Greetings from Robert Schow, VP of Customer Relations
The summer months are upon us, and hopefully the heat stokes your entreprenurial engines. Get ready to hit June hard by making a strong statement with your site design. In this newsletter we will discuss how to design a website that makes the right statement and ensures your customers that their experience with your busoness will be worthwhile.
Design to the Point
Your website is the only salesman for your business that your customers will ever meet. It is your showroom, your brochure, your customer service department and the nice person behind your checkout counter. In short it is the entire customer experience rolled into one package. With that in mind you should be aware of the importance of properly designing your website.
Many people build websites to suit their personal tastes. They include their favorite colors and pictures, and they make it a very enjoyable experience for themselves. But is that the point of an eCommerce site? eCommerce has one point, and that is to sell a product or service.
Remember the point of your website and you will design a website that can succeed.
Discussion
Your website has a very simple job, to sell your product. Your Home Page is designed to welcome visitors and assure them that they have found exactly what they are looking for. Your Contact Us page is designed to reassure visitors that if there is a problem, you can be easily reached for help. Your About Us page is designed to assure potential customers that you are a company run by real people that they can trust. Your information pages help the customer make the decision to buy, and your Product pages are designed with just one goal, to get visitors to click the “Add to Cart” button, turning them into customers.
Application
As you design each section or each page, go through the following list and make sure that, whenever possible, what you are doing meets the outlined requirements.
Content
Is the content of your site accurate, up to date, relevant and useful?
There may be plenty of other sites with identical content. Make sure your site has information for your customers that they can trust. Make your site a resource to them by including addition information beyond making a purchase. Most buyers visit a site at least four times before they buy anything. A site that has useful information will be visited frequently, and if return visitors already trust your site, they will be ready to buy from you when the time comes.
On the other hand if your site has old news or yesterday’s model how does that look to visitors? Who would take the chance of buying from a poorly maintained website?
Is your site unique?
Remember this can be a help or a hindrance to your website. You want to be unique and memorable without being unusual or strange.
Technical Questions
- Does each page load in a few seconds when accessed from a dial-up connection? If your Home page has large graphics you may lose impatient visitors.
- Does everything function properly?
- Are there any broken images?
- Are there any links on your site that lead to a page that cannot be displayed or that cause any other errors?
- Does the ordering process function properly when used with systems running on all platforms?
- Does the ordering process work with all products and payment and shipping options?
- Does your site fit on a screen 800 pixels wide?
Nothing will tarnish your credibility like a broken site.
Marketing Questions
Your page must tell each visitor:
- WHO you are.
- WHAT you sell.
- HOW MUCH the product costs.
- WHY someone should purchase the product.
- WHY someone should purchase the product from you.
- WHY someone should purchase the product now.
- HOW to obtain the product.
Does your page look professional?
Run a spell check on every line of your site. Mistakes are not the message you want to send to your visitors.
Is the header and navigation bar consistent throughout your site?
Many visitors will enter your site from pages other than your home page. Make sure they can find their way around.
Does your page elicit a want or a need from your visitors and does it show them how your product can solve it?
People don’t buy cars because they want cars. They buy cars because they want to go places, sit in luxury and look cool. Sell the experience and then offer the solution.
Does the text on your page take longer than a few seconds to read?
Often, people skim content rather than read it. Most of us read the bold type whenever we can and web surfers are no exception. If your webpage contains as much information as a page from a book, then how much of it is actually being read?
If so break it up with bold subheadings like this one.
Long passages of text are often necessary to say all that needs to be said. However, remember that people shopping on the Internet are often pressed for time and have numerous other sites trying to sell them the same thing. Say what you need to say in as few words as possible.
Bulleted lists have several benefits:
- They make key points more memorable.
- They show your selling points to those of us who are :
- Too lazy to read the whole page.
- In a hurry.
- In the habit of reading the bold type only.
Does your page have large graphics?
Large graphics or too many graphics distract your readers from the message you are trying to get across. Some graphics are necessary and can be a very effective tool in selling but keep in mind that people seldom buy anything based solely on the images they see. Images may get your customer's attention, but they will buy based on the printed word.
Use images to punctuate and enforce the information on the page. A picture may be worth a thousand words but have you ever bought anything based on just a picture?
Does your page focus on selling to the right group?
People who view your site can be divided into three groups:
1) Those who have already decided to buy your product.
2) Those who have decided not to buy.
3) Those who have not yet decided.
The first group is nice but they don’t require any selling, just a working website. The second group will not be moved but only visit the site to browse. The third group is the only one on whom you can hope to have any effect whatsoever.
Focus your efforts on turning the “undecided” visitors into customers. Otherwise, you are not making the best use of your website.
Unclear text - The information on your website is useless if customers can’t read it. While small fonts, fancy or unusual typefaces might look nice to your eyes, many visitors have different screen resolutions, color settings and might be using browsers that do not support your typeface. Stick to dark text on white or light backgrounds, and use standard typefaces like Ariel, Times or Courier.
Hard to find Links - Create links that are clearly links. Links are the key to any webpage; do not make it difficult for your visitors to find what you are trying to show them.
