E-commerce ... Design Matters For Increasing Sales

By Author: John Tang
Total Articles: 507
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While Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is very important so that you are found by those seeking your product s, you still need to convert that visitor to being a buyer. If you are selling through an online store, conversion is easily measured SALES.
How do you know that your e-commerce site is generating all of the sales that it can? The answer lies in the statistics.

Monitoring and analyzing your stats is absolutely critical towards the ultimate goal of maximized sales for your online business. You can almost count on, in every case, that you will find things in the stats that will indicate issues that are preventing you from achieving the best performance.

Stats offer you a window into the user interaction with your shopping cart. You can see how effective and efficient the buying process is. Are visitors moving through the process smoothly? Do they seem to get stuck on a particular step or page? How many enter the checkout process? How many complete the checkout process? At what point is the checkout process aborted? Which products are producing the most sales and the least? Compare the best ...
... sellers with the worst? Are there differences that can be attributable to the information and the way the information is displayed?

Have you tested different designs, configurations to see which ones perform the best? There are hundreds, even more, factors involving color, font, positions, graphics that need to be tested to determine the optimum combination.

Are you insuring that the visitor feels secure, confident and have the peace of mind that your site is secure, their purchase is secure? Do you offer guarantees, warranties, even money back guarantees? Do you offer customer reviews / comments to further promote a sense in confidence in you as a vendor and in the product itself?

Not all e-commerce sites are created equal from an SEO point of view either? E-Commerce structure and internal software needs to be SEO-friendly in and of itself. The products need to be indexed through a well designed and structured relational database. Visuals are important as well; are you displaying high res / high quality images that can be enlarged? Are you offering more details / specifications there are those that read this stuff so it needs to be made available.

Your Back Office

Your shopping cart requires active administration to:

1. Monitor and manage your product line and all available options.
2. Manage integration and options involving all of the major shippers.
3. Dynamically update the site map to include all relevant updates so that Google has your products properly indexed for universal search purposes.
4. Carefully review stats which is so essential as already said
5. Customize CRM (Customer Relation Management) features to reflect current operations, products and policies online.
6. Offer special pricing, coupons, promotions and other customer-engagement initiatives.

There are hundreds of additional considerations depending on your particular situation.

You likely will need an E-Commerce Design Specialist with demonstrated results both in Internet Marketing / SEO and Conversion Optimization. Both sides of the success formula, visibility on Google and the highest conversion rates on the site itself need to be addressed by a fully integrated Internet Marketing Services Company. The wide array of specialties and sub-specialties dictate the need for top-level expertise. The opportunity cost is huge without a dedicated company that is focused and skilled in all of these areas.

The key, as with everything worthwhile, is being fully committed to the ultimate success of your website and your shopping cart in particular.
For more info click E-Commerce ... Design Matters for Increasing Sales. Optimum7.com is an Search Engine Optimization Services Company with primary focus on Small and Mid-Sized Enterprises (SME's). Optimum7.com offers a rich consultative approach that our clients find refreshing. We actually listen to our clients to learn exactly what their problems and objectives are.