The Ecommerce Guide

To build an ecommerce website, you must have web design knowledge and a lot of patience. The basic knowledge of html is necessary if you are planning on doing it yourself.

The Plan is in Motion

• Design – the design or look of your web site should represent your business and what you want to market. Remember the website is what the customers see and through it you must be able to convince them to buy your product. It should at the same time not be aggressive towards sales and scare the visitors.

• Text – another very important feature. When you build an ecommerce website you need to use as many keywords (the keywords are the words through which the search engines bring visitors and possible clients to your online store) as possible to ensure that the search engines bring your store up when the visitors are looking for the items you sell.

• Cross Browser Compatibility – with more that 100 different brands of internet browsers currently available you need to ensure that your site is compatible to be picked up by all of them. So you need to build an ecommerce website that is viewable in at least Internet Explorer 4.0+ and Netscape 4.0+. This is imperative in getting traffic to your site.

• Using images – The pictures used on your site should describe the merchandise clearly. Be original make your own pictures and scan when you can; don’t copy and paste. Also be sure to optimize your images for fast download; one looses a lot of customers who simply loose their interest while waiting for the picture to show up.

• Site Navigation – This should be easy to understand and use. Make a FAQ section where you should list any and all questions you think visitors may have. The easier your site navigation the more sales you will have. Buyers hate to get stuck on a site because it leads them nowhere.

To build an ecommerce website is not an easy task, especially if you do it by yourself. There are many website hosts out there who offer step by step help and assistance; they are a great tool to have on your side if you have never built a site before.

You must have patience and creativity in order to build an ecommerce website. It may take a while if you do it yourself however once ready to launch you can proudly say, you have build your store yourself.

Ecommerce is no different from a real world business.  It covers the same aspects, i.e. product identification, product presentations, marketing strategy, after sale service, and so on. What are the main criteria that will need your attention when you build an ecommerce site?

Learning the Basics

The basic criteria will revolve around the following core factors:

• Goal – what is the goal you have in mind for your ecommerce venture?
• Objective – what is the leading objective of launching the online business?
• Functionalities – what are the functionalities that would be required to achieve the above two factors?
• Material – do you have “ready-to-use” material available?

Answering the Questions

Goal – inspite of the popular belief, all ecommerce sites need not be online stores. There are many other goals which promote ecommerce such as, building brands, enhancing marketing strategies, launching products, answering customer queries on the product features, analyzing and improving sales, and so on. You will need to decide what your goal is, so a high degree of clarity is exhibited in terms of what is expected of your site.

Objective - this covers the process and methods that your website will use to achieve the goal. For example, if you have an online store, you will need to present your products through clear pictures and have adequate information ready to be presented to the customer.

Functionality – This is what will be enabling your site to achieve the completion of sale. Right from presentation to the processing of payment, there needs to be some software or method of getting it done over the Internet. The ‘getting-it-done’ process is what is known as functionality.

Material – There is a great amount of information needed to build an ecommerce site and in order to have things done well and fast, you will need to have all the required information compiled well in advance. This covers information on the product, background of the company, FAQs, processing guidelines, and so on.

All the above factors will need to be considered before you go out to build an ecommerce site. The better you will have planned for each of these steps, the better will your ecommerce venture be built, the faster your will business grow. It is important that each of the aspects be considered in depth and executed flawlessly from the outset. Now go ahead and build an ecommerce site for yourself!