Effective Tips for E-Commerce Website Designing

E-commerce, or electronic commerce has come a long way and continued to pave way for the new future prospects. Since the year 2009, the global economy had long witnessed recession, but online trade has continued to flare its wings. There is no denying to the fact that online purchasing has always been the ever growing element. The world of Internet has always proved to be a boon and always landed up in the interest of the lives of people, be them— ordinary, marketers, businessmen, or may be anyone. It has always helped in making the life of the people easier and better in one way or the other. Today, online shopping has become as asset for the ordinary people. It is considered to be the most effective, quick and a smart way to shop as well. Time has always been the biggest constraint, and electronic commerce has proved to be a blessing in the curse.

In the wake of this scenario, more and more people have started landing into the online venture. There have been estimates that in the near future, there would remain almost no physical storefront that would not be shifting or making a place in the online world of market. The Internet is flooded with the online stores, and it becomes really difficult to claim your presence on the web.

“Surviving and living are two different terms in the web world.”

The web world is loaded with the e-commerce websites, and in lieu of creating a presence on the web, the business owners tend to forget the fact that they have yet not claimed their presence. The fact cannot afford to be ignored that your site is exposed to the million of audiences out there, and the audience has n number of options to choose from. Therefore, it becomes really important that you make a wise choice, and try and make a thorough market research before venturing into the online world of business.

This post is actually an attempt to give a first hand, and ready to use solutions for an effective E-Commerce store development, without the chance of losing your visibility on the web. They have been given as follows—

Domain Name

What do you think would be the first and the foremost step before you set up any e-commerce store? Just imagine what if you had no name. Anyone would have called you XYZ or may be ABC….Would you like your store to be unnamed? I guess the answer would be a No.

Then, how can you afford your unnamed e-commerce website amongst the crowd? You need to choose a domain name that describes your identity and all about the store. The name in itself should be capable enough to describe the store and create a brand out of it. The popular keywords and phrases should be kept in mind while choosing one for your store so that it is visible in the popular search engines.

Every sub page should be provided with a URL that contains a specific name and caters the need of the search engine spiders.

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Content is the King

The content rules all. There is a need to come up with an appropriate content— crisp and precise. The content should be designed in such a way that it should be explanatory and describe each and every piece of information on every product, service, your cart, the terms and policies. The content ought to be search engine friendly, so that the search engine spiders read the whole content of the page and you are able to claim your presence on the top search results of the most popular search engines.

Navigation Menus

Navigation menus are by far, the most important feature that decides the retention of the probable customers on your site. Create simple navigation menus so that the user does not have to look out for them. This tends to drive the visitor away from your site. It is always important that you double check the linked pages and the navigation provided. Every page should be linked to each other and the most important of all, every page should be linked to the Home page at least. Just step into the shoes of the visitor and then, try and settle the navigational structure of the site.

Theme and Design

While working out on the theme and the design of the site, CSS, valid codes and user-friendly interfaces have always helped in attaining visibility with the search engine spiders. The elements should not be put in such a manner that it takes ample of time to load. There is a probability that the visitors get frustrated and click on the close button without even having single look at the page.

The smaller the size of the images would be, the faster would be the loading time of the site. The text should be rich, and descriptive enough to support and gain the visibility in popular search engines.

— The content ought to be supported with the big headings and should be descriptive in a way that it is convenient for the user as well as the search engine spiders ( by using H-tags) to read the main part of the site.
— Keep updating the content and adding on to the new in the form of blogs, articles and RSS feed so that you prove to be the live and active on the web.
— The icons used for the representation of the stock, add to cart, or others must be of good quality and should convey the right message. There must be effective call to action buttons placed in the area of high visibility of the visitors.

These are the very basics and do not involve any complex issues. I am sure that you must be wondering about the payment gateways, order process, and many other details. But, I would like to mention that the very idea of this post is to keep in mind the SEO in order to maximise the chances of gaining visibility.

In an attempt to do so, we have mentioned below some of the effective and useful SEO tricks that would help you attain the same—

Market Analysis

Market analysis keeping in consideration the design of your site is a key to the strategical vision towards improving the search results. Knowing well about your competitors would help you make a list of the popular keywords and phrases, so that you are availed with the latest of all the trends.

Social Networking

Create a brand identity of your own, by innovative advertising and marketing strategy. Create more and more links and advertise it on the proper social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Youtube, and many more. This would help you gain popularity and search engine friendliness with the popular search engines.

Site Map

Did you know that a site map is the richest in content? Yet again, this would be considered as an important element for the search engine spiders to scan the pages of your site in a more filtered way.

Campaign Marketing

A dynamic and regular campaign to be able to build links by promotional activities, coupons, PR, and articles, guest posts and blogging and a strategical and effective link build strategy can prove to be an effective medium to a good marketing strategy and help in the search engine optimisation techniques.

Google Ad words, social engine marketing (Pay per Click Management), micro sites, and Flash and multimedia designs would be the important steps to marketing strategy.

In a nut shell, if you really want to share profits out of this online world of trade and commerce then, apart from what we have discussed above, about the tips to an effective E-Commerce website design, there is a need to maintain a level of transparency between the customer and you. You need to reassure them that their transaction and order is in the safe hands.

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