Building eCommerce Websites That Work - Part 1
Building eCommerce Websites That Work - Part 1
Copyright 2005 Richard Keir
You want to succeed at eCommerce? Welcome to a very big
family. Right off, let's be clear - there are lots of ways
to do business on the internet. And lots of ways to both
make and lose money. Successful eCommerce websites come in
all shapes, kinds and colors and while I can't cover every
type of site in this series, I will present the basics you
need to consider and apply for an eCommerce web site to be
successful.
Let's begin by assuming you have some of the fundamentals,
that you understand the language and that you are serious.
I'm not going to tell you how to set up a web site or get a
decent hosting account. We're beyond those basics. The
basics here are the factors which will influence the
success (or failure) and the degree of success your
eCommerce web site experiences.
First and foremost, you need to provide value for your
customers. Absurd as it seems to have to repeat that, a
lot of so-called eCommerce sites provide no or very little
value for their visitors. Pretending to offer value is not
the same thing as providing value. Promoting miserably
written, hackneyed, cloned ebooks filled with questionably
useful and/or outdated content doesn't make a high value
web site. Sure you might make some money. Once. And
you'll end up with a high refund rate - and an unhappy
credit card processor. That path means you're taking
advantage of inexperienced customers and abusing their
willingness to trust you. This isn't the way to a
long-term business with steady repeat customers.
Value on the net is not very different from any kind of
off-line retail sales -- a quality product line that will
attract potential customers and a competitive price that
will lead to purchases. An honest, quality product that
will meet the expectations you've created in your buyers.
Hyped junk just doesn't cut it.
Next, you've got to have a smooth, user-friendly, easy to
follow process all the way to your thank you page. The
simpler, cleaner and clearer you can make the process, the
better. Where it makes sense you can augment this
user-responsive site profile by adding live-response chat.
If you do decide to use call-in or live chat, it's
imperative that your operators be well-trained, understand
your products and your system and be customer friendly.
This can be a problem if you outsource. The less expensive
out-source call centers can turn out to be very expensive
in terms of lost sales and customers who never come back.
You'll need to check very carefully and be 100 per cent
certain the operators actually speak and understand the
primary language(s) of your targeted customer group.
You'll need to provide extensive background information and
highly flexible, well-written scripts.
You should collect your own customer evaluations -
separately. Don't rely exclusively on any monitoring or
customer satisfaction surveys provided by the call center.
Track your ROI to be sure it's money well-spent. Don't
stop monitoring just because the results looked good for
the first two or three months. Things change. Make sure
you're tracking desired actions linked to the call center
separately from those NOT related to call-in or live chat.
Mixing outcomes leaves you in the dark about what's really
happening.
You probably should have an attractive website. An ugly
site can work, but to do that you need to absolutely know
exactly what you're doing and why it should work. And
you'll have to test like crazy to optimize (of course, you
should be doing that anyway). The ugly site tactic is not
for the inexperienced. Very few individuals really have the
grasp of marketing, market and customer psychology that
makes for a successful "ugly" site.
To provide a pleasant experience, you need to be careful in
what you use - colors, text-size, graphics, animation and
white space can add value to your site or turn it into a
user nightmare. Test your site with people who will tell
you the truth. Just because you love it doesn't mean
anyone else will. In general, aiming for a professional
appearing site is your best option. Look for the highest
ranked, busiest sites in your business area and study the
layouts they use. Extract the common features that you see
on those sites. While other factors heavily influence
traffic and ranking, appearance has a strong effect on
visitors and sites that do testing evolve toward optimizing
visitor behavior.
Keep in mind that a site's desired actions affect the
design and layout. You'll want to study sites where those
actions are most similar to the desired actions you target
on your web site. If your goal is direct product sales,
there's not much point in emulating a site that's optimized
for newsletter sign-ups or AdSense.
If your main goal is direct sales (and if it is, then you
need backend products too), provide incentives for
customers to buy AND to return. The return factor is
critical to a long-term strategy for success. Anyone who
buys is your best possible future customer. Keep them,
track them, make them special offers. Use coupons,
discounts, special deals, customer-only offers and back end
sales. Your customer base is your gold mine. Since
they've shown enough faith in you to buy, do your utmost to
never damage that faith. Treat them like the priceless
resource they are. Think long-term: successful eCommerce
websites are all about value and customer service.
----------------------------------------------------
Richard teaches, trains and consults, on and off-line, on
business and professional presentations, eCommerce, site
building and programming. And writes a lot. Visit
http://www.Building-eCommerce-Websites.com for articles,
information, resources and links and check our blog at
http://www.Building-eCommerce-Websites/blog for opinion and
ideas.
Is Your Website Designed to Sell?
Is Your Website Designed to Sell?
Why do some websites sell better than others? Do you need a
marketing degree to create a website? Does design have much
impact or is web copy the key?
