Small Business Ecommerce Solutions – Designing A Successful Ecommerce Website

In the first part of this article series we discussed how to select a webhost that will meet the needs of your small business ecommerce website.

In this article you will find learn how to design a successful ecommerce site that will reach new customers and build customer loyalty.  A well designed website can increase your profits in ways you may not be able to achieve in a brick and mortar store.  A poorly designed website can be a drain on time and money.

Before you begin, you must identify who your customers are.  Taking the time to understand your target market is key to designing a website that will appeal to your customers.   You must also determine how your customers will benefit from your website.  What will your customers want to get out of your website?  Will they be looking for information about your products and services?  Will they be looking for suggestions on how to use your products or a way to connect with other customers to share ideas?  Will a shopping cart facilitate their purchase or do you offer custom products and services that can’t simply be ordered?  Clearly documenting the benefits your visitors will get from your website will ensure you meet those goals.

When first designing your website it is easy to focus all your attention on the graphics and color scheme.  Although these important factors set the tone of your website, it is more important that your website be user-friendly.   Visitors should achieve the purpose of visiting your web site fast. Obviously the complexity of a website might depend on your subject; however you should set a goal of no more than three clicks to achieve their goal.  The goal can be anything from making a purchase to finding information or connecting with other customers in your forum. 

Your website should also be easy to navigate. If your customer visits your website and they can’t find the information they are looking for they will leave your website and go to your competitor’s. Some websites can be so confusing that the purpose of the website is hard to determine.

It is also very important that your small business ecommerce website loads the pages quickly. This not only gives your customers a good experience, but is now being considered a factor in search engine ranking. The search engines are now looking at page load time as a factor when determining which sites should rank highest in search results.

Finally, your website should have content related to your products and services.  Your customers will have a better experience if you provide them with valuable information.  Suggestions about how to use your products can help you reach your customers in ways you probably haven’t been able to in the past.  For example, if you sell craft supplies providing project ideas using your products will increase your sales and your customer loyalty.  The content on your site can also help increase your ranking in the search engines.  It is frequently said that content-rich websites that reference the keywords being used in the search will likely receive a higher ranking than a website that lists only products with a shopping cart.

Although many factors will impact the success of your small business ecommerce website, these suggestions will help you build a website that will improve your customers’ satisfaction.