What are the main criteria for a successful e-commerce website?
Answers (45)
One of the most important aspects to any e-commerce Web site is its customer list. Assuming the buyer's initial shopping experience was a pleasant one, you will find it is far easier and less costly to sell and market your product or service to past customers than to new ones. Communicate with your customers assuming they have opted into your mailing list.
From a Web site development perspective, make sure the site is easy to navigate and has a clean professional design. It will increase your prospective customers purchasing confidence.
I can't tell you personally, but i will share some stats from a survey my web designer shared with me:
1. Only 37 percent offer multiple images views of products.
2. Only 33 percent offer customer reviews.
3. 62 percent have difficult to read fonts.
4. Only 14 percent allow customers to change the font.
5. Only 43 percent offer free shipping.
6. Almost two-thirds do not offer in-stock information on the product page.
7. While just over half of online retailers have physical stores, only 10 percent offer in-store pickup.
8. 58 percent do not offer shipping costs early in the checkout process. One third have checkout processes with more than 4 steps.
9. Only 58 percent correctly answer an e-mail question within 24 hours.
10. Around 80 percent don't seem to get that more ways to pay means more ways to buy. 20 percent offer pay-by-check, 10 percent offer Google Checkout, 20 percent accept PayPal and 18 percent offer Bill Me Later.
the source material is at the link below
regards,
Greg
Links:
Eric's keen graphical design and attention to proper UEX development, combined with Meg's solid and intuitive copy writing skills would enhance any web site's appeal.
1/ easy to use ergonomics ( buttons to clic) & navigation :
2/ give something first (complete product infos, anything but do give something )
3/ clear graphical layout and a little animation
4/ make customers feel secure about their privacy and payment
5/ let users inter act : comments, score, evaluation, games
6/ Care on tags, links & affiliation programs
John M
Director at Survey Software Ltd
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Greg and Eric answers are good. Easy and clear navigation is vital. As regards shipping charges I heard recently that something like 15% of customers abandon the transaction when they see the shipping charges.
I could add to Greg's list. Several, if not most, UK e-government sites only work with IE 6. The Inland Revenue can get away with it. You won't. Don't spring questions on people part way through - Norton used to ask for information from a credit card statement on page 3 or 4. Make your site international, people outside America object to being asked for the state and zip code - in fact we often can't give the data.
How to achieve a successful e-commerce site? Take as many people as you can find who resemble real customers and have them test it.
I would say this:
1. customer support
It happens sometimes shop doesn't have product in its stock. Is it hard to call customer and explain situation. So small effort make big trust.
2. professional design, optimised processes and Search Engine Optimized site
Your service is important but also of great importance is how to bring people on the site ...
Mike K
TJ Rebbe, Director of Operations MTM Productions, Experienced Bludgeoner of Diction
1. Visibility - people have to know to come to your site (marketing)
2. Findability - people have to find what they're looking for easily. There's no set rule on how many "clicks" deep that need be - but the item has to be able to be found logically. Nothing frustrates a user more than not finding what he's looking for.
3. Useability - the procedure to checkout should be as smooth and painless as possible (and cart/checkout needs to be easy to find on the screen or you'll lose business.)
4.Reliability - Make sure the items you are offering are always in stock - or at least make sure it's clear they are out of stock at an early stage in the purchase process.
5. adaptability - Make sure to choose a web building partner who's capable of adding on/ adjusting/ removing modules as your business grows.
An E-Commerce Website should be treated as a living, ever-morphing organism who's functions and needs rquire constant monitoring and nurturing.
Oh yeah, and the most important thing you'll need to have is energy and patience.
Good luck,
Mike Kashnow
MTM Productions
Leaders in Web development.
Links:
Doug J
Jones and Associates, Headhunter, Recruiting Consultant & Corporate Coach - with residences in Iowa and California
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Most of the earlier answers sound good but they all miss the one topic that I consider most important: content.
Yes, your site must be easy to navigate, the font easy to read, the instructions clear, provide many photos & various views of products, (yes) provide shipping information early in the purchase process, respond to questions quickly, and allow your customers to pay you in varieties of ways. All these things are important.
#1) Be rich in content. Subject matter. Including Links. Substance. Something real. This is presumably why they visited you in the first place, so deliver on it.
#2) Have a compelling way to engage your viewers around the topic of your site - this motivates them to bond & identify with your site (thus creating a customer list) and then to return over & over. Blogs, contests, silly things, serious things. Engage them.
#1 & #2 are predicated on #3) All the other things that have been mentioned previously. I consider them necessary because they are the vehicle/medium for your content.
Doug Jones
www.hdhunt.com
doug@hdhunt.com
1. Security - Giving buyers a secure cart and site to purchase on builds trust and loyalty. And without this, you're in trouble (literally & legally!)
