The ecommerce business today has turned into a million dollar industry as more and more people now see the internet as a medium for getting better and cheaper deals. An ecommerce website also helps organizations to cut down on several peripheral expenses while at the same time helps the retailer to get a far wider audience reach. If marketed in an effective manner, the ecommerce business can help organizations rake in huge profits. However if you look at the ecommerce sector today, almost 70% ecommerce companies are running at a loss. This can be attributed to poor marketing strategies and lack of knowledge of certain key aspects required to make an ecommerce website work. In this article, we enlist the points to bear in mind so as to make your ecommerce website successful.
The success of any ecommerce website is wholly dependent on the traffic it generates and hence you should know who your target audience is. Once you have identified your target audience, you should know how to entice them to your website. The website design and layout should be eye catchy and its content should be such that it keeps the user engrossed. Furthermore it is crucial that the site have good navigational features as users should swiftly be able to find the products that they are searching for. For this reason, the search box of the site must be well optimized and it should be able to track the most accurate page related to the user’s search query.
Loading time is also a vital feature that you should pay attention to. Many webmasters make the mistake of loading the site with heavy flash and animations so that it looked pretty and attractive to users. But this in turn increases loading time and any site that takes more than 5 seconds to load is bound to lose more than 90% of its visitors. So it is necessary that you maintain a fine balance between the two and not compromise on one for the other.
Your site should also have a custom shopping cart wherein users can easily add or remove items. The checkout procedure should be a one page affair and you should ask the users only necessary details required to carry out the transaction. Lengthy forms and too many personal queries may cause buyers to lose interest and increases the likelihood of them leaving halfway through.
You also need to have good visibility on the net because unless you are visible, you can’t drive traffic to your site. Pay close attention to the marketing strategies of your competitors and see if you could pick up a trick or two. Observe the prices at which they are buying and selling items and make changes to your strategy accordingly. Have good SEO and SEM marketing strategies in place to garner more eyeballs online.
Ecommerce development requires both strategic thinking and planning and if you aren’t an authority on the subject then it is advised that you take counsel from an ecommerce online store creation expert who will be able to warn you about potential pitfalls.
The author says that though it may cost a few extra bucks, you should consult an ecommerce online store creation expert before embarking on an e-commerce development program. These people can advise you on key aspects such as custom shopping cart, payment integration, etc and in the long run will only save your money.