Building eCommerce Websites That Work - Part 1

By: Richard Keir

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cloned ebooks filled with questionably useful and/or outdated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 Keir:
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.