2. Professional design, easy to find what customers are looking for - good site experience form search to purchase confirmation
3. SEO - now that the house is clean, you can invite the world. I believe SEO can potentially drive more ROI to your site than anything else.
4. Web Analytics - KNOW YOUR CUSTOMERS, and cater to their needs by acting upon the info you receive from analytics. Give them what they appear to want, not what you want them to want.
5. Support - long term, this will be a benefit or a thorn in your side.
There are many factors but broadly a successful site needs:
- a good, intuitive user experience. Don't make your customers think when using the site. If it's difficult they won't purchase.
- allowing customers to rate and review products. Advocacy and peer reviews are important drivers of sales.
- excellent logistics and fulfilment. There's nothing worse than ordering online and having to wait ages for products to arrive or experiencing diffulties with returning faulty/defective goods. Test the order systems and ensure that they work seamlessly.
- a good advertising and promotional planto drive traffic & sales. This will involve a range of tactics including SEO, email marketing, affiliate marketing, advertising (on and offline) and PR.
Most importantly, it has to be easy for a customer to execute a BUY transaction. After that, you need to consider your channel P&L and determine how much investment in the site can be made to improve the customer experience. A positive customer experience will lead to repeat customers. eCommerce is traditionally a very low cost channel, so businesses should take advantage of that extra margin to win repeat business.
There are a variety of factors that impact the customer experience including:
- Personalization (e.g., how well is the site able to adapt to the customer based on click through patterns and/or on previous buying history attained through cookies or a sign-in process) Ultimately, you want to be able to present relevant and valuable products/services to the site visitor to convert them to a buyer.
- Access to Information needed to make the sale
- Ability to merchandise and create a selling environment equal to or better than can be create in traditional retail.
- Accuracy of goods shipped to what was ordered.
- Availability of customer support (complex sales require support - be prepared to provide this to ensure a high quality customer experience. Watch your call to order ratios closely for trends in quality)
Tucker W
User Experience Design and Managment
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Know your customer and put the right products in front of them at the right stage of the customer lifecycle. Know how, why, and when they shop and are ready to purchase.
Understanding your customers intent beyond just the merchandise is the key. It's a complex task which is why more and more sites are relying on social aspects.
Usability and experience is important as many others have alluded to. Being a UX consultant myself I continually work to improve those aspects, but a beautiful experience will not make up for poor merchandising.
Joe G
User Experience Consultant
Best Answers in: Blogging (1), E-Commerce (1), Enterprise Software (1)
One thing I'd add here is to understand selling. Designers assume successful ecommerce requires understanding the ecommerce nuances. However, I'd argue you need to know how to sell before you can sell online. This is in line with the comments here about understanding the user. But there are also some basic things which make a successful salesperson stand out. And this is what you must first know.
Also, think about how to create a good experience that doesn't irrritate the user. For example, while research shows that often times blinking content can irritate users, a site may use a slide show to feature the latest products. This reminds me of the bombardment that a shopper might get in a retail store "how can I help you." over and over again. The thinking here is "we need more eyeballs so let's get the user's attention. Instead the site should concentrate on targeting users based on overall needs.
You also need to only show users what they need at the right moment and when appropriate. As an example, a company wants to promote their extended warranties. The user should only see the warranties that relate to what they're buying, instead of a full list.
There are a ton of great comments and suggestions on this list of answers to a great question.
Here is a humble opinion on the question -- your question is what is the "Main" criteria for a successful e-commerce website and the answer to that is very simple -- qualified and targeted traffic. For example if you market xtratuf mud and rain boots for commercial fishermen, hunters etc.... you do not necessarily want the Mom's of the world hitting your site searching for rain boots for their 5 year old. This will be frustrating for her and when she is in the market for those boots -- let's say for Fathers Day, she probably won't remember the site.
Qualified, Targeted Traffic -- that is the key and main criteria for a successful e-commerce site. All the rest can be tweaked with the statistics derived from the right traffic.
Perry Thorne
Hi Jeff
Agree with all of these but no one has mentioned the actual products. You need a good product range and your products need to be keen on price. The Internet allows all customers to easily price compare. It isn't necessary to be the cheapest on all products but to attract traffic you will need to offer comparable pricing to get any conversion at all.
Once you've got that you need to concentrate on generating traffic. In ecommerce it's a numbers game. The average conversion rate of an ecommerce site is down in single figure percentages so you need to generate a lot of traffic to get a reasonable level of sales. It is almost inevitable that a combination of SEO, advertising, email etc is needed.
