Developing a Winning eCommerce Strategy

Developing a Winning eCommerce Strategy

by: Lee Traupel

One bright spot on the economic horizons around the world seems to be continued consumer spending and ecommerce is clearly a part of this, with sales estimated to be in excess of $9.9 billion in the next three months according to ACNielsen. But there is a dark cloud hovering over this sunny ecommerce landscape called poor web site design. Letกs explore some of the reasons why consumers are not reaching for their credit cards after perusing an ecommerce web site.

There is a huge knowledge gap about how the web is really driving online and offline commerce. A recent eCommercePulse survey of more than 33,000 surfers conducted by Nielsen/Net ratings and Harris Interactive indicates ecommerce sites are driving more purchases offline (phone, catalogue, retail store sales) than online. Many consumers are using the web to effortlessly compare features and pricing, then calling the company or visiting their local retail store to make a purchase. Clearly many companies need to factor this information in when analyzing their online and offline marketing expenditures and related ROI.

According to a recent Zona Research and Keynote Systems Report released earlier this summer, over $25 Billion (USD) was lost in ecommerce due to users abandoning the web site prior to a purchase being made or during the process. The users just gave up because the load times (the amount of time it takes a page to be displayed in a browser) were painfully slow. Todayกs online shoppers aren’t a real patient group; they want information presented in 1218 seconds or they are off to another site that works.

Unfortunately, many firms have allocated a disproportionate amount of resources for advertising and not enough on good web site design and backend infrastructure. Itกs critical to make the market aware of a site, but if the potential customers are not presented with the right navigation and menus (read information architecture), they will not buy. Case in point: according to recent Dataquest surveys (and others), between 2040% of most users don’t purchase because they can’t figure out how to easily move around the web site.

Many firms fail to properly integrate their ecommerce components with the overall site design. The inhouse developers or the outside design firm concentrate on the sexy parts of the web site design process (the graphics, branding, look and feel) and only focus on the ecommerce process after the primary web site design is completed, making ecommerce an afterthought.

A large number of ecommerce web sites don’t even list a phone number, arbitrarily forcing people to contact the company electronically, This is a real problem, as many people don’t want to use email or forms as their primary means of communicating. They want the immediacy of the telephone.

Itกs very surprising, but approximately 30% of ecommerce sites don’t have a search capability that actually works. In many cases it just returns gobblygook. This is a real irritant for many online shoppers who want to find goods and services quickly and efficiently. The need for speed should be the ecommerce merchantกs marketing mantra and a good search capability gives users a way to quickly find products.

One of the most important parts of any web site is the home or index page, as it aggregates the design elements and information architecture. So many index pages are cluttered and poorly designed, loaded with poor graphics, bad menu structures, oddball words, or my absolute least favorite … 3060 second Flash animation sequences which force the user to sit and stare at a blank screen while the animation loads.

Privacy statements are about as exciting as filing taxes (unless you know you’re getting a refund). They are out of necessity filled with legal terminology that needs to be addressed succinctly and in a way that makes a consumer feel comfortable about doing business with an ecommerce web site. Unfortunately, many ecommerce web site privacy statements look like an afterthought, or are so กattorney drivenก (three pages who has time to read this?) that people are turned off by them. Itกs very important that a privacy statement be a compromise document brokered between legal and marketing.

We are a full service ad agency so I don’t mind shooting arrows in the direction of my peers. Too much attention is being placed on web site advertising metrics (clickthrough rates, certified traffic to substantiate ad rates, etc.) and not enough on how people find and use an ecommerce web site. The industry standard web site analysis tool is Web Trends, but one of the least understood aspects of this product is tracking how people find and move around a web site via reports which can be pulled from the server log files; i.e., where did the visitors come from, what pages do they visit, how long do they stay, what are their traffic patterns, etc.? eCommerce companies should be analyzing these กdigital customer tracksก to better understand how to improve their frontend marketing processes and backend web site design.

About The Author

Lee Traupel has 20 plus years of business development and marketing experience he is the founder of Intelective Communications, Inc., http://www.intelective.com, a resultsdriven marketing services company providing proprietary services to clients encompassing startups to public companies. [email protected]

[email protected]

This article was posted on July 25, 2002

by Lee Traupel

Is It Easy to Build An Ecommerce Web Site?

Is It Easy to Build An Ecommerce Web Site?

by: Lester Boey

Online Commerce

ECommerce website is all about selling products and services over the Internet. Amateurs may think that it is easy to build your own ecommerce system and our advice to you is to stay away from these amateurs. Building an ecommerce system is a complicated process and it requires web professionals who know the intricacies of building secure systems. Building an ecommerce system comes with the potential for a lot of errors and it is advisable to find security and database experts for the job.

Resourceconsuming tasks such as order and supply tracking needs to be automated for ecommerce websites. Automated billing, invoice handling, accounting, and report generation tools make your ecommerce web sites easier to manage and handle sales. These are essential features to look out for in ecommerce websites.

Building One Yourself

Sure, you can try to build a basic Ecommerce web site. But, an Ecommerce web site without the tracking and automated is quite useless when you are trying to determine how your sales are derived and business expansion.

About The Author

Lester Boey works in an Australian SEO and Web Design company http://www.definiteweb.com/

His life revolves around SEO; providing fulltime and freelance seo services to US and Australian businesses. Email: [email protected]

[email protected]

This article was posted on December 19, 2004

by Lester Boey