Incompatibility - Microsoft Internet Explorer, or “IE”, is still the most common browser in use today, so it makes sense to design your pages to work in that environment. A few years ago 95% of all Internet traffic was using IE, but that number is dropping steadily. It is more important than ever to test your site using Firefox, Safari, Opera, and Netscape Navigator as well as many other browsers.
Forms - Simplify the forms you need and remove any unnecessary forms. A website should not be like a trip to the DMV. You need a secure order form that contains all the required information needed to process the order. A contact form is a must for permission marketing, but it should be as simple as possible, containing name and email only.
Horizontal scrolling - Page widths must be limited to avoid the need to scroll horizontally. Scrolling down is not an issue, but keep in mind the "above the fold part of the page" rule. Get your visitors' attention with the first thing they see, and they will gladly scroll down to see what else you have to say.
Flash and Script - Flash is great, but until everyone has super fast broadband every flash animation breaks the first website rule of avoiding long loading time. Flash increases your loading times by 30 seconds on a fast connection and several minutes on dial-up, which many of your visitors still use.
Scripts can be useful and generally don’t take too long to load, but they frequently fail to work properly. If you want to use scripts, make sure you know what you are doing and test your pages using systems running on all platforms before you go live.
If your site is designed as a showcase for your technical expertise, then design it that way. If it is designed to sell products, then limit your efforts to things that promote that goal.
Pop-Ups - Users almost universally hate pop-up windows. They are not only an annoyance but many feel they are an invasion of privacy. Pop-ups may also make your visitors fear for their safety, because pop-ups can carry spyware and even viruses. Most of your visitors probably employ pop-up blockers, so your work will be wasted anyway.
Lastly remember to listen to the experts. Look closely and frequently at other sites and see what they are doing. If you see a good idea, use it on your site.
Summary
You have invested time and money into your business. You have researched and selected a product, secured a supplier and soon will begin marketing your site in earnest to bring traffic to your site. All of this will be wasted if your site isn’t designed to sell. It’s not a difficult concept. Your website sells a product and if you make that your goal and test it frequently, you will turn traffic into sales. How quickly and efficiently you do that will determine how much profit you turn, as well as how soon you will see it.
Designing your site to sell is critical to success. Keep testing and improving your site and you will be on your way to a successful Internet business.
While searching for a supplier and setting up your business, we recommend Avail as well, it will give you the professional appearance without the cost.
Managing communications with your clients is the core of your business. Avail is the professional, easy to use, affordable communication solution that will give you control over your phone, fax, and email systems, all from the convenience of your computer.
Call customer support to activate your account today 801-434-8582 
Use Avail to Manage Your Phone Calls:
Avail works together with your existing phone and phone line. No special equipment is needed. Login to your account online to update and maintain your menus, greetings, teams, and employees. Avail gives you the ability to see a list of all calls, answered or unanswered and to listen to your voicemail.
Use Avail to Manage Your Faxes:
When you work with Avail software, you do not need a fax machine to receive faxes. Avail receives your faxes as email attachments in the same place that you read your emails and listen to voicemail. Your account comes with a toll free fax number making it convenient for local and non-local customers to send faxes.
Use Avail to Manage Your Email:
With Avail, you can send and receive email from the same inbox that you listen to voicemail and view faxes. Avail allows you to use all the standard email features plus the expanded functionality that comes from having your email, faxes, and voicemail managed from the same application.
Use Avail to Manage Your Contacts:
Customers contact you by phone, fax, and email daily. Establish long-term, profitable relations with your clients and obtain reoccurring business, then it is critical to ensure that your communication avenues are open and running very smoothly.
Avail will also help you by:
- Saving You Money: Avail eliminates the need for a fax machine and extra fax line
- Providing You Worldwide Access: Avail is web based, so you can retrieve messages and faxes from your email.
- Increasing Your Company’s Reliability: No more busy signals for clients or paper jammed fax machines. With Avail, you get your faxes, emails, and phone calls and messages organized in one place.
Call customer support to activate your account today 801-434-8582
As a reminder, Imergent Financial Services in conjunction with Home Savings of America is offering merchant discounts on home mortgages. Whether you are purchasing a home or refinancing your home, we are a great resource for you to find affordable financing solutions. Call us anytime for a free consultation at 866.918.8866.
Also, stay tuned for our Financial Advocate Network Release in July. Included is a suite of financial products and services that are available to Merchants at significant discounts. Our financial dashboard tool “ABOUND” will also be a key part of the release that will enable individuals to run a free financial fitness evaluation, optimize their finances, accelerate the payoff of their debts and mortgages with the revolutionary software, and improve cash flow. Feel free to check out the website at www.financialadvocatenetwork.com.
Featured Testimonial
“I can be teaching in my classroom and when I go home and check my website, I can have $2,000 worth of sales that I didn’t have to do anything to get, once the website was built. You go out shopping, spending money, and you come home and you see that money has been replaced because people have being purchasing from you.”
Karla with a K
www.proclubgear.com
Click Here to read Karla's story >>
Our customer service and programming departments are committed to providing the best possible service to our merchants by listening and responding to their needs.
If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for our customer service department, you may visit us at http://support.myquickresponse.com/ for 24/7 Customer Support Live Chat. You may also call 801-434-8582.
As always, we are grateful to have you on board as a merchant with StoresOnline! See you next month!
Robert Schow
VP of Customer Relations
StoresOnline, Inc.
