Ash Arshed, Sales Director at Flame offers his top ten tips to achieve a successful e-commerce website; something Flame considers fundamental to all businesses in the current economic climate.

1.

Easy-to-use site navigation

It is important to ensure that your site is easy to navigate for all browsers. Creating the perfect site architecture will ensure site browsers become site users. Try to keep it simple, so that visitors can easily move around your site and not get lost or confused.

2.

Provide a breadcrumb trail

Always supply users with a breadcrumb trail so that they can pursue different journeys on your site, and go back to revisit certain pages if necessary. These easy-to-use shortcuts will create great usability for customers.

3.

Clearly display your calls to action

It is vital that your customers do not have to search for the shopping basket or other important information like contact details. This should be clearly displayed in the top half of your site so that customers can view what they have put in the basket with ease.

4.

Make the most of your products

By promoting a different product each week, you can make more of the space you have on your site. By creating a ‘buy of the week’ or special offers section, customers will be more inclined to keep checking back to the site each week, increasing loyalty to the site. Testimonials also work well, as users will feel more trusted in your products if other people have good things to say about them and your service.

5.

Unique landing pages

By anticipating the different needs of your customers and analysing popular search terms and keywords you can dedicate certain webpages to fulfil these needs and increase your rankings. However, it is important that these pages are filled with relevant information and not just overusing keywords to achieve higher page rankings. Customers look for quality copy with relevant information, so this would do more damage for your site and reputation than good.

6.

Quality search function

The search function is an important tool for your users, it can help them find exactly what they are looking for, so it is key that you do this well. A keyword search function on your page, should automatically check spelling, and offer alternatives that they may be interested in. Feature filters are also a good tool to help customers choose exactly the right product to suit their needs. This is valuable for customers who may not know what they need/want yet.

7.

Make the most of your page

Make sure that you maximise all the space on your site. It is essential to keep the most important information for your customer in the top half of the screen, so that they don’t have to scroll to find what they need. It is also key to keep the number of steps and processes down, to maintain a great service that is quick and efficient.

8.

Look after your customers

Even though your site is online you still need to offer the same amount of customer service that you may do from your call centre, or retail shop. By ensuring that you reply to customer emails within 24 hours and deliver on all of your offerings, then your customers will be happy to repeat business with you. Building up relationships with your customers online is crucial to a happy and long relationship. Loyalty is key.

9.

Analyse your customers

By analysing customer journeys and looking at how they use your site, you can begin to evaluate what is working and what isn’t. This is a valuable process to make sure your website is successful and doing the most that it can. By analysing where you lose potential customers you can see where you are going wrong and make improvements – constantly building on your online service and capabilities. It is also important to evaluate key search terms and update your SEO with your findings to improve site rankings.

10.

Don’t slow down

Flash and html can visually give your site the wow factor, but make sure that it doesn’t mean pages take too long to download and become slow. This will frustrate users and may lose their interest. Ideally, your site should take less than 10 seconds to load. By using small files and images and taking out unnecessary flash and html you can ensure fast downloads and happy customers.

If you would like to discuss this post or would like to try our FlameCart™ Product then why not contact us now on: 08453 893 300