Basic ecommerce web site design and development – Part 2

Pre-sales support to encourage sales

In Part 1 of this ecommerce series, we examined various pages that should be included on your site. A good ecommerce site is more than just a home page, product page and shopping cart.

This article examines other aspects you may wish to consider as part of your online sales pitch, then leads on to further information about the nuts and bolts of ecommerce – shopping carts, payment gateways and merchant accounts.

Info sheets.

Perhaps the customer is not yet ready to order? Provide them with an offline reminder by the provision of quick downloading info sheets about your product, valuable information regarding the area that your product or service addresses and contact details in PDF format. The infosheets should contain some of your site’s branding elements to assist with recall. Info sheets also have a habit of being forwarded or printed out and passed around. This is a part of viral marketing. Read ouroverview of viral marketing.

Pre-sales email support

Not every question can be answered in a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions page), so offering to answer pre-sales questions should be encouraged and promoted. Rapid response to pre-sales questions will definitely assist in securing online sales.

If I am interested in purchasing a product, submit queries and don’t receive a response within 24 hours – I usually don’t buy the product, no matter how good it appears. Delay in response time could mean poor support in the future.

When responding to customer enquiries, ensure that your messages are well thought out. Address the question asked thoroughly and offer further support. Sales are also lost through poor spelling and grammar in email messages. View our guide to email etiquette.

Always thank the prospective client for their comments and questions, even if they are being what appears to be slightly unreasonable. You’ll find that many customers will have ESL (English as a second language) and it can be quite challenging for them to submit queries. Ask for clarification if you aren’t sure of what the client is requesting.

Autoresponder software & mailing list managers Get more from your email marketing – tips, reviews & free trial software/services.

 

 

Live chat software

Another way of encouraging sales is to implement live online customer support. There are many products available now that allow you to communicate with prospective clients over the Internet in real time directly from your web site.

The way that live support operates is through special HTML/JavaScript coding embedded in your site’s pages, supplied by the company that you obtain the service from. It detects when a visitor arrives at your online destination. You are then alerted to the arrival by specialized software on your office system via a message from the company.

If you do decide to go ahead with implementing live online customer support, it doesn’t have to be an expensive process. View further information on live chat software and support services and try out a free service!

Easy access to ordering

Having convinced your prospective online client of the benefits of your product or service, it’s now time to close the deal. If it takes any more than one click to begin the ordering process, then it’s too many. Make sure every page that contains information about your products has ‘order now’ links in appropriate places.

The links or buttons should be easy to locate, but not too gaudy – it’s a balance of subtlety and promotion. The best place to implement ‘order now’ links is after paragraphs which detail some positive aspect of the product, or directly after a testimonial from one of your clients.

Learn more about processing
credit card transactions

Shopping carts

A shopping cart is a software package that showcases products (in some cases), collects customer details, assembles the order, calculates price, shipping and tax, then submits the data to you and a credit card payment gateway for further processing. The funds are then transferred into your bank or merchant account if the transaction is successful. It’s important to realize that the shopping cart, payment gateway and merchant account are three very separate components.

There are many products and services on the market, but it is imperative to find one that suits your business totally and allows scalability. The wrong package or a mismatch of components could cause you a great deal of headaches and cost you money as your business grows.

The good news is that there are a number of free shopping cart software packages on the market as well, which may fulfill your requirements.

Read more about selecting suitable shopping carts; and when you’re done with that; learn more about payment processing options.

Related learning resources.

Part 1 and Part 2 of this article really only just scrape the surface of ecommerce. Once you have your online store happening, your cart installed and your payment processing implemented; how will you promote and market it? Have you considered starting an affiliate program to help increase sales? What’s an affiliate program anyway?

We have a wide range of articles and tutorials on Taming the Beast.net covering all sorts of aspects of running an online business :

Search engine optimization tutorials section

Affiliate marketing strategies and tutorials

Ecommerce tutorials and guides

Web development tutorials and articles

Michael Bloch
Taming the Beast
http://www.tamingthebeast.net
Tutorials, web content, tools and software.
Web Marketing, Internet Development & Ecommerce Resources
____________________________

In the interests of transparency and disclosure, please note that the owner of Taming the Beast.net often receives goods and services mentioned in reviews for free, or may receive payments or affiliate commissions for advertising or referring others to merchants of products and services reviewed.

Copyright information…. This article is free for reproduction but must be reproduced in its entirety & this copyright statement must be included. Visit http://www.tamingthebeast.net for free Internet marketing and web development articles, tutorials and tools! Subscribe for free to our popular ecommerce/web design ezine!

