5 Tips For Creating an e-Commerce Site
The old movie quote is “If you build it, they will come” but in e-commerce sites this is rarely the case. It takes some careful planing from the start to create a web site that will attract and maintain a customer base. Here are 5 tips that can help you develop your site, particularly if your online sales experience is limited.
1. First of all, we’re assuming that you’ve done your preliminary research into the niche you’re attempting to enter. If it is already dominated by a big player, an Amazon.com for example, then you may want to redefine your target market before spending a lot of money in a questionable endeavour. However, sometimes the ‘big boys’ ignore critical sub-markets that you can exploit or are weak in customer service. If you plan on moving into a crowded market, find things like this you can use to make your efforts stand out.
2. You should know if the product will sell well enough year round to justify the expense of running an e-commerce site. For example, one product line I used to offer sold really well at one time of the year but very poorly at other times. I found it more profitable to operate an eBay Store for the hot sales months rather than run a year round store that only had significant sales 3-4 months out of the year. If your product is seasonal like this consider using a temporary store front like eBay or other Internet mall location rather than maintaining your own site. You might also consider selling a variety of merchandise that matches the current season throughout the year if this will work for you.
3. Check out your competitors web sites. See how they’re laid out, what works, what doesn’t and what you would do to improve the customer experience on their site. Write down your ideas then apply them to the site you want to develop. While you may not be able to implement them all if you’re not a skilled web developer, you can often find little, simple, things that can easily be improved on or duplicated.
4. Pick a web site domain name that fits your business. If you’re selling widgets you don’t want to use a web site name that mentions sprockets. If you have other web sites there is a temptation to save a few bucks by sharing the same domain. Don’t. I made that mistake early on and it almost certainly cost me sales. It only costs about $10 a year for a domain name so skip a lunch if you have to in order to get the best name you can. As for picking a name, try DomainsBot. They have a nice interactive tool where you can brainstorm about names and check the availability at the same time.
5. Get help if you need it. If you’re not a web designer/developer you may be concerned about how you’re going to setup an e-commerce site. It can be quite a daunting and time-consuming task even for a knowledgeable person. However, you can find resources to help you along the way.
Once your site is up and running, you’ll need to promote it. We’ll cover that in a future article.