The Ecommerce Guide

In the planning stage of your online venture, ask yourself this question: “What would you look for if you were a customer and were looking for the best ecommerce site?”

Answering the Question

There are many things that would make a site a hot favorite with your customers. Among the most basic are the following features:

1. Flexible payment options – the best ecommerce site will offer as many as possible payment options from among those available today. These will include credit card payments, debit card payments, online payments, e-check payments, and so on. The more options you have the more likely that the client will come back again and gain to your site.
2. Highly navigable website - the best ecommerce site will have a very user friendly site, which would be easily navigable by the most novice computer user. Too many websites concentrate on having the latest techniques on their website completely puzzling the new Internet browsing mass. With millions joining the ranks of Internet users every day, you will risk loosing this critical group of customers.
3. Uploading time – the best ecommerce site will have a fast uploadable site. Many sites tend to post large pictures and animation feature on their sites which take very long for those who use old version computers and software to load. If the consumer has to wait for more than 45 seconds for a page to upload, he/she will move on from your site.
4. Frames vs. non-frames – have your website functional in both the options. Many of the people who use slower version computers will remove the frame options from their browsing. If your main features are based on frames, then the customer who has disabled this feature will be lost on your site, think it is a bad site, and move on.
5. Fast order processing – the best ecommerce site will have a maximum of two to three clicks from the time the customer chose an item and the payment is processed. The more clicks that are required, the less likely is that the customer will come back for more.
6. Fast payment processing – the payment gateway should be able to process the payment quickly. It is extremely annoying when you wait forever to get the message that your payment has been accepted or not after keying your financial information on a site.

The features mentioned above attempt to make the customer happy. This is in effect what the best ecommerce site has to offer first and foremost – satisfaction.