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useful and/or outdated content doesn't make a high value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.