An entrepreneur's guide to ecommerce

Ecommerce site design for many can be seen as a bit of a black art. Whether you are a seasoned web designer, or maybe a merchant wanting to do-it-yourself, it can be a confusing. So here are my top eight and a half tips for designing an ecommerce site to minimise maintenance and maximise sales.

 

 

Choosing an ecommerce solution can be daunting, but if you are serious about reducing the amount of total effort that site maintenance will take, then it’s imperative you choose a solution with an inbuilt design capability.

 

Many solutions will include a number of well designed templates that can give you a real head start, even if you end up changing them significantly. There are also platforms that will allow you a free hand when designing your site by connecting to familiar design packages, such as Adobe Dreamweaver.

 

If you are a web designer then it makes complete sense to choose a platform that has some synergy with your existing expertise, learning something new each time you need to update a site is both unnecessary and ultimately expensive.

 

 

It always amazes me that designers and merchants can spend thousands of pounds on a brilliant site only to let it all down by skimping on the hosting infrastructure. There are two points here; if you are a successful site the cost of downtime can be catastrophic, and unless you are a server expert it’s time-consuming and often dangerous to manage your own maintenance.

 

I would always advise site owners to spend as much as possible on your infrastructure and choose a full service partner. Make it someone else's problem and focus on what you do best.

 

 

One of my pet hates, and this isn’t just related to ecommerce sites, is what I call the “now what” problem. If your site is unnecessarily complex and causes your visitors to question their next actions, or worse, get lost altogether, then your site just don’t work.

 

For ecommerce sites it’s critical to design and maintain a clear and structured approach. A term that is often used is the “buy path”. Defining your buy paths upfront will help you keep the site design simple, as well as maximise the conversion of site visitor to customer.

 

Think about ways to categorise and group your products. Very often these groups are obvious, such as size, manufacturer, or product use. Including product categories into your design from the beginning and brainstorming on their usage will mean you’re not forced into a messy and unnecessarily complex design change every time you need to add a new item.

 

A good test of usability is to watch someone unrelated to the business, using the site to find a specific item you designate, or to buy a basketful of items. Or try software like ClickTale to give you a graphical ‘heat map’ showing how someone moves around your site.

 

 

The organisation of your site, specifically around the initial entry page (check your logs to establish which page) and product pages, is a key factor in keeping people interested. If you force your customers into complex rat runs (see tip 3) or overload them with detail too early it can be highly off-putting.

 

Design the initial product page to be simple and uncluttered, include photographs, price, delivery cost, availability, a short description and even a few customer reviews if possible.

 

 

But having said less is more, it’s also true that information is power. The difference is down to how you present the information. If a product warrants further detail then don’t be afraid to roll onto a second page and/or extra images. Then if the initial description is compelling visitors won’t mind having to ‘click for more’.

 

This will not only makes your life easier as it cuts down on the costly and time-consuming exercise of answering queries, but I would also argue it helps conversion. When people are informed they are reassured and so much more likely to buy.

 

 

A really neat tip for keeping your site looking fresh while providing useful information to your customers is to include some marketing features on your site. The most common are ‘best sellers’, ‘what’s new’ and ‘also bought’.

 

Many ecommerce solutions include automatic marketing features, but as any merchant will know it’s important these can be manually edited to include or exclude specific products. Putting these features into ‘set and forget’ mode makes life easy, and it also has a nice impact on your site’s SEO as changing content is manna to the search gods.

 

 

I love shopping online as I can do it from my desk, couch or even on the train from my phone. However, the biggest reason I love ecommerce is I can do it quickly. Keep this in mind when designing your site, never put things in-between a product, the buy button and the checkout. I am sure your blog is really interesting, but I really don’t care!

 

Also keep your checkout clean and streamlined. It doesn’t have to be a single page checkout, in fact research suggests that this is off-putting, but keep it easy and low maintenance. And never, ever, force a customer to register first - it’s the biggest single reason for cart abandonment.

 

 

The rise of social networking has really got the retail industry to take their customers seriously. Providing a bad service or product these days is a fast track to going out of business -- the power is most definitely in the consumers’ hands. So why not provide a mechanism to allow your customers to feedback directly on your site?

 

No-one sells your products better than people that already use them, plus providing regular fresh content is great for your site’s ranking. User experience also shows that it can up sales by 10% or more. However, I would always suggest using a third party service, such as FeeFo or eKomi, as independence equates to credibility and trust.

 

 

Ecommerce can be difficult but with some smart thinking and some clever design and automation it is possible to limit the amount of maintenance overhead required to run a successful site. Keep at it!

 

Benjamin Dyer heads the development of Actinic's portfolio of ecommerce and retail applications. He is an enthusiastic blogger and Tweeter, and has written many articles for the small business media including BusinessZone.co.uk.

 

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