Essentially, all aspects of managing your online shop should be easy and efficient. The shop should provide the right kind of service and experience for your customers and at the same time provide you with an effective and profitable means of online selling.
Bearing in mind that the facilities of your online shop depend on the system you adopt, you should aim for:
Easy shop management
This may include full control of:
- product listings
- product categories
- descriptions and images
- prices
- delivery options
- availability indication
- special offers
Easy client management
This may include:
- order notification
- customer ordering history
- database of customer details
- mailing list facilitycompliance with legal processes
Effective payment processing
This may include:
- versatile payment options
- customer confidence in security
- smooth and speedy transaction of funds
Fulfilling orders
You must make sure that you can:
- dispatch and deliver goods on time
- cope with large demand
User friendliness
It is vital for your shop to be welcoming and user-friendly. Just as in a ‘bricks and mortar’ establishment, you should make every effort to provide an online shop that is inviting and gives your visitors a pleasant experience.
Contact details
Make sure your contact information (including phone numbers, email address and postal address) are readily available. They should either be part of every page or reached by means of a prominent link on each page.
Don’t hide the door to your shop
Make sure your design shows clearly how to enter your shop, to avoid confusion visitors. The shop entrance should not be obscured with advertisements or too much information. Home pages that are too busy may prevent the customer from locating your shop and the goods or services on offer there.
Use easy navigation
To prevent your visitors from wandering aimlessly around your shop, make sure your navigation system easily allows them to find what they came for.
Let your visitors browse freely
Be careful not to hassle customers for personal information until they are ready to buy. This is the equivalent of a pushy sales assistant and could result in customers going elsewhere.
Layout
Make your shop layout and categories meaningful for customers. Items should be divided into appropriate categories, making it as easy as possible for people to find what they are looking for. Avoid ambiguity in the categories and if necessary use text descriptions to explain what is in a category.
Search facility
A search facility should always appear prominently on the web site. A quick and easy means of ‘finding what you are looking for’ is particularly important, given that browsing through a large online shop can be a difficult and slow process. Make sure that the search facility accepts appropriate terms, including multiple words. This will make the whole searching process work well for customers.
Accessibility
Make sure your online shop can be operated by and is accessible to all customers. ‘Accessibility’ means ‘making the content accessible’, so that everyone can navigate and read what is there, regardless of their location, experience, disability, or type of technology they use. As well as being required by law, good web site accessibility will bring you many more potential customers.
Keep your products list up to date
The shop items need to be kept up to date with correct information. There is no point in advertising items that you no longer stock or that are wrongly priced. Web site users will come back if they know the content is updated regularly. But if you disappoint a customer by not providing an advertised product, you will get ‘poor press’ as the customer relays their experience to others.
The shopping cart
The shopping cart should be both easy to use and to navigate. Shop items should have clear and informative labels to describe them and to show if they are in stock. The customer likes to see what they are buying, so you should include images of items to help identify them. This is particularly important for the more expensive purchases or fashion items. The ‘add to cart’ link should be positioned next to each item listed, with the ‘view cart’ link viewable at all times.
As the customer makes their order, each step of the shopping cart process needs to be explained, from adding an item to paying. Orders should be placed and processed with as few clicks as possible, and customers should have to provide as little information as possible. There should be provision for the customer to recover easily from any mistakes.
Payment options
Be as flexible as possible and allow your customers a variety of payment methods, including:
- credit card
- debit card
- payment processor (for example, WorldPay and PayPal)
- multi-currency
- cheque with order
User testing
Use a sample group of people of different ages, backgrounds and Internet experience to find and buy a product. Use their feedback to fine-tune how your online shop works.
Customer account management options
Registered web site users can log into an account management section with their email address and password to manage the following areas:
- ‘My profile’ – allows users to keep their contact and account information such as payment method and delivery address.
- Account history – where users can view all orders made through the web site, checking each order and its details in full at any time.
- Order tracking – once an order has been placed, users can log into their account management section and view the progress of their order (for example, has it been dispatched?).
Wish lists
Wish lists drawn up by the customer of items they desire can be used as the ideal shopping list for their friends and family choosing the perfect gift.
- The wedding gift list is a good example of the wish list. The bride and groom register with your wedding gift list service online, then browse through the online shop and add whichever items they want to their wedding gift list. Once they have completed the list, they will receive a URL (web site address), username and password to give to guests, who can then go online and log into that list. The guests can view which items have been bought and which are still available to buy.
