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A lot of stores are built online. To make an online business grow, one must know the key to make it successful. efront web development spent time researching for the essential elements for a successful online store:
1. Simplicity
Navigation – Allow customers to navigate it easily in just one click.
Shopping Cart – should be visible for customers with products in bundles and easy to add for purchase.
Checkout Process – make buttons clear for check out, and not require log in for customers that would make it complicated and time consuming.
Making it simple and easy to navigate would give you a positive impression. Remember, if customers are frustrated with your site - the perception will be that it’s hard to do deal with you and your business.
2. Consistency
Be consistent on every designs or logos you have in your site.
- Keep the header images the same to be easily identified, Make sure your site use CSS - this gives you greater control and consistency between the design elements of both sites.
- Use scripting like PHP to mage consistent footer elements across your site - again minimizing work for changes down the track.
- If you accept credit cards, don’t be afraid to show the logos.
3. Control
Make it easy to manage! & Control your Content
- Add / Edit / Remove Products & put images for your product description.
- Specify freight pricing & put multiple options for each product also, avoid displaying products that are not available.
- Put multiple categories for each product and avoid duplications.
4. Security
Build trust from your customers. Be sure that it would be safe for them to purchase through your site.
Things you need to know about security
- Always encrypt the customers’ credit card details through SSL and the use of a valid certificate.
- Don’t slow down the entire site by using SSL on the normal store pages - just use it for checkout.
- Don’t send the customers credit card details via email.
- Don’t store the credit card details after you have processed payment - delete them.
5. Search
Make it friendly and easy for customers to find what they are looking for.
- Put some good search.
- Make it accurate & don’t bounce the customer to another page for search results. And fast
6. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Don’t leave this as an afterthought.If you’re store is database driven (and it should be), chances are your visitors are going to be seeing the same page just loaded with different content. While this gives you some benefits, it can also impact on your Google rankings. Make Google Your Friend
- Put keywords on your titles. And have a Google sitemap installed and registered for your site to tell Google what pages you have so they can list them.
- Make sure to have a updated database of your products. And have more images that reflects on the product name. When your images are displayed they should contain appropriate name data in the html Avoid URL’s that contain variables, search engines don’t like this and won’t often follow these links when scanning your site.
7. Clarity
Put an excellent presentation! Great product images not only make your site more appealing, they also impact on the perception of quality and professionalism of your business.
Paint A Thousand Words
- No photo can sometimes be better than a bad photo.
- Take high quality images of your product, & compress for your site.
- Avoid having other things in the background of your image. & Use a white background - a large piece of white paper that wraps up a wall behind your product can be inexpensive and effective.
- Take your photo’s with plenty of light so you can avoid using the flash.
8. Management
Control With Ease for a good service.
- You should get an email when a sale comes through with the details (excluding credit card) - this allows you to action it promptly.
- Your site should have a pending list of orders that you can access online and manage & put proper label for each.
- Managing your orders helps you stay in control, gives you peace of mind that you are on top of things and lets you respond to queries quickly.
9. Feedback
Peace of mind
- A personalized email should be sent to the customers confirming his/her
order details.
- Your email should outline the process from here and what the customer needs to do or what they should be expecting.
- You should provide the customer with a method of contacting you such. ie. Your email address and/or phone number and ideally a name to keep it personal.
- Provide the customer with a link that could help them monitor or keep track of heir order.
- Once the order has been processed or sent, send the customer another email (ideally automated) thanking them again and letting them know their order has been sent.
10. Follow Up
Invest time to value your customers. To keep them coming back
- Keep previous customers up to date with specials or promotions through email. & Offer a special gift or incentive to existing customers as a thank you.
- Send a thank you email to customers a few weeks after purchase.
- Ask customers for a testimonial or their thoughts on a product - it’s personal and shows you’re genuinely interested in their satisfaction. & Show it on the site, to enhance and support your product.
