Key eCommerce Factors for Success No. 1

What are successful online merchants doing right? Where are the largest potentials for optimisation? What are the key factors for success in eCommerce?

In concrete terms:

What do I have to do to be successful in online commerce?

Basically, this applies: Online merchants who recognise the special needs and requirements of online buyers in virtual shopping and who consistently adapt both their business activities and online stores towards them have excellent chances for long-term and lasting success in online commerce.

The key factors for success can be summarised in the following areas:

1. User friendliness, user interaction and design
2. Trust and security
3. Marketing and sales
4. Customer service

User friendliness, user interaction and design

Or: Making it as easy as possible for your customers!

Many online merchants believe that the price in eCommerce is the most important thing for a purchasing decision. Studies show that the price is indeed important, but user-friendliness and ease of use of the store is really the decisive factor. Due to these two factors, customers primarily decide for or against certain stores – before they have even seen the price of a product.

You should thus make it as simple and pleasant as possible for your customers to get information in your store, to find and order products – one of the basic rules for successful online marketing. You have made the right choice with your decision for an ePages store, because your new store comes with all the vital features and elements for shopping conveniently and easily on the ‘net laying the foundations for successful online marketing in the long term.

Attractive and sales-promoting design

Basically, the same rules that apply to a conventional store apply to the design of a virtual store: The goods offered should be attractive and induce shoppers to buy. But this product presentation and the store design should not distract from the actual purpose, selling. Via design and layout it is important to impart a pleasant and secure shopping feeling and induce the visitor to buy. It is essential during implementation to take into account some internet-specific peculiarities:

• Unlike selling in a brick and mortar store, your customer can’t test or try out the product or check the material. For this reason, you should make his buying decision easier with meaningful, but not overly long, product descriptions and high-quality and free-form product images. Detailed images of the product or individual product attributes facilitate the choice and buying decision of the potential customer.
• The customer should be guided from the product presentation/information quickly and with as few detours as possible to the actual purchase. Don’t distract the customer from shopping with meaningless design elements or information not related to buying. Give him the opportunity of placing the selected product directly into his basket and then getting to the basket without having to take a roundabout route.
• Broadband is indeed on the advance, but ISDN and analogue connections are still widespread, especially for private users. Unnecessary gimmicks and large-size images lead to longer page loading times and test the patience of your customers. The graphical elements should not result in an extreme slowdown for images being displayed. Because prolonged waiting increases the readiness of the user to leave the web site.

Your online software should provide a set of powerful design features like ePages that you can use to quickly, easily and flexibly customise your store according to your own personal ideas or your corporate design. In doing so, no knowledge of HTML or assistance from external service providers is needed. Support is provided to you by a powerful design editor and a tool for creating images that automatically creates different sizes and views of product images.