SPWD

You have a great idea for your web site, the online front for your business, and in some cases this may be the only front for your business.  Your first step is you research some web developing companies, maybe even browse eBay for a listing for a “complete web site” package.  You finally decide on the developer, pay them for your web site, which they make to look how you want, with some SEO and content added for helpful search engine placement……

Perceptions, Deceptions and Lack of Sales

You have no sales the first month.  Okay, give it time you say.   The second month you pick up a few sales.  By month three your $49.99 per month “E-commerce Value Hosting” fees are starting to make you re-think your web site.  You continue to search Google for your site and find nothing for the keywords that were to be the main point of the site.  You have some friends look your site over, and being friends they are not 100% honest that the bright yellow page background really is painful on the eyes.   Further, they refrain from telling you that your images are not crisp and sharp.

Your contact page simply lists a contact form that users can enter data into, but no email address, no phone number, no physical address and definitely not any “real” contact information for you or your business, not even hours of operation so they may be able to expect when they might receive a reply back.  There are no Policies or Terms & Conditions pages that specify shipping policies, return policies or privacy policy that ensures your potential customers that their orders and data are kept safe and that you will not try to make a quick buck selling their name to every spam marketing mailing list ever made.

You do not have your own SSL certification, but your host allows you to use theirs, so when people do buy something, you transfer them from www.yourstore.com to www.hostingservice.com/~users/yourstore/secure/checkout.php?xxx=222&jjj=2134&kkai=188137 and they get scared thinking they were just transferred to another web site, one that maybe malicious and steal their credit card information, even if it “looks” just like your site, and has the products they just added to their cart listed.

By the sixth month, you are still not making profit from your web site, and you are wondering if the price you paid for the 1 year of hosting was worth it ($49.99*12 = $239.88) since you have yet to recover that cost, let alone the $1489 you paid for development of your site (or if you were lucky you paid $399 for someone to install a “canned” open-source {open-source generally means FREE} shopping cart system).  Good thing you only have 6 months left on your hosting package….you can cut your losses and tell everyone you know that designer A really made a poor web site and that e-commerce really is not meant for the average small business.

Perception Explained: You thought just by having an online store you would have sales rolling in, top rankings for your keywords in Google even though there are 2.5 million results in Google for your selected key words, and that it would be gravy with out any added effort on your part.  You hired a developer that sold you the world and gave you a Cracker Jack trinket web site that is not optimized for the user experience and not optimized for the Search Engines.  You picked colors, layouts and designs that belong to a junior high school aged MySpace profile thinking that since you liked them, so would your customers, and worst, you just had to have the fancy Flash animated navigation menu popping around because it was “cool looking”.

Deception Explained:  Your developer put some keyword tags into the Meta tags, maybe a description.  Most likely used an open-source package you could have setup yourself, charged you too much for hosting, especially since you did not receive your own SSL certificate and are merely using the web host’s shared certificate.  He didn’t explain anything about user interfaces, navigation that is SEO friendly and that content truly is king in the online world.  Further, he didn’t explain the issues inherent in Flash based navigation and Flash in general on web pages, simply because that is what you wanted and he makes more money creating these items for you than just making a site that works how you wanted it to.

Lack of Sales Explained:  Your customers do not like the layout of your site, that is if they can even find the site.  You have not promoted it on the Internet or offline, because you were told it was “optimized” for the search engines and you “knew” Google would send the visitors streaming in.  Your lack of content and product information doesn’t “sell” your products, but gives the same canned information that all the other sites and eBay listings selling the same item have.  Further, you do not publish privacy information, which is a must in today’s online world, and you never once thought that you should include a phone number or physical address because someone might find out who you really are (which unless you are trying to hide your business for illegal activity, is a big no-no).

What A Web Site Should Be For Business

Looking back, you realize it could have been done differently.  I tell you it should have been done differently.  Let’s examine some key aspects that are essential to any success in the online world, even running auctions on eBay (though we focus on having your own web site here).

• Site Design: Your web site, or eBay store page should look, feel and function as well as any of the top tier web sites on the Web.  You should have colors that look even across different monitors, screen resolutions and browsers.  The color usage should be inviting, not painful and should be complimentary to the content, not overpowering it.  Just because you like bright yellow, doesn’t mean it necessary works well in a given design.  Further the site design should be user-centric, meaning the user can navigate it easily, find the information they want and most importantly find the products they want and purchase them easily. The design is not just limited the layout and colors, but images, user interaction flow and process should be examined.  Images should be crisp, sharp and clear, as much as allowed in keeping the file size down to ensure fast loading times.  The user interaction flow should be determined to allow easy access to product information.  If a user needs to click on Products, then on Widgets, then on Spiffy Widgets, then on Blue just to get to a selection of Blue Spiffy Widgets to buy, they are 4 levels into the site before they even see a product, which is not conducive to effective sales. The process would be overall shopping experience.  Offer items such as one-click checkout for returning buyers on your web site, meaning the login and once logged in can hit a button, get the page with their product selections, their user information and the forms necessary to accept payment information, and then click on finalize order.  Users many times don’t want to have to go through 5 pages to complete an order due to time constraints.  It also can lead to problems if the pages are not properly coded and designed if a user starts to use their browsers back and forward controls during this process.

