This week, we’re focusing on starting an online store. It’s one of the easiest ways to make money while you sleep – or while looking after the kids – and work when you want to…and it’s a growing trend, as more and more of us choose to shop online to avoid queues and poor customer service instore.
Sounds great, doesn’t it? But ecommerce can be very complex. To offer a world class customer experience, you must incorporate technologies and functionality that exceeds rising customer expectations – your customers won’t care that it’s just you running the business between bottle feeds or the school run, and if your website isn’t up to scratch, people just won’t buy.
On the flip side however, site fundamentals still play a very large role in converting visitors into customers. Many mumpreneurs surprisingly lose sight of these site basics and leave significant sales on the table. Here are four quick “fundamentals†every business mum cannot afford to lose sight of.
1. Think Fast
While dial-up internet is a thing of the past, it doesn’t mean that everyone viewing your website will be doing it on quick-speed broadband connection, so it’s important that your web pages don’t take a lifetime and day to load – pages loading in less than 9 seconds is ideal, and will stop search engines liek Google penalising you.
To make this possible, you’ll need to make sure you don’t use things like flash, or large pictures (fielsize not the actual size of the picture) on your website – especially your homepage. Flash’s artistic aspects may help you establish a brand presence – but it will likely lose potential customers before they have even searched within your store because if they use an iphone or ipad, they simply won’t be able to view or use your website, and if it takes too long to load, the others will get fed up, too. So, before you part with your cash, make sure you speak to your web designer about using alternatives.
2. Image is important
Images are a very important aspect of selling online and are often neglected, but there’s nothing that makes a website look like a bodge job than poor quality pictures. All product images should be of the highest resolution possible, be much larger than the product page original, and have multiple views. Dynamic imaging capabilities can improve the user experience to an even higher level by increasing interactivity (zoom and rotate) – these days some fashion wesbites even show you a catwalk of the clothing you want to buy so you can see what it looks like being warn. At a minimum there should have at least two additional views outside of the product page image to help build emotion.
3. Be my guest
Shoppers do not like being forced to do anything, especially when they are ready to open their wallets. Forcing a shopper to register on your site before purchasing is a sure way to drive a portion of your traffic to your competitors. Most people like to shop online because it’s quick and easy – most do not have the time or the inclination to fill out a lengthy form before making a purchase.
Always offer the ability to checkout as a guest. You will see less customer leakage within the checkout process and can still offer the option to register once the all-important sale is completed.
4. Make sure it’s “above the fold”
Your homepage is the most important page on your online store. It sets the initial tone for the shopping experience and offers your best promotions and products to your visitors. Users typically visually scan a web page from top to bottom, and then from left to right, so all important content and navigation options should be made obvious to the shopper without them having to scroll down when they come to the homepage. If you have your best promotions “below the fold†(i.e. you have to scroll down to see it), you can bet that a large percentage of browsers are not scrolling down to see it.
Those are our top tips for online stores, but be sure to check out our video tutorials in the Mothers Who Work Club for more tips and advice.