Converting valuable traffic is important and we've found that all the usual sales promotion tricks used by retailers in the real world help so things like buy one get one free, bundles etc. The products themselves need as much info as possible and plenty of good quality pictures, a great site search engine is needed, if visitors know what they are looking for then they'll use the search rather than browse and a fast checkout is vital so ask for the minimum amount of information to get them through.
Finally people rarely make a buying decision the first time so features like send to friend or saving your basket can be useful so they can revisit easily.
Best of luck!
Monica
In a nut shell…
Build a business plan, build a marketing plan offline & online. These are your most valuable assets when developing an online business. Without these you cannot gauge or react to customers needs and market trends. And without the customers or market trends you end up going nowhere fast.
Online shops are just another tool to put your service or product in front of your customers.
The main criteria?
Well, that's easy: To be able to convert visitors into buying customers!
But how to actually accomplish that is the tricky part.
A lot of good advice has allready been given in this post, so I'll only add the 3 things I personally think is most important:
1) To drive relevant traffic to your site at low (or affordable) cost, or to make sure you are relevant to your traffic.
2) Make sure you know where your advertising dollars goes, and what you get in return. To be able to effectively and in great detail calculate your return-on-ad-spending (ROAS) is often the key to survival if you're in a competitive niche.
3) Understand your customers. Do not try to sell them stuff, but focus on meeting their needs.
For me a successful e-commerce site is one that generates revenue. To do this you need more then a pretty design or cleaver search. You need good products at a good price, with strong customer service. And if you really want to be successful good follow up and communication with clients is key.
Thomas A
Computer & Internet Professional
Best Answers in: Computers and Software (1), Telecommunications (1), Software Development (1), Web Development (1)
The only things you really need to have a successful e-commerce website are:
1) an in-demand product
2) a shopping cart that works
3) plenty of marketing to let people know that you exist
Everything else is just fluff. Not that fluff doesn't help, such as a spiffy design, good copy, lots of product photos, testimonials, a money-back guarantee, special deals, great customer service, etc. But if you have those three things -- a good product, a working cart, and marketing -- that's all you really need. You could have a bland design, no customer service, etc., and still be successful.
Success = Customers finding the site, using it, buying from it, and then coming back again!
Find the site:
Search Engine Optimisation. Other marketing methods can enhance traffic too, but are not always essential.
Using it:
Accessibility, fast loading pages, and a simple, logical layout.
Buying:
Give user a feeling of confidence by having a professional design and more importantly: a fast and secure checkout process.
Coming Back:
If all of the above criteria are met, then chances are the customer will come back again, and hopefully even tell friends colleagues about it – which leads me to one more key factor: Strong branding and a memorable domain name.
Howdy Jeff!
Everyone here has some great answers, but I just thought I would throw in my two cents.
My advice is absolutely, positively make it as easy as possible to check out. This involves a lot of things, both easy tactics that can be implemented as well as serious abstract strategy development.
Try to make the checkout process quick. This can be reducing the number of screens, steps, or requirements for the user. It can also be having a system in place to capture abandoned carts.
But, perhaps most importantly, offer as many different payment solutions as possible. I can't tell you how many times I've gone ahead and bought something just because PayPal has my info which is in my wallet in my car.
Hope that helps!
Sincerely,
- Garrett
Effie Z
COO of Direct & Online Marketing Agency, Strategist, Leader, Artist
Best Answers in: Web Development (1)
I agree with most of the answers here - and let's assume that you have mastered all of these suggestions with regard to business plan, UI, Scalability, Search, Products, Pricing etc. the two major downfalls that most of our customers come to us for help with are:
1) Poor understanding of their customers - in other words, insufficient customer data and reporting (CRM if you will).
2) Poor follow-up and retention of existing customers. (Did you know it costs you 6 times more to bring in a new customer as it does to get repeat business from an existing customer? That's huge!)
A strong CRM system that will allow you to track what your users purchase from you and how often will also help you identify other items they are likely to buy from you and also allow you to prompt them for purchases and offers.
Additionally, you need to work at building and maintaining your relationships with your customers. Keep them coming back. Let them know that you understand their needs and make them feel appreciated as a customer. Make sure you are taking care of them everyday - Customer Service at all stages of the purchase and after are MUST haves.
Two other points to consider -
1) know your competition and find a way to differentiate yourself from them.
2) consider finding ways to diversify how you sell and who you sell to. For example, create incentives for your in-house sales staff or your customer service staff to build relationships with repeat high volume customers. Create "corporate" sales relationships where they make sense. I can not tell you how many businesses let their repeat customers fall by the way side...
John R
Web Developer at Pelago and Owner, Pelago
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On the technology side of things, be sure to evaluate the web site against the OWASP Top Ten vulnerabilities. Nothing will ruin the success of an ecommerce web site quicker than a security breach.
