Top Three Mistakes Companies Make with ecommerce Website Design

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Many companies are turning to website design that incorporates ecommerce functionality. It seems like it should be fairly simple. All they need to do is decide which products to sell and put up a few pictures and then they can sit back and watch the revenues come in. Unfortunately, this has led to the failure of many ecommerce sites. Here are some of the top mistakes that companies make when it comes to ecommerce website design.

They do not make their site easy to navigate
Many companies make it very difficult for customers to find their products. They either do not have a functioning menu that allows customers to find specific products or they make that menu very difficult to find. If customers do not have a clear path to the items that they are looking for they are unlikely to spend a lot of time looking for them. This means that you will end up losing potential customers to your competition and this can lead to the failure of an ecommerce site much more rapidly than you may think possible.

One possible fix for this problem is to include a search feature in your website design. By providing a way for customers to get directly to specific items you will make your website design much more efficient and this can help you get the kind of revenue you have been hoping for.

They do not have a fully functioning shopping cart or payment solution
When trying to entice customers to purchase goods online your website design has to include a fully functional shopping cart and payment solution. There is nothing more frustrating than trying to select products and finding it impossible to do so. It can cause you to lose customers very quickly and again, this can cause an ecommerce website to fail. You also need to make sure that once the customers have found the products they are looking for that they can check out and pay as quickly as possible.

If you ensure that your shopping cart and payment areas are easy to find, simple to use and functioning properly you can quickly increase the amount of revenue that your site is bringing in.

Customers cannot get a clear idea of what the items look like
Customers want to be able to tell what they are purchasing before they are willing to pay for it. You need to make sure that you are using a combination of clear, crisp photographs and descriptions that give your customers a clear idea of what they will be paying for. Be sure to include measurements and any options that a customer can choose from. Consider grouping like items together to make them easy for customers to compare.

In the past, when digital photography was just getting established it was more acceptable for the images to look grainy or unclear. This has changed. Digital photography has progressed so far that there is no reason why an ecommerce website design cannot include high quality photographs.

By addressing these three top mistakes relating to ecommerce website design it becomes much more likely that your site will be a success and generate the kind of revenue you have been looking for.

What does a successful e-commerce website really need

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There are many different options available when it comes to setting up an E-commerce website, but no matter how you go about it, you will need a full array of options when establishing your website in the beginning.

It goes without saying that before you can even begin to think of the setup and design of the ecommerce website, you need to have a business plan drawn up to cater for your product, your marketing plans, and your outline for future growth. Once you have a suitable product and plan to generate traffic and direct it to your website, you can then outline what you want for a fully functioning ecommerce website.

Of the features available, you will need the following, at the very least:

Hosting

Layout and Design

Logo creation (if you don’t already have a company logo)

CMS (content management system) for your products and listing and pricing

Shopping cart integrated into a payment gateway

Order tracking system / database

System reporting

For any ecommerce website that is selling physical (or non-physical) goods, these are the items which you will need to consider when setting up your site.

For hosting, you can either approach a hosting company directly, or approach a decent web designer. The web designer will be able to handle the logo creating for your company logo, and will integrate this into your layout and design for your website as well. They will, usually, also know where the cheaper options are for hosting, and will be able to direct you to a suitable company for this, often being able to set it up for you. Alternatively, often hosting companies provide the same services (by having an in-house developer and designer) as a package, and you will be able to use one of their website templates for your site.

The shopping cart system can either be done by yourself, or by hiring a developer, or by getting a ready-made shopping cart system integrated into your site (your web designer/developer will be able to do this for you). The cart will generally integrate into a payments processing provider, so you’ll need to discuss with a provider about having credit card payments made on your site, and about having the provider take payments and settle with you directly.

Any decent ecommerce website will keep track of its own stock and orders, and will integrate its own stock and sales reports with those that are returned by the payments processing provider. You will then need to do reconciliations with the provider to make sure that all the orders that are processed were paid for, and that the provider settled all payments to you by the required date. The providers are usually quite strict about you maintaining your own records, so keeping track of your own orders is a good idea.

Overall, it is quite simple to do the entire ecommerce website yourself (or with the help of contracted IT professionals), but there are also alternatives out there, where you can purchase an entire, ready-made package. It’s just a matter of looking, and gauging what works best for your situation.

About Webmama

Webmama.co.uk is a leading provider of ecommerce website and shopping cart website solution in the UK. We have packages that suits every budget, with industry leading client centric service and competitive, honest prices, it’s no wonder 1500+ worldwide customers look to Webmama.co.uk for all their ecommerce solution needs.

Were excited to offer you a completely free 14 day trial to evaluate our software with zero risk (no credit card required). Were sure that once you see what our E-commerce website can do, youll know its the right choice for your business and your online success.

Contact: 44 (0) 845 634 4586

Source: webmama.co.uk

RELATED LINKS: www.webmama.co.uk

eCommerce Trends to Watch This Holiday Season

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Black Friday and the holiday shopping season are fast approaching, and customers know this just as well as retailers. Based on last year, between Labor Day and mid-November we can expect online customers to change their behavior by deferring purchases. As an industry, we have conditioned our customers to expect exceptional offers in the run up to Black Friday.

At SeeWhy, we track both conversions and shopping cart abandonment rates, and you can see this change in behavior in the data. Shopping cart abandonment rates normally average 70 percent, i.e. 7 out of every 10 people that place items in the shopping cart do not complete the transaction. But last year from Labor Day through November 15, the number of online sales fell by almost 56 percent compared with the volume for the previous month, and the shopping cart abandonment rate shot up, peaking at 83 percent.

But once holiday promotional offers were rolled out, the transaction volumes rose sharply, and the abandonment rate fell dramatically. You can see this in the graphs below.