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Basic ecommerce web site design and development – Part 1

Introduction

Welcome to Taming the Beast.net and the world of online business!

This 2 part series assumes you have a basic web presence and briefly outlines preparing your web site for online sales and credit card transactions. The articles linked to will then assist you in making a more educated decision before implementing ecommerce software and marketing tools.

Online sales processing using credit card based transactions may not be quite as straightforward as you may think. Many web site owners new to ecommerce are under the impression that they just plug a shopping cart into their site; but a cart is only a part of the whole ecommerce process.

“I don’t want to support online payments”

In case you were thinking about avoiding online credit card transactions to sell your product, think again. The days of ‘send me a check or money order’ are long gone. In the vast majority of cases, customers will want your product, and want it now.

Even if the product or service you are offering is totally unique, you will miss many sales if you don’t implement some form of online credit card processing. But implementing a processing service doesn’t necessarily mean shelling out big dollars up front.

Shopping cart software Learn more about shopping carts or read our reviews of some the best shopping cart software around! Need to learn more about merchant accounts or payment processors? Read our reviews & guides

 

The web site

OK, I’m sure you know this one! The web site acts as the store front for the products and services you wish to sell online. Your site visitors are, for the most part, window shoppers and browsers. A commercial web site’s aim is to convert these browsers into buyers.

The web site should be designed to gently lead the client through the learning and sales process. Your sales text must be grammatically sound and spelled correctly. Poor spelling loses credibility points straight away.

Ensure that there is plenty of well laid out textual content on the site to attract search engines as well as to inform prospective clients. Use keyword and keyphrase rich text; that is, utilize copy that includes common phrases that people would enter into search engines when performing a query. The copy you use shouldn’t just be informational, it needs to actively sell to the site visitor. Learn more about crafting marketing copy and creating effective landing pages.

What search terms are commonly used?

A useful tool in understanding how people are searching is freely available from Google. With Google Insights for Search, you can compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, and time frames on particular keywords, finding the most popular terms for a given topic or industry sector.

Attracting search engines and targeted site traffic is a huge ongoing learning curve, and there are plenty of other articles and tools on our site to assist you with this. View our search engine marketing resources or our general promotion archives.

Cross Browser Compatibility

Internet Explorer isn’t the only browser on the market. There are currently over 100 different brands of Internet browser currently available. IE’s major competitor is Firefox and what looks good in Internet Explorer may look terrible or even crash other browsers! Make sure that you design your site to be viewable in at least:

Internet Explorer 5.0+
Firefox 1.0 +

Between these two browsers, you’ll have well over 90% of market covered. By paying attention to even simple things like browser compatibility issues, you will increase your sales.

The use of images

All images used should clearly depict the product/service and where possible, don’t use stock images that come with products such as Photoshop. Seasoned Internet surfers will recognize these as they appear on thousands of sites around the world. Use original photography or scanned images wherever you can, or make use of the many stock photo archives where you can purchase high quality images for as little as a couple of dollars each.

Ensure that you optimize your images for rapid download. Much of the world still does not utilize broadband, and no-one is going to wait around for 2 minutes to see a photo of a “happy customer” or “successful businessperson who uses our product”. All popular graphics packages support compression for web based graphics, usually through easy to use wizards. Try your graphics software program’s help file and search for “optimization” or “compression”.

Images are a wonderful medium to assist in the online sale of your products/services, especially useful to those clients with poor literacy levels or who are in a rush, as we all seem to be these days. But remember, while a picture may be worth a thousand words in the offline world, it’s worth next to nothing when it comes to search engines as spiders do not ‘see’ pictures.

Image HTML coding should also contain ‘alt’ tags. This is a textual representation of the image which is useful for the situations where the image doesn’t load for some reason. Search engines spiders also latch on to this content, especially if the image is linked to another page. ‘alt’ text will also pop up when a visitor moves their mouse over the image. Here’s a sample of html code for an image which also contains ‘alt’ text:

<img border=”0″ src=”../images/iconarticle1.gif” alt=”Article section – Web development, eCommerce and site promotion tutorials and comments – free for reproduction!” width=”50″ height=”50″>

Site Navigation.

Site navigation should be simple and all the questions a consumer may ask should be answered along the way. Where possible, adhere to the “three click rule” – that is, a visitor should be able to access any information regarding your product or service within 3 clicks of any other area of your web site. Pay close attention to cross-browser compatibility issues as many complex menu systems play havoc with browsers.

Recommended pages.

