Posted by zoli in When you have just launched a new ecommerce business, you need to identify some of the issues that can crop up, so that you can prevent them from jeopardizing your business.
Let us look at some of them in detail.
- The Website
- Security & Protection
- Honor commitments
- Promotion & Marketing
- Regularly updating your site
Your website is the life line of your business and if it is not in good shape, your business is a non starter. It is not only necessary to design a website that is pleasing to the eye, but it must also be convenient to the user. This means that the user must be able to navigate around the site without losing time and the loading of the images need to be slick and fast. You need to remember that if the visitors to your website will have very little patience for slow loading sites and will prefer to get out the site, unless you can engage them and catch their interest. Customers face the most problems with the shopping cart page and when they try to check out. You must ensure that your site irons out these glitches and the customer is able to exit easily after making his purchase.
People are often cagey about the fact that their credit card details may get misused when shopping online. Though the chances of they losing their credit card and somebody getting access to sensitive data in their credit card is equally high even in the brick and mortar shops, it is just the mindset that has been formed, due to stray instances of credit card hacking on the internet. It is thus your duty and obligation to give that comfort feeling to your customers so that they will buy at your site. The 128 secure sockets layer (SSL) is a must and this allows for credit card number encryption. This will make people feel safe and you need to mention this in your privacy policy.
It is imperative that you honor what ever commitments you have made in your shipping policy. It is necessary that you only mention what is possible from your side and what is sustainable over time. Mentioning something on the site and not able to honor it is the worst possible scenario which could lead to serious loss of credibility and impact your business severely.
Having done the hard work in designing a pleasing user friendly and secure website, you now need to make this site known to the world so that people can visit the site and become your customers. You need to quickly grasp the nuances of search engine optimization and take steps to make sure that your website is ranked high by search engines like Google and Yahoo. This can be done by incorporating good keywords in your title, code and having good back links that can link your site to other sites. Make sure that you also spread word of mouth about your site within friends, family and in discussion forums.
Nobody wishes to keep visiting a site that has the same appearance and your customers are no different. So, please make sure that you regularly update your site with new images, products and links. This will keep your website in the public eye and customers would feel that it is a different experience each time they visit your website.
If you can take care of the above issues, you are sure to make a success out of your ecommerce venture.