Customer details and mailing lists
You can ask customers when they register with your online shop if they would like to be added to your email mailing list. Then you can divide this into two types of email mailing lists – HTML (the language of the Internet) and text only. You can use the mailing lists to inform customers of sales, special offers and other initiatives.
Value added experience
You should promote the value of online shopping at your web site. If you can offer benefits over high street shopping, customers may be tempted to buy online. Your promotion will depend on the kind of items you sell, but useful features could include product reviews.
Email marketing is a form of direct marketing which uses electronic mail as a means of communicating commercial or fundraising messages to an audience. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing. However, the term is usually used to refer to:
- Sending emails with the purpose of enhancing the relationship of a merchant with its current or old customers and to encourage customer loyalty and repeat business.
- Sending emails with the purpose of acquiring new customers or convincing old customers to buy something immediately.
- Adding advertisements in emails sent by other companies to their customers.
- Emails that are being sent on the Internet (Email did and does exist outside the Internet, Network Email, FIDO etc.)
Researchers estimate that US firms alone spent $400 million on email marketing in 2006.[1]
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This kind of content has value for the reader, obviously. But it also benefits the author / publisher. Here are the top five benefits of creating high-value website content for your small business website:
1. It keeps people on your website longer.
2. It makes people more inclined to trust you.
3. It encourages readers to recommend the site to others.
4. It encourages other webmasters to link to your content.
5. It helps you improve your search engine ranking and
visibility.
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PPC Myths:
- PPC ads will help organic rankings
- PPC ads will hurt organic rankings
Tag Myths:
- you must have a keyword-rich domain
- you must have keyword-rich page URLs
- heading tags are necessary (H1, H2 etc.)
- you need to use keywords in meta keyword tags, in particular you need to use keywords that are included in your page content. It’s actually better to use the keyword tag to include misspellings and other keyword varieties that you don’t have in your pages.
- using keywords in comment tags will hurt your rankings.
Content Myths:
- page copy must be a certain # of words. but there is really no set limit to please search engines.
- that you need to bold/italicize your target keywords.
- that you must use a specific keyword density. Keyword density tools are ridiculous.
- that you must optimize a page for a single keyword or phrase per page. Instead, try to optimize each page for 3-5 phrases that are related, so that your copy reads better than repeating one phrase over and over.
- that you need to optimize for the long-tail searches. You don’t generally need to optimize for these - engines will find them on their own.
- duplicate content will get your site penalized. There is not a penalty as such, but engines will filter out duplicates in lieu of the original copy (or what they think is the original).
Design Myths:
- your HTML code must validate to W3C. Not even Google.com validates!
- your navigation must be text links not images. Surprisingly, graphical navigation is fine as long as you use ALT tags.
- you can’t use Flash. It’s fine to use Flash, as long as it is one element of your page, not a complete Flash site. Use a text-based site too if using a Flash site.
- certain design techniques are black hat. Javascript code is legitimate, not just used by black hats.
Link Building Myths:
- that Google’s link: command is accurate. It’s not a useful tool. Use Google Webmaster Tools or the Yahoo link command instead.
- that reciprocal links won’t count. From the right site, reciprocal links are fine, even very helpful.
- that pages are ranked in PageRank order in the search results. They’re not. Google Toolbar PageRank is not accurate anyway so ignore it.
- you must be in DMOZ or Yahoo Directory to get good Google rankings. The Yahoo Directory is not worth the money these days.
Submitting, Crawling and Indexing Myths:
- that you need to submit URLs to engines. Provided you have a link to your site, you will be found and indexed.
- that you need a Google Sitemap. Not needed for the average site. It won’t change your site rank.
- that you need to update your site frequently.
- frequent spidering helps rankings. Not true.
- that you need multiple sites. This won’t help in the engines and creates more maintenance work.
- that you need doorway pages. This is so 1995!
SEO Company Myths:
- that a #1 ranking will always lead to more traffic or sales. The good rankings need to be for keywords and phrases that people are actually searching for.
- that the company can place pages in certain positions. Not possible, unless they’re using Pay Per Click or sponsored spots.
- that your rankings will tank if you stop paying the company. Rubbish!
- that they have a “proprietary method” of SEO. They’re lying!
- that they have a “special relationship” with Google. Again, they’re lying. Google has no relationships with organic SEO companies.
- that they can increase your rankings without doing any on-page work. Run away!
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