Posts Tagged ‘e-commerce’

Maintaining a healthy perspective on website ownership

How Close are you to your own site ? Experts say the closer to the situation you are, the less perspective you have. What I mean is that if you are a website owner who uses your website for one purpose, you sometimes lose focus on the fact that your site is suppose to be designed with the customer in mind. Think like a vendor and a customer when redesigning your website. The last project I worked on I spent a few days explaining to the CEO, that the easier it is for a customer to use the site the more they will come back to the website. If you are running an e-commerce website the more the customers come back to you the more you can count on profits. This is one major piece to the puzzle when developing an e-commerce website.

Improving potential Customers and new Visitor experience

Most new visitors are looking for information before purchasing a product. What are you selling, why purchase from this vendor, how long have you been in business, where are you located; are all common questions. Are you an expert in your field ? What makes you an expert?  What is your track record ? After a visitor gets the information they are looking for then they want to know more about your product or purchase. A lot of clients want to know they are dealing with a reputable company, especially when it comes to high ticket purchases. BBB online, SSL and Fraud prevention Trust seals, industry affiliations and more give your site the authority it needs to make the customer comfortable when dealing with your brand.

Handling Returning customers

One client had a food ordering system that took 30 clicks to checkout. We ordered the same food on another website in less than 5 clicks. Which one do you think the customer would use the next time ? Getting clients to return a second time to your website to order a product can mean a few things. Are you the only one selling this product, or at this price point ? If you have competition then you have to think like a customer and make your site different than the competition. What is going to make the customer want to come to your website the second time to purchase the product ? The number one complaint of existing customers is usability. I like designing a one-stop page where existing customer’s can find all the general links and information that they need. This helps them want to book mark this page and get them from the homepage. This leverages your SEO and  traffic reports to unique visitors who are potential customers or vendors on your homepage.

Membership  and E-Commerce websites

Membership websites tend to get the most complaints when it comes to usability and redesign. You may have had a site that was not exactly up to par in the first place. When you do a redesign customers are expecting a new level of ownership from the company that runs the website. You should think like a customer the most when designing community websites. How should the customer login ? Will they know where to get the resources that were available before ? What features has the existing community been asking for ? How do you ease the process in taking them from the old site to the new one. Test, Test, Test. If your old site wasn’t the best site, you still don’t want to leave out some old features when updating the new site.

Anticipating Vendor needs

One project I worked on was mainly targeted to vendors. They needed the ability to quickly login, add their products and details and sell. The company worked on a very high profit sharing system. If there were too many clicks, too many moving parts vendors would be alienated from using the site as their primary method of e-commerce and the website owner would lose the potential product placement. I try to teach my clients that the least amount of clicks, the better the usability. Why do you need 5 clicks for one action ? A prime example is ordering food online. Many sites are using ajax to improve the user experience but there is a lot of thought that is put into reducing the number of clicks a customer needs to have to achieve checkout.