Here at Lancore our aim is to help e-commerce businesses get ahead in the extremely competitive online marketplace. Through our professional payment gateways service we have helped dozens of companies to streamline their websites and have seen some incredible results.
However there is a lot more to success in the e-commerce world than being equipped with the best systems; and that’s why we decided to launch this blog. Through the posts that we add here we hope to give you advice, pointers and tips on ways you can really optimise your website to unleash its true potential. For this first post I am going to start out by offering five pieces of advice that every new e-commerce start-up should take into consideration.
1) Consumer Trust
When setting up an online business you should bear in mind that many potential consumers are still very wary of supplying their details over the internet. Whether or not visitors perceive your website to be trustworthy is something that will make or break your online business. Implementing a sleek professional design and using a reputable payment service provider really are the best way to do this. If the consumer doesn’t have faith in the websites integrity when they are asked for payment details they are very likely to leave.
2) Monitoring Statistics
This is something that will merit an in depth look in a later post, but for the moment it is worth noting how important installing analytics software on your website is. One of the major benefits of working online is the ease that an enormous amount of stats can be tracked with very little effort, allowing you to analyse the information and constantly make improvements to your site.
3) Keep It Simple
When setting up their first online business many people fail to take into account how much more fickle online shoppers are when compared to their high-street equivalents. It is absolutely vital to make the process as easy as possible for the consumer. Many websites make the mistake of hiding very basic information such as shipping costs or return policies which can instantly turn away online consumers who are very unlikely to work to uncover information.
4) Information Overload
Like analytics the structure of product, and category pages, are something that will merit an in depth look later; when setting up the business though it is imperative that you consider what information is best for the potential customer. Many websites make the mistake of offering either a very brief description which doesn’t give visitors enough information to tempt them into a purchase, or they offer huge quantities of technical information, which although informative, many customers don’t bother to reach.
The key here is to strike a balance by offering a detailed description of the product backed up by a list of technical specifications in case they are required. Additionally, providing reviews can be extremely beneficial; many visitors place a great deal more trust in reviews from other buyers than the opinions of the website selling the product.
5) Remember to advertise
Another common mistake that many online start-up companies make is failing to acknowledge the importance of online marketing. Unlike a high street store an online shop is essentially invisible until some promotional work is done on it, people don’t tend to accidently stumble upon online stores instead they are referred there by search engines, adverts or possibly friends/family.
In a later post I will look into the benefits of some online marketing techniques (such as search engine optimisation and pay per click advertising) but for now it is worth bearing in mind not to spend your entire budget on the website leaving you with no funds to promote it.
I hope that you found this advice helpful and will return to check out our upcoming posts which will go into greater detail about how you can run a successful business online. In the meantime if you have any tips or advice on e-commerce why not leave a comment below.
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Tags: Ecommerce, tips on web design, web design, website tips
Good basic advice, I especially relate to the simplicity one. Removing barriers along the way is crucial and I have seen how fickle people are in usability testing. Ease of comparing / filtering products is crucial as is removing trust barriers throughout the process. Good marrying up of offline processes and other operational parts (e.g. post purchase email and managing order) are important too. Thanks.
Cheers
Chris
Good advice. It’s far too easy for people to simply click away from a site if they can’t find what they want easily or the process is too unwieldy. Simplicity and ease should be the basis of any successful ecommerce site.
Some really good advice on your blog I think that most websites don’t pay much attention to this kind of thing