You may not realize this but many of the successful internet
marketing businesses realize that design, or layout of the
website should be a marketing decision based on research done by
internet marketers - not designers.
This is in no way a reflection of the incredible talent that
website designers have. You will clearly have a much more
professional looking site when an expert applies his handiwork.
However, it is very important to understand some of the key
elements that smart marketers will make certain to appear (or NOT
appear) on their highly profitable sites. If you are aware of
these you may be able to select a designer who is knowledgeable
in marketing as well.
COLOR:
Designers with a flair for color can make compelling choices that
set a mood. But reading on a computer screen demands as much
contrast as possible, otherwise the reader will have vision
fatigue. You do not want to irritate or tire your visitors in any
way or they may leave, so be certain that the main body of your
website copy is black writing on a white background - or as close
to that ideal as possible.
Colors also change appearance on different monitors, so what
looks cool and calm on one monitor may be bright and glaring on
another. Simple works.
GRAPHICS:
Striking, bold graphics can be a real eye-catcher for visitors.
Still, internet marketers are pretty much unanimous in stating
that you should avoid flash graphics as much as possible. Again,
they tend to tire visitors eyes or create a distraction from the
written copy. Even if they are initially impressed by the work it
may subconsciously annoy them. Simplicity is again the best way
to go.
LAYOUT:
The first 'fold' of your site is similar to opening a tractional
paper letter. If you remove a letter from an envelope that is
folded in three, you will obviously view the top 'fold' first.
This fold is what individuals will see without scrolling down the
page. It is CRUCIAL that important elements like descriptive
headlines, your contact number, newsletter subscription form etc.
all show in the first fold. Do NOT place banners here unless they
are the main element of your business as you will be giving prime
space to other websites and your customer (which you fought hard
to get in the first place) will be gone just as quickly.
These are just some of the important elements you should be aware
of when designing your site.
About the Author:
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Martin Boyd publishes a weekly newsletter dedicated to
guiding home business owners to maximise there internet
marketing efforts. Drop by and pick up your free newsletter
http://www.theworkathomesuccessbusiness.com/direct-marketing.htm
================================================
Should You Bother Learning HTML to build Webpages?
The most popular method to build webpages today is to use WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) software. Microsoft FrontPage and Macromedia Dreamweaver are prime examples of
WYSIWYG software. Both programs allow you to create webpages as though you were creating a document with your favourite word processing software like Microsoft Word or WordPerfect.
Its as simple as entering paragraphs, headings and inserting clipart or images.
WYSIWYG software like those listed above are prefect for beginner webpage builders who want webpages constructed quickly without having to learn HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language).
All webpages are brought to life using HTML codes, regardless what webpage building software is used. WYSIWYG programs simply create the HTML codes as you construct a webpage (in the background, without you knowing), so you don't need to understand them.
This is without a doubt the biggest advantage over any other type of webpage building programs. It means that if you can press keys on a keyboard, you have what is required to create your very own webpage!
However, most WYSIWYG programs don't give you absolute, total control over webpage design (ie, exactly the way you want the page to look). There are design limitations.
For example, you may want to place headings, sub headings and a navigation menu in a particular arrangement on the webpage, but no matter how many times you try, the program won't permit such placement or position them correctly. This
is one big disadvantage of WYSIWYG programs if you desire a custom look to all your webpages.
Knowledge of HTML, however, can assist you to overcome such design shortfalls in WYSIWYG programs. How is this possible? Let me explain.
If you understand HTML codes, then you understand why webpages appear the way they do in a web browser, such as
Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox. This is powerful stuff because the moment you change/modify HTML codes, the webpage will take on a new design/appearance.
And don't forget that HTML codes are exact, giving you total freedom over how everything appears on the webpage. Most WYSIWYG programs allow you to view and modify the HTML codes. As you can see, knowledge of HTML is beneficial.
The downside to HTML is the learning curve. It takes time to understand how HTML works and why, but once you know, using
HTML to create totally custom designed webpages is easy. For the beginner, HTML can be challenging, but don't despair because there are HTML tutorials available that teach you basic and advanced HTML in a matter of days!
So the question is - Should you bother learning HTML to build webpages? The answer - yes and no.
It is obvious that WYSIWYG software speeds up production of webpage development regardless of your knowledge on how to build webpages. However, to further refine and tune your webpages exactly to your liking, it is usually necessary to add and modify HTML codes. So yes, HTML is worthwhile learning if you are unsatisfied with the webpages produced by WYSIWYG software.
There is little point learning HTML if you are 100% satisfied with the webpages made with WYSIWYG software.
One thing is certain. Using WYSIWYG software and learning HTML codes is the answer for those of us who want webpages made exactly to our requirements. Learning HTML is not as hard as you think. To get started, simply search any major search engine like Google, Yahoo or MSN using the search phrase "html tutorials", its that easy!
About the Author:
Les Pinczi is the creator of interactive HTML learning software to help you learn how to make a web page in hours!