Note also how the day of the week is very significant: During the weekends, customers were researching, not buying. The pattern of high shopping cart abandonment rates during the weekend is normal throughout the year as customers research online before potentially making a purchase during the week. However, this pattern was much more pronounced from mid-September through mid-November, reflected in a peak abandonment rate for the year.

What happened in mid-November, of course, was that Black Friday-specific promotions were being rolled out across the board, triggering seasonal buyingnot browsingbehavior and the ramp up to the peak on Cyber Monday.

Based on last years pattern, we should expect that, until the big Thanksgiving promotions get rolled out in mid-November, many customers will defer purchases, having become conditioned not to purchase online but to wait.

This reinforces what we have known for decades; promotions shift the timing of revenues and may not provide significant lift overall.

Well be monitoring both the discounting trends and the shopping cart abandonment rates through the rest of the holiday season, and it will be interesting to see whether the Holiday 2010 will be a rerun of 2009.

Know Which Tablet Pc Is Better For Kids Vetch Innu Tab Vs Leap Pad Explorer

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The chiefly familiar present for the festival period would absolutely be tablet computers for children. The matter is: which is the mainly perfect tablet to get? Let’s take a look at the Vetch Innu Tab vs. Leap Pad Explorer war to observe which one is finest for you.

Price and Cartridges
The Leap Pad Explorer is cost at $100 while the Vetch Innu Tab is $20 contemptible that this at only $80. Since nearly anyone of their features is the similar the price would absolutely be a final thought amongst buyers.
This being the case, you have appeared at your long-standing charges. Do you desire to purchase more game magazines in the future? If yes, the Leap Pad is your finest selection because it is well-matched with magazines while the Vetch Innu Tab is not well-matched with it. Some magazines may be well-matched with the latter but those from the V reader are not well-matched with it.

Design
When comparing Vetch Innu Tab vs. Leap Pad Explorer by intend you will see that equally children’s tablets have similar intends. Both come with a 5-inch color display and both make employ of a stylus or a stroke purpose. Moreover, both kinds have tip sensors that may come in helpful when playing some games. Final but not the slightest both are also very multi-colored and are simple to apply and operate by kids.

Camera
Leapfrog Leap Pad has a built in camera as the Vetch Innu Tab does not have one. With the Leap Pad, kids can even make their individual movies and get pictures.

Memory
The Vetch Innu Tab has a built in 64MB memory ranges so if you desire to stock up extra information to it, you require to purchase a divide SD card. Alternatively Leapfrog Leap Pad has a built in 2GB memory that will further or fewer be sufficient for your kid’s exercise

Features
Another ordinary characteristic with equally tablets is that they both have video player, image spectator, and e Reader. Unhappily the Leap Pad does not have an Mp3 player unlike the Innu Tab.

What to Buy?
It is rigid to speak which one of the two you should obtain for your youngster. Even though the Vetch Innu Tab is contemptible evaluated to Leapfrog Leap Pad, the final has extra characteristics compared to the primary choice. What you can only think is the type of producer each of the products has as well as the type of characteristics your kid needs to have.

This will be two of your deciding issues when choosing amid Vetch Innu Tab vs. Leap Pad Explorer. The base line is, your option should be arranged right in time for the holidays to make sure that your child will obtain the present that he or she needs to find.

Using Online Services to Sell Your Product Outside the UK

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Looking to expand your customer base abroad? New clients await worldwide and with the internet and online services that come with it, it’s now easier than ever to connect with these foreign target audiences. Time to branch out your UK based business! The world can become your oyster with a bit of research and investment.

“Ready Made” Online Shops

You don’t necessarily have to invest a lot of money in developing an international ecommerce website. There are existing services or online “marketplaces” which users can sign up for. These are simple and effective ecommerce sites where transactions are managed by the marketplace operator, but products and their descriptions are provided by third party retailers: individuals like yourself.

Sites like Etsy, ASOS and Amazon are available for all to use for a small fee. You can personalise the look of your online shop with informative descriptions, logos and product imagery.

Making Your Shop Stand Out

There are various factors which can affect consumer trust in your shop and product offering. Two of these are visuals and copy so it’s absolutely vital to get these just right.

Make sure your images directly reflect the way the product looks in reality. Take photos from various angles in natural light without any interference from the flash and resulting reflections.

For added professionalism, ensure the background is always the same. If you can, enrol the help of a photographer.

Copy is a very powerful medium with which to attract customers. Shop owners often underestimate the importance of this so don’t make the same mistake.

Be descriptive but creative in your copywriting. Avoid excessive adjectives which lack coherent meaning. Highlight the features of each product.

Postage and Packaging

In the UK, you have the choice of using Royal Mail services or specialist parcel delivery companies such as Parcel Force and Parcel Monkey. Do some research on who does the best deals on worldwide parcel delivery. Some companies may be specialised in European deliveries while others will deliver further afield.

Instead of sending the item wrapped in bubblewrap and stuck into a generic parcel, do a little something more interesting to leave an impression on your customers.

At the very least print your logo on your packaging. If you can afford to, it’s also nice to give customers a little extra to say thanks for their custom. Personally signed thank you cards are a nice gesture and don’t cost a lot. Vintage postcards also work a treat, but pick something that goes well with the product.

Spreading the Word

Although you can expect some traffic to land on your page through users searching for specific products, if you’re looking to really get a name for yourself abroad, you’ll need to do some advertising and public relations.

Use social media to your advantage. This is free after all! Create shop profiles on popular social networks and actively engage with people, and give them reasons to buy from you. Competitions work well online. Give winners a special discount code to enter at checkout, for example.

For more ways of spreading the word, be it through social media or local media in the countries of interest, enlist the help of creative agencies specialising in a range of services from PR Scotland to advertising in China. Knowledge of search engine marketing would also be very beneficial.