ecommerce site in the world! What I need is simple instructions on how I can get my gifts sent. If you do not have it, then my money is not going to you.
5) Have Google analytics installed:
Well lots of statistics companies just went bust because Google came up with their infamous and superb analytics tool. Install it and then you can analyze on where the drop out is. You can then analyze where your website needs tweaking. For example if you can see that when the dropout rate is high in your member registration page, you may want to reevaluate your methodology. Why are they dropping out here? Should I eliminate my mandatory registration fields? Should I reduce the number of questions I should ask? Does the page take too long to load?
Are the shoppers worried about my lack of web security or credentials?
Get a web developer to assess this and he will revert to you on why it happens. Get an experience company and not some freelancer who does this for some part time cash! Oh.. by the way Google analytics is free so give it a shot even if you don’t have an ecommerce website! It can tell you lots of stuff even for a plain vanilla site.
6) Reply fast:
Turnaround time as well as delivery is important for businesses all around the world be it if you from New Delhi or New York! Ensure that your customers’ requests are handled immediately and SLA should be informed upfront. Many web design companies do not program dual way receipts for customers and companies alike hence it goes haywire. This is a problem if you do not do dry run before you release the site to BETA. There should be minimum standards to web practice and at De Mellows, we follow a no nonsense 24 hours reply guarantee. We reply emails within 24 hours to adhere to best web practice. To increase your trust in your clients, you have to ensure all these are set in place and the sooner you reply your client, the better trust you will engender. And that will say a lot about your company and its Ecommerce policies.
Mike Greaves is a self-made entrepreneur, a well known sports shirts consultant and internet marketer. Over the years he has football shirt across the world and has numerous writings credited to his name in many renowned publications. His areas of writing include sports shirts experiences including reviews of Ecommerce websites and Singapore Web Designer
Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/web-design-articles/few-important-aspects-of-launching-ecommerce-website-1778603.html
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