In the world of e-commerce, your business website is your portal to your customers and the public face of your store to those surfing the Internet looking to buy goods from you. Because of the importance of your online presence, it is best to adopt a few best practice web design ideas.
K.I.S.S.
Keep It Simple, Streamlined. A complicated and cluttered website is going to do little to attract customers or keep them on site long enough to buy. More so than with a brick and mortar store, it is easy for a customer to simply move on to a different store, and if they are faced with a confusing series of complicated links that make it hard to find what they are looking for, they may well take their business elsewhere.
Engage Your Audience
A boring website is one that will not keep the user’s attention, think theatrically; your customer is your audience while they visit your site. Make sure to engage your audience when they arrive on your site; grab them and pull them in.
Unless it is inappropriate, use tricks such as clever wordplay and humour to keep your customers not only shopping, but also entertained. At the same time, remember to keep it professional, appropriate and informative. Knowing what your customer’s type is and playing up to that is essential in engaging the customer.
Quality, Quality, Quality
When providing images of the products you are selling, make sure that the images are not poor quality. It can reflect badly both on your store and on the item in question, and can lead to a customer refusing to buy the item. Likewise, make sure the picture of the item is both accurate and recent. If the customer expects an item to look one way but receives something that looks a different way, this could perhaps sour their thoughts on purchasing from you in the future.
If at all possible, include multiple pictures of your products on your page. For example, the item from different angles or in different colours. You want to give your customers a good idea of what they are getting and what their options might be. If the software you are using allows it, give the customers the option to compare items of the same category.
Likewise, your description of the items should be accurate and of high quality. Play up the positives of the product, but don’t be dishonest; dishonesty will be discovered and may well lead to negative comments and a souring of the relationship with that customer in the future.
Physical Contact Information
While the majority of online shoppers are likely to contact you via email or web form, it is also important that you put an actual phone number, land line if possible, on your website for customers to contact your store. Not only does this give them a means to get in touch with you should they have a question that needs immediate answering, but it also gives shoppers a sense of security that you are not a simple fly-by-night operation.
If you also operate a physical storefront, be sure to provide the address information for your storefront. You never know when a customer you deal with online might want to pop over for a conversation in person.
Accept Payment
You should have a wide range of payment options available to your customers. Not everyone carries one of the big three major credit cards around, some might use less popular cards or not even have a credit card at all.
Consider accepting payment through services that allow the shopper to pay through a third-party such as PayPal. This will allow those without credit cards to use the money on their account to pay for their purchases.
Customer Service is King
Just because you are not looking at the customer directly in the eyes, don’t mistake this for a chance to provide poor customer service. Answer questions directed to you in a timely manner and remain pleasant and polite. Remember, too, that it is often hard to properly convey emotions through text-based media, so choose your words carefully so as not to send the wrong message to your customer.
Give Recommendations
This is often a function of your e-commerce software, but you should always allow recommendations to the customer based on what they are looking for or have purchased in the past. Never underestimate the power of impulse buys.
Author Chris Anderson
Toxic Creative Web Design Northampton
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