So you’ve purchased your eCommerce site. You’re ready to start a new side career that may eventually lead you full time that you can quit your current job or you are ready to start out on your own already?
You have your product/s now what?
There are many options out there that could satisfy what you are looking for but what do they all possess over the other?
First consider how many products you want to sell when you first open your storefront. This will factor in what kind of platform you might want to use. Some platforms have a lower monthly rate but charge a transaction fee. If you have a small inventory, transaction fees will seriously cut into your profits. If you have a large inventory and would like to have a lower month rate the per sale transaction fee may balance out nicely for you.
Now that you’ve decided what platform you want to start with what’s next?
At Greentree Designs we have worked with many different clients from small, sometimes one product inventories to ones with sku’s reaching into the thousands.
Your next step should be how do you want to plan your website to look, function, navigate etc.
A unique design can separate you from the pack. A well thought out navigation scheme can give your customers the ease of mind to find what they are looking for without having to look for it. Make sure your navigation is chock full of SEO keyword terms. If you sell shoes, list brand names, list style of shoe etc.
A search box – Some customers, no matter how well you set up your navigation, will ALWAYS go to the search box. This means in order to satisfy those that use search only you need to include good SEO keyword phrases on your product pages, categories etc. Otherwise the customer will never be able to find the product they came to your site in first place to find. These keyword phrases will also help potential clients find your site when making a simple Google search.
Keep your site up to date, current – The best way to ensure retention of your customers is to offer them specials, sales, new products etc. Who wants to go to a site more than once that offers the same thing every time they visit the store? This can be accomplished simply by displaying a featured products photo slider linking it to the product page for quicker purchasing or providing a new products listing.
Increase Your Conversion Rates!
This means every eCommerce storefront should have the following displayed on every page, preferably in the header or above the fold.
- Your Shopping Cart display – This is vital. Allow your customers the ease of shopping when they add an item to the cart, the cart displays a subtotal, item count and a link to Checkout. Make the cart display a primary, focal element that is not competing with any other part of the design but flows seamlessly within it.
- Purchase your own SSL certificate – Most eCommerce platforms provide a shared SSL certificate. What this means is if the customer goes to view the cart or check-out the url physically changes. NetworkSolutions Commerce Space is a great example. Say you are shopping at http://www.xyz.com, you add something to the cart and then want to view your cart you do so by clicking on the View Cart link and it redirects to https://12340.netsolstores.com. If your customer is paying attention, and they probably are, they may panic that they’ve just left the store they were on even though the design hasn’t changed but the url has. What having your own SSL will help is by only changing one thing, adding an ‘S’ to the url, or simply https://www.xyz.com.