Major Points Of An E-commerce Website	Visited: 1168 Not rated Rate: Select 1 - Terrible 2 - Poor 3 - Average 4 - Good 5 - Outstanding
by Maneet Puri December 10, 2007

E-commerce sites are quite different from ordinary websites in a sense that they can survive only when they make money. So, they badly need the traffic flow to be quite frequent. However, given the intense competition prevailing, even most of the online buyers often get indecisive about where to go. This is where a couple of factors become extremely crucial and decisive. If you have an e-commerce site, it is imperative that you know about these factors.

Looks Can Kill

Believe it or not, research says most visitors spend an average of 3 seconds on a webpage while they browse through the internet. This is when they decide whether to stick to a site or move on. So what affects their decision? If you put yourself in an online visitor’s shoes, you will understand that it is the appearance of a website that leads you to form an instant impression about the entire website. An unprofessional appearance of an e-commerce website offers a visitor enough reason to get biased against your website. As matter of fact, business is lost every second in the cyberspace because of the unimpressive appearance of e-commerce websites!!! It severely affects the trust factor of a visitor. Make sure that your e-commerce site has a really professional look.

Keep The Faith

Testimonials are a great tool to instill trust and confidence in your visitors. When visitors hear form your satisfied customers, they tend to believe you more than when you try to speak the same yourself. Hence, testimonials from your customers or clients add to your credibility among the visitors.

Lost and Found

Just imagine that a visitor is impressed with and convinced of your goods or services and he/she wishes to buy them online. So the next thing he/she will do is want to contact you. He/she clicks on the contact us page to leave useful information only to find himself/herself in a problem because the link will not be working perfectly. It will surely bring catastrophe to you, won’t it? Make sure that the link to contact us page is working fine. There are some ecommerce websites that have broken links to some of the most important pages. This not only harms your business prospects but also brings disrepute to your eCommerce website. Do not ask a lots of information from the visitors either as they might find it a chore to fill out the blank spaces.

Writing That Rocks!!!

What goes for other websites also holds true for an ecommerce website. Aside from the attractive design, if there is anything that catches the fancy of your customers, it is the content on your page. Remember, for an ecommerce site, the content has to be persuasive as the customers might spend a very little time if it is otherwise. Let’s get real – they already know that it is an ecommerce website offering goods and services. However, they need to be said why they should buy from you instead of buying from others. What is so special in your offer that others don’t have? You must put this message across to your visitors to win them over.