Take some steps to make your website ecommerce friendly. Your site should be easy to navigate. Customers want ot be able to find information and details about products and services quickly and easily. Contact information should be displayed so that visitors can easily contact your business with questions. The ordering process shoudl be secure, and as easy and fast as possible.

...and so many online stores ignore this advice and create incredibly bad user experiences!

...and so many online stores ignore this advice and create incredibly bad user experiences!

 

And so many times we just ignore such online stores and browse to better ones... I mean: why should we lose our time?

 

Honestly kconnections, when reading your post title I thought you'd give us some advice on "how to", not just a suggestion that we should.

I was under the same impression when I read the thread title too and was a bit disaapointed with what was posted and thought 'what was the point in that'. Mind you it might spark up a debate.

Well my point of the site was to remind everyone to put some thought into your site when desiging the site. I mean it does seem like common sense that you would want to make your site as customer friendly as possible. And yet I have visited many sites that are not.

 

There are sites that have no real sense of order. You try to find details on products and find that the information is scattered. Other sites I have visited do not make it easy to view prices. I believe pricing should be easy to locate. And yet i have actually visited some sites where you have to begin processing an order to find out the price.

 

Other sites do not have enough contact information. One site that I have been trying to get assistance from for weeks now only has an online contact form. They do not offer any type of phone number, regular email address or even a snail mail address. I think ecommerce sites should offer more than one contact methods. Also, they should respond as quickly as possible. When I contact someone and they have not replied in days, I find this a bit ridiculous.

I hate it when ecomerce sites do not advertise their postage rates and sometimes I've had to register, add stuff to my shopping cart, go through most of the purchasing process before I find out they are going to charge £10 or something ridiculous for the postage which makes me cancel the order and look elsewhere. But I'm annoyed as they now have all my details and will start sending me their newsletters and offers etc and there's no way of de-registering. Why can't these things be transaprent at the start. It seems very sneaky to me.

 

I also hate shop sites that allow you to add stuff to your cart without registering, then when you want to buy they demand that you register, so you do and then once you've gone through the confirmation etc all the stuff you had put in your cart has vanished and you have to start again! Do the site designers not to usability testing?

I have number of ecommerce sites and the first thing i plan before anything is security and performance, I'm use SSL certificates for all my online stores and easy and clean design for better user experience to my sit

Making my site ecommerce friendly has been a constant challenge and requires ongoing updates. I want to be able to use shopping carts but the platform I am using doesn't support them unless I get the package that is 100 a month which I can't afford right now. I have been looking at a free paypal shopping cart and have played around with it but the problem is integrating it into the site itself. I have my passwords and different pieces but putting it together is a problem - I'll keep working on it for now.

 

Meanwhile I have an email address for ordering and will send a paypal invoice. I accept credit cards through paypal too. If the customer prefers I will take personal checks and money orders but they have to clear first of course. Along with this I am inputting paypal buttons for individual purchases which they can click on the picture to link to and make a secure purchase.

 

I've also stated that all shipments are a flat 5.99 priority shipping per order...whatever is ordered. Plus if they buy 30 dollars worth of merchandise they get a free tote bag. I don't charge tax or shipping...I will take care of that myself.

 

Can anyone think of something I've forgotten? I know of course that the shopping cart is the best option (I shop online myself a lot and like the convenience.) but until I figure out how to make it work with my platform (Network Solutions) have to use other methods.

 

I can't promise I'll use your suggestions but would love to hear them!

 

whisper

http://www.sistersstitchings.com

I assume that if you have a flat shipping rate, then you do not have any international orders...or am I reading that wrong.

I assume that if you have a flat shipping rate, then you do not have any international orders...or am I reading that wrong.

 

I wasn't really clear about that and I appreciate your pointing that out to me. I am willing to ship internationally but the customer would need to contact me prior to purchase/payment to find out the shipping costs. I would ship at cost to the customer. Thanks...I'll be sure to update that on the site as I work on it!

 

whisper

http://www.sistersstitchings.com

Do you feel that newsletters for frequent customers add to the usability of a site or make it more complex, then? I have been debating adding a newsletter to an ecommerce site I'm working on.