Nowadays, with the all-pervasive power of the internet, no one in business can afford to be ignorant about basic e-commerce web site design. After all, most brick-and-mortar retailers and wholesalers have some sort of internet presence–even professionals, such as lawyers, solicitors and architects, have set up internet sites to provide information on their services and projects. You need to know something of the basics of e-commerce web site design to brief designers and developers.
For example, e-commerce sites are based on credit card transactions. Asking the person who is purchasing goods and services from your web site to send a cheque or a bank draft is no longer possible. Most people can and do pay immediately with a credit card. You will need to implement online credit card processing, which may not be as expensive as it sounds.
When discussing an e-commerce web site, the site itself is seen as the store front in brick-and-mortar terms. Just as in a brick-and-mortar store, many people come in to browse amongst the goods, and a few people stay on to buy. Your aim, as the owner of an e-commerce site, is to convert browsers into buyers. In short, you, your designer and your developer are the salespersons for the e-commerce web site.
Your aim is to lead the client carefully through the learning and sales process. The sales text should be grammatical and correct with regard to spellings. Poor grammar and incorrect spellings could ensure a loss of credibility in an instant. The textual content should be rich in keywords and key phrases that clients would use in search engines. The text should also be well laid out keeping in mind both clients and search engines. Use a tool such as Overture to locate common search terms and their variations.
These are a few things to keep in mind when designing an e-commerce web site:
• You will have to ensure that your e-commerce web site is compatible with at least Internet Explorer 4.0 and above, and Netscape Navigator 4.0 and above.
• When using images on your site, use original or scanned-in images, not the stock images that are provided with image manipulation programs. Use image compression software to ensure that your images can download within less than 2 minutes. When placing images on your e-commerce web site, use HTML code and include a description of the image.
• Ensure that your client can navigate your e-commerce web site easily and quickly.
• The pages considered essential for an e-commerce web site are a home page, pages depicting the products for sale, a shopping cart page, a page describing the company, another describing the privacy policies used, a page that lists frequently asked questions (FAQs) and one that provides testimonials.
• You can also include pre-sales pages in Word or PDF format that provide offline information on your product or service.
• You should also include an e-mail address, which clients can use to query your staff about products, services or sales details.
• You can also include support for live chat on your e-commerce web site–this will help you develop a loyal clientele.
• When your client decides to place an order, the order button should be clearly visible, but not too gaudy.
• You will need suitable shopping cart software, which should suit your business and be scalable, to capture customer details, assemble the order and calculate the price, shipping charges and tax for further submission to your organization and a credit card gateway, for processing.

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