• Search Engine Friendliness: Your pages should follow modern design techniques to ensure that the content is properly read by search engines.  This means not using a lot in terms of javascripting and flash for navigation links, and ensuring that the content is place higher in the page as some search engines only crawl so much of the page before going on to the next, and if your content is after your navigation, after your scripts and after your really cool flash banner, the search engine may not pick it all up.Meta tags should conform to industry best practices and include keywords that describe the actual page content.  In consideration of Meta tags, there are more than jus the keyword and description tags that can be effectively utilized for better search placement.

• Contact Information:  You run a business, and therefore should have every contact method you want to use adequately displayed and easy to find.  It is hard for someone to purchase a product (especially a high-ticket product) if there is lacking contact information.  There is no problem with offering a contact form that customers can use to send a message to your business, however that should not be the only contact method listed or available.  You need to list your physical address (exceptions may apply on eBay listings for privacy concerns there if you are running out of your home) of the business, the business contact phone numbers and a general contact email address to ensure your customers that you are a legitimate business on the Web.
• Policies, Terms, Conditions:  You have to spell out to your customers what your policies are.  Policies may include privacy of information they submit to you, return policies, shipping policies and anything else that you decide your customers and their transactions will be subject to.  It is always a good idea to have an attorney review these to make sure you are not generating pitfalls for your business.  You should also spell out terms of use for your site, what are customers subject to when using your site, copyright information and any conditions that apply to the use of your site.
• Shipping: Your shipping information should be adequately and prominently available to all customers.  What shipping method is the default method, and what other methods are available should be explained.  You should also include any handling charges, and any processing times for order packaging and preparation.  You do not want your customers ordering a product with overnight shipping and getting a complaint because it took 4 days to process and pack the order before you shipped it, so you want to spell that out as clear as you can.  You should also note whether or not shipping is done in your home country, other countries or full international shipping.  Many times in the US business will ship to the US, Canada and Mexico, but maybe not to Europe or Asia.  This needs to be explained and your site needs to not accept orders from countries or locations you do not ship to.
• Security:  Your web site should run the latest SSL encryption technology and have its own dedication SSL certificate.  This ensures your buyers that you are who you say you are and your site is who it claims to be.  You may find some web hosts that offer free use of their “shared” certificate, but this means redirection to a Web URL different than your stores and can spell doom to your bottom line with untrusting consumers who are constantly hearing and reading about online fraud.  Your back end processing software should be secure as well, both through proper encryption and proper physical access.  Remember, when the customer submits their credit card information to you, they expect it to be handled properly and safely, as well as there are laws that dictate what practices need to be followed to ensure compliancy.

Some small basics of operating a web site for business, that when followed will help ensure good visibility, good customer interactions and safe shopping will go a very long way to increasing your bottom line from online business. These are not the end of the sage, the last page of the book or the icing on the cake.  There is one more important aspect to any online business, including eBay stores.

Marketing and Advertising

 All too often I have seen small businesses come thinking that they will see double and triple their offline sales just by building a web site without taking into consideration one of the most basic business concepts: Marketing and Advertising.  Even with all of the preceding tips being followed and the web site being safe, secure, well designed and picked up by the search engines, you still have some marketing and advertising that needs to be done.  Search engines are not the only traffic generators for web sites.

You can get links from online directories, forums where you are an active member at (via signature links, and writing tutorials and such many times you can get a link back to your site) and you have online advertising.  You may wish to purchase some Google AdWords for your web site to advertise with, or you may even want to purchase individual ad spots on some prominent web sites that are applicable to your industry. 

If you want to get even more adventurous, you can setup an affiliate program.  The affiliate program generally will give a set amount or a percentage to the affiliate marketer that sends a click, a lead or a sale to your site through their efforts.  Many times their efforts are accomplished by displaying your banner ad, text ad or link on their web site and in their email newsletters.  You may even have some very ambitious affiliates who have a network of sites that they run your ad on, and tens fo thousands newsletter subscribers they send emails to on a regular basis.

While we are talking about it, do not forget to list your URL in our offline marketing and advertising.  I cannot count how many times I have had someone not do this and wonder why they weren’t getting results.  They don’t list it on their business cards (even if you don’t have business cards now, get them to promote your web site or store), they don’t list it in their newspaper ads, their radio ads and they even forget to put it on their yellow pages ads.  This is an absolute must - get that URL out there everywhere - like on a marquee on the back window of your car, truck or van.  Get some bumper stickers made up and include one in each order you send out, or give them out at trade shows.

In the end, a little extra work may very well end up getting you quality direct traffic, some good search engine traffic, and most importantly, with a good product or product line, fair prices and a great web site, some sales that increase your bottom line.