TEN TOP TIPS FOR BUILDING AN E-COMMERCE WEBSITE

 - Many companies are still failing to understand the basic principles of e-commerce,
argues Ben King, Director of bit10 ltd -

Companies of every size continue to waste money on useless, irrelevant e-commerce websites which do more harm than good to the corporate reputation, according to digital solutions agency, bit10 ltd.  

In fact, most companies are patently failing to achieve even the basic principles of e-commerce. Ben King, Strategic Director of bit10 explains, “With no clear targets, no understanding of the online audience, no stakeholder involvement, no performance monitoring and inept marketing, is it any wonder that the majority of e-commerce websites are underperforming?”  

In order to address this problem, bit10 is providing companies with ten top tips in order to help them maximise their online presence:   

1. Know your audience

It is important from the outset that you know your audience, and you know what they want from the website. Take the time to understand why they are coming to you in the first place and what they are looking to do once they arrive at your site.   

2. Follow the footprint

Analyse how many people are visiting your website, and how they are navigating through the web pages. Are there trends and patterns in terms of site usage? If you are selling - How many visitors are actually buying something from the site? If they are not buying, do you know why not? If you are not directly selling – then are they going to all the key information points on your site? If not, why not? 

3. Marketing

You must be constantly thinking about how you are getting your website to your audience whether that is online or offline, if this is not a priority then chances are there are plenty more unique visitors waiting to find your site. This is all about marketing your website. You can’t just set-up and expect people to visit. You need to build campaigns to generate visitors – this will then tie the website directly into your overall marketing activities – search engines are the most common way that people find your site but all sorts of online marketing apply. But don’t forget all the other things like recruitment ads, your advertising, your PR and your direct mail, these should all be generating traffic.

4. Back-up support

Make sure you have got back-end systems to be able to fulfil the demand at peak times during the year. You don’t want to find yourself in the position where you have gone to all the effort of generating a great website and all of a sudden you are not able to fulfil all of your promises on delivery. 

5. Usability Testing

Conduct a usability test to make sure your site is user-friendly to all types of visitor, and that transactions can be completed quickly and easily.

6. The Host

High availability is essential so make sure that you go with a trusted hosting partner that will guarantee your site is operational 365/24/7.

7. Online vs. Offline

Don’t forget about the void between an online shopping experience and an offline shopping experience. Online shopping is a very different. A lot of people only buy items online if they are absolutely clear about what they are going to get. More obscure products are harder to sell online, so be aware of this and provide as much product information as possible, with good supporting photography. But be careful how you present it - don’t bombard consumers as information overload will make them go and look elsewhere.  

8. Security

Make sure your customers know that your site is secure. For customers who are not confident about spending money online, this point needs to be reinforced at every given opportunity so that they feel they are safe to buy from you. And back this up with credibility stats – if you have a highly successful product, tell your audience how many people have already bought this product from your website. There are a lot of e-commerce sites where consumers would question whether they are legitimate so make sure you use the logos of your security partners in order to win the trust and confidence of your audience.  

9. Competitive intelligence

Know your competition, make sure there is a market for what you are selling and make sure that the market isn’t already sewn up by another supplier. For example, you’d be rather naïve to try and set up a new site selling books and CDs as there are already a lot of very well established, big brand sites selling these products. 

10. Contact us

Make sure there is a telephone contact number on the website. This provides reassurance to those online shoppers who like to know there is somebody available on the end of a telephone who they can speak to, in the unlikely event that something goes wrong or they don’t receive what they have just ordered.

About bit10 ltd.

Headquartered on the University of Warwick Science Park, bit10 is a digital solutions agency that has been developing internet-based applications for commerce and government since 1997.

bit10 provides a broad range of web services including website design; usability and accessibility testing and consultancy; e-commerce and bespoke application development; web marketing; web site performance analytics; flash design and development; content management; connectivity; hosting; infrastructure consultancy and support and maintenance.

bit10 has completed projects for a wide range of private and public sector clients including BMG Music Publishing, Severn Trent Water, Comet, Department for Education and Skills, BT, Virgin Trains, Figleaves.com, The Derbyshire Building Society, NHS, Coventry City Council, Cranfield University and the University of Warwick.

For Further information, please contact: