What with the internet getting so big and popular and all, it has reached the point where having a business and having a website is basically synonymous. If you don’t have a website, unless you are a market stall, you don’t have a business…or at least, you are not making the most of it.
So to get your business online, you obviously need a website. This is just the beginning though. Too many businesses phone up the first website company they come across, give them some colour scheme and accept what they are given. They then throw their products in and hit ‘Go Live’. Then they sit back and wait for the orders to start piling up in their inbox.
Unfortunately for them there is so much more to it. They may as well not have bothered if they are not willing to spend a lot more time and energy making it the best it can be. There is just so much competition out there that websites need to be of a high calibre to make any impact or provide any return on investment.
Worthwhile Content
The first and most essential element of all is worthwhile content. You can spend £10,000 on your website design and development but if you don’t invest in providing useful, user friendly, valuable information then it will all have been a waste. Ecommerce sites for example need to not only provide pictures and prices; they need high quality images, good solid descriptions and detailed price breakdowns.
A Unique Online Selling Point
Another essential element is a unique selling point. This is something that makes your business stand out online ahead of your competitors. While your existing business may have one in place, this may not do so well online. Good online selling points are things like ‘Free Shipping’ and ‘Free Returns’.
Security
People are very aware of their vulnerability online. This means that anything that seems unsafe, especially when their credit card details are concerned will make them run a mile. You need your site to look professional, be free of adverts (where possible) or any pop-ups and offer reassuring information like your physical address and a phone number. Furthermore, how are you processing payments? This certainly has to be secure and brings about the issue of payment gateways and which payment service provider is right for you and your customers.
On Page Credit Card Gateway
Sticking with reassuring customers and payments; sending them to an external site to take their card details is a major turn off, so it is essential that you nip this in the bud now by immediately applying an online credit card gateway that can be used from the checkout seamlessly.
SEO Services
Finally, search engine optimisation is not technically essential, but you won’t get much traffic quickly without a professional casting their eye over your site and explaining what you need to do to be as attractive as possible to search engines and your customers.
A roadblock in the world of ecommerce is basically anything that stands between your customers and your products. You probably know that online shoppers are like a flock of birds: the slightest little jolt and they are off up into the sky and away. They’re not like ants who will immediately try to find another route to their goal, they will not often back track and look for gaps and ways over, under or around an obstacle. No they know that they can just go back to the search results and start again with a fresh site that probably has what they are looking for and may well be easier for them to get to.
The problem with blogs is that so many companies that have them do not know what they have them for.
Ecommerce stores are notoriously difficult to manage. Not necessarily because of the technology, but because of the users. Most people who visit ecommerce stores fail to do exactly what you want them to do or what you have predicted they will do. It would be all plain sailing if every visitor went straight to what they wanted and immediately completed a purchase or at least made an enquiry. This unfortunately is for the most part not the case and there are hundreds of factors in your ecommerce sales process that can cause users to decide not to make a purchase.
When a visitor or potential customer arrives at your website for the first time, they form an opinion of your site and your company as a whole in a few seconds. This means that you need to make sure that every element of your homepage (primarily) and all the deeper sections of your site are completely tailored to give your visitor the best emotional response and first impression. Think about the last time you arrived at a site that looked odd, was unappealing, and made you feel awkward in some way…did you stick around? I doubt it. You don’t want to be in their shoes.
Times are tough for small businesses. Technically the economy has not literally shrunk, but the fact it stayed the same as it did for the previous quarter, a flat graph if you will, means that there was zero growth, which is as good as shrinkage. This has raised fears that despite some sectors showing signs of growth, overall we may be heading back for another round of recession.
Every online business, if they are at all serious about making their website profitable, needs to be thinking about their visitors when they create landing pages. Landing pages are where your users arrive at your website – depending on where individual pages appear in search results, it could be one of a number of pages and not just your homepage. You can more accurately direct your visitors to particular landing pages by using search engine optimisation techniques.
Statistics recently announced across the national press have shown just how disastrous both the coldest December in 100 years and the lingering atmosphere of the economic downturn has been for the UK retail sector.
Did you know that social media locations have become the number one place for people to spend their time online? As people find staying in touch a more and more enjoyable experience and a better place to hang out than in front of the television most businesses have wised up, got themselves a website and 
So you have built and launched your ecommerce store. You have perfected your product range and created an excellent website that gives them all the information they could want to know about each product with great pictures. You have spent money on search engine optimisation and pay per click campaigns and have a steady flow of motivated traffic arriving at your site every day. But, your sales from your website are still low and through analytics you can see that all but a few of your customers leave the site as soon as they get to the payment stage. What gives? Your prices are highly competitive.
