Before beginning to consider the specifics of creating your e-commerce site, you need to understand a little more about what your customers will be looking for when they visit. In essence, if you know what your customers want, then you can give it to them, which makes it far more likely that they will do business with you.

Follow up:

For the majority of people who spend money online, there is one factor that of all else dictates sites they buy from, and which they don’t. More than anything else, they want simplicity, and therefore ease of use and convenience.

While many new online entrepreneurs might be tempted to try to create an all-singing, all-dancing website that is flashy and complex, that is not what your customers are interested in. They want to know what you have to offer as quickly as possible, they want to know why they should deal with you, and finally, they need to know how they can do so.

It is important that the design of your site and the content on your homepage should grab your visitor¡¦s attention, but it must do so in a positive way. It must be easy for visitors to navigate from your
homepage to your internal pages (it should never take more than three
clicks to get from the homepage to any page on your site), while
getting back again must happen with one click.

Also, make sure that all of the information on your site is presented to your visitors in language that they will understand, rather than in business jargon. Again, it is all about making it easy for your visitors to use your site.

Give details on the homepage of who you are and what your business
does. Make sure that the home page has a clearly evident site map, as
well as links to other important internal pages such as your FAQ page,
details of payment terms, delivery conditions etc.

You will need to have a catalogue of the products you supply
somewhere on your site, and each of those products will probably have
its own individual page so that you can give further information about
what they do, why they are beneficial for the people who use them and
so on. Once again, links to your catalogue should be clearly highlighted from your homepage, and each of the individual product pages should be linked to the short product description on your catalogue page.

If you are providing a 24-hour customer service chatline, then you
should feature the chat utility on the homepage, as well as further
contact details such as an e-mail address, telephone numbers and so
on. Incidentally, if you list telephone numbers, I would advise that you also include an indication of your time zone to deter people from calling in the middle of your night (especially if you¡¦re working from home).

Pages: 1 · 2