Links:
On the technology side, make sure that your server performance is stellar. E-commerce engines can be notoriously slow, especially if there is a large product catalog. Take advantage of content caching to pre-render flat product pages and category lists rather than having everything generated via database lookups. Generally speaking, your engine should produce a result page within two seconds or users will be quickly frustrated browsing your product catalog and leave to shop elsewhere.
Reducing the steps in the checkout process will help improve the customer experience. Providing a quick checkout process or even 1-click checkout for return customers will provide an incentive for repeat business.
Notifications are critical. Keep your customers informed along every step of the fulfillment pipeline from order confirmation to processing and shipping (including tracking details). Always provide links to order status pages that they can monitor on their own.
Execution of the things we know make a great e-comm site. Easy to use navigation, no surprise shopping cart, dynamic product recommendation, graphically interesting and of course built with search in mind. Go to the three or four favorite sites that you love to ship on and just start writing down why you love them. (other than the product of course). Do the same with ones you hate to shop on.
Mohammed Hussain K
SEM Manager at Communicate2
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- Showcasing of the Products
- Tell Me What it Costs & What I'm Saving
- Keep the Search Bar in Easy Reach
- Proper Search Refinement Options
- Clear Delivery Options
- Reassurance With Email
Kevin H
Founder at Total Success Teams (launching 2009)
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Does it make money.
Paul P
Chief Evangelist at DesireMesh
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the main criteria?
ZERO CHARGEBACKS
close second would be ZERO REFUNDS
and close third would be ZERO VOIDS
Links:
Paul P also suggests this expert on this topic:
First and foremost, it should allow a visitor to conclude a purchase in 3 clicks or less (Amazon does it in 1 or 2). Ecommerce is about convenience and speed, and buyer's can change their minds before a page loads!
All the areas mentioned in the other answers are then almost equally important.
Pwebsite = { ((14.14* EaseNav) + (13.56*Speed) + (13.11*CleanDes) + (10.89*Func) + (10.89*Up)) - ((12.63*Pops) + (10.32*Ads) +(5.21*MultiM)) } / 6.26
The key differentiators within the ‘perfect website' formula were revealed as: ease of navigation, high speed of page downloads, a clean and simple design, functionality and the site always being live with excessive aggressive advertising seen as a detractor.
The formula is a result of research carried out by the Social Issues Research Centre (SIRC) on behalf of Rackspace Managed Hosting, incorporating a YouGov nationally representative online survey of 2,500 adults, in-depth interviews and in-house qualitative research. This involved setting 50 participants a 'virtual treasure hunt', requiring them to seek out specific pieces of information from a variety of websites. As participants tried to navigate the set sites, SIRC recorded their comments and preferences.
Research highlighted:
* 83% of respondents reported ease of navigation as being the most important factor in their ‘ideal' website, with 62% rating high speed and 49% rating functionality as the other key factors
* 80% of people surveyed rated a clean and simple overall design as their most desirable design factor with only 6% wanting innovative use of flash and multimedia options
* Running a faster (61%) and easier to navigate (52%) website were the two most popular improvements people would make to Internet sites today.
Putting Pwebsite into practice
Following the findings from the YouGov survey, Rackspace Managed Hosting developed an online calculator using the SIRC criteria to measure a website's performance against the perfect website formula. This can be found at: http://www.rackspace.co.uk/rateYourSite/
Jacques Greyling, managing director of Rackspace Managed Hosting commented, "The rules of the web are constantly changing. Rackspace commissioned this study to better understand what the formula for online success is today, as part of our commitment to providing our own brand of customer service ‘Fanatical Support' to our clients.
Greyling continues: "Furthermore, 25 percent of the formula highlights that for any business wanting to run a ‘perfect website' it must focus on speed and uptime, an area in which Rackspace Managed Hosting is a proven market leader. It will be interesting to re-visit this in twelve months to see how the needs of web users have evolved."
The Formula explained
Pwebsite = the degree of perfection of the website
EaseNav = ease of navigation
Speed = the speed at which pages load
CleanDes = clean and simple design
Func = functionality -' does what it says on the tin'
Up = the site is always alive
And:
Pops = the site tries to give you pop-ups
Ads = excessive advertising
MultiM = Flash and other multimedia
A website that scores 10 out of 10 on the first 5 variables and 0 out of ten on the second 3 variables, would achieve a 'perfect' score of 100.
For sites where security is an issue, e.g. online shopping, banking, etc. - then an additional variable enters the formula, 'Secure', with a weight of 9.77. If this is added, the total should be divided by 7.24, rather than 6.26, to maintain the maximum score of 100.