Over the past recent years, online marketing has become a very popular way of promoting products and services. Consequently, there has been a proliferation of ecommerce sites on the internet. Therefore, to succeed in this competitive market, you need to ensure that your site stands out before hundreds of other sites out there. So how do you go about designing an effective ecommerce site?
Before doing anything else, you need to carry out some research to establish the needs of your site. What kind of products or services do you intend to offer? Who is your target audience? These are the questions you need to answer from the onset. Once you have identified your site’s needs, you can then go ahead to choose a platform for designing your ecommerce site. With the wide range of platforms out there, this can be a very confusing and frustrating decision.
The following are some tips which will help you select the right platform for your site.
1. Uniqueness
Your ecommerce web design should be unique and attractive so as to stand out among many others out there. Since free themes are likely to be common with many sites, it would be advisable to go for premium themes for building your site. Make sure the theme selected is not only attractive, but also flexible. This will enable you to customize the theme according to your needs.
2. Security
The level of security provided is a very important factor for the success of any online business. Visitors will want to be assured of their safety as they carry out transactions on your ecommerce store. Winning the trust of customers will greatly enhance the chances of making more sales. Therefore, you need to choose a platform which offers the best kind of protection from fraud and identity theft. In addition, the selected platform should have a database backup feature which allows you to recover data in case of a server crash.
3. Video and photos embedding
Videos and photos play a key role in the success of any ecommerce store. Such visual content offers a very powerful way of marketing your products and services to a wide range of prospects. Make sure you choose a platform which allows you to embed videos and photos easily.
4. Multiple payment gateways
Different people prefer different kinds of payment gateway. While some are comfortable with PayPal, others would prefer Braintree, FirstData, PayJunction, AmEx, PaymentExpress or SecurePay. Therefore, you need to ensure that the platform selected offers a wide variety of gateways which customers can choose from.
5. Mobile compatibility
Nowadays, more and more people are accessing websites using mobile devices. It is therefore important to ensure that your ecommerce store has a mobile-friendly version. This will allow you to reach customers who prefer to visit your site using gadgets such as smart phones, iPads and tablets.
6. Packaging and postage
Timely delivery of orders is very important for the success of any ecommerce site. If orders are delayed, you are likely to lose your customers as well as your credibility. It is therefore vital to choose a platform which offers the most efficient packing and postage service.
About the Author
Charles Mburugu is a professional blogger who likes sharing tips for internet marketers and bloggers. Currently, he is writing for Moto CMS HTML templates
This is an original article from WP Cypher Copyright 2012