Along with the home page, your sales pages and the shopping cart, I recommend implementing the following web pages as part of your ecommerce site:

About Us Page.

The “About Us” page is crucial to boosting consumer confidence. It provides a summary of the business, your commitments and direction.

While we are all protective of our privacy, online business is no different to traditional business in that we all like to ‘put a face to the name’ – we need to reassure our site visitors. When purchasing goods online, I always go to the ‘About Us’ or company profile pages before parting with my money (especially after one bad experience – another story for another time). The page should also provide other contact details for your business and your various registrations, associations and affiliations. View further information relating to “about us” or company profile pages.

Autoresponder software & mailing list managers Get more from your email marketing – tips, reviews & free trial software/services.

 

Privacy policy.

What are you going to do with my information? – a question asked by many online shoppers. Putting together a privacy policy doesn’t necessarily require a legal team! Learn more about developing Privacy statements.

FAQ’s (Frequently asked questions)

No doubt you’ll be asked many questions about your product. Many of these questions will be repetitive. It’s these questions and answers that you’ll want to add to your FAQ page. This promotes customer confidence and saves your valuable time. A prospective client may be somewhat hesitant in asking questions and this hesitancy may translate into a lost sale. A well constructed FAQ will help coax these online customers into purchasing.

You don’t need to spend a lot of money on a basic FAQ system. Simply list the questions at the beginning of the FAQ in dot-point format, perhaps broken down into various categories to make searching easier. Each of these questions should be directly linked to the answer further down the page with the use of bookmarks. This basic design also allows for scalability.

You can link to the FAQ not only through the main menu system, but after every “buy me” type statement. The FAQ should be accessible within one click of any other area of your web site that is dedicated to selling the product or service.

Testimonials page

A dollar value can not be placed upon positive client testimonials; this is some of the best promotional copy around. Elicit feedback from your current customers and ask their permission to publish their comments on your site.

Testimonials can be implemented on a page of their own, or interspersed between your own statements regarding the product. If you do implement a Testimonials page, ensure that it can be accessed with one click from any other page on the site.

Ideally the link or button should be placed on your web site navigational menu, preferable at the top.

If you don’t have any testimonials or referees, it may be worthwhile considering supplying a select group of people with the product free of charge for testing and feedback purposes. Learn more about usingtestimonials and reviews in marketing.

Guide to accepting
credit card transactions

In our second part of this series, we’ll cover other pre-sales services worth considering as part of your online sales pitch. Also included is some introductory information about ordering processes and ecommerce components. View part 2 of Basic ecommerce web site design and development..

Related learning resources:

Payment Gateways, Internet Merchant Accounts and third party credit card processors

Shopping Carts – hints and tips in choosing the right ecommerce solution for you

Over 130 ecommerce solutions reviewed – the results

Michael Bloch
Taming the Beast
http://www.tamingthebeast.net
Tutorials, web content, tools and software.
Web Marketing, Internet Development & Ecommerce Resources
____________________________

In the interests of transparency and disclosure, please note that the owner of Taming the Beast.net often receives goods and services mentioned in reviews for free, or may receive payments or affiliate commissions for advertising or referring others to merchants of products and services reviewed.

Copyright information…. This article is free for reproduction but must be reproduced in its entirety, along with live links & this copyright statement must be included. Visit http://www.tamingthebeast.net for free Internet marketing and web development articles, tutorials and tools! Subscribe for free to our popular ecommerce/web design ezine!

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If you operate a retail or ecommerce business, accepting all major credit cards and electronic checks is a required method of customer payment. However, when you decide to accept electronic payments, business owners must also consider the potential cost of fraud. Studies have shown both traditional and online merchants have lost billions in fraudulent transactions. Today, technology provides proven methods for identifying and preventing fraudulent transactions.

Fraud can come in many forms. Needless to say fraud is bad for business. If you process a fraudulent customer order by the time you find out the credit card was stolen you have already shipped the product. Fraudulent orders usually result in a customer credit card chargeback to your business. Unfortunately, by that time, you have delivered and lost your product, you have lost the income from the sale and to top it all off; you will receive a chargeback fee from your credit card processor. I’m sure we can agree there is a strong need to identify and stop a fraudulent order before you deliver your product. Fortunately for the merchant, there are many steps and processes that can be implemented to reduce and eliminate credit card fraud.

10 WAYS TO REDUCE CUSTOMER CREDIT CARD FRAUD

1. Address Verification Service (AVS) – is a simple and easy to implement process to decrease your chances of accepting a stolen credit card. When you process a credit card transaction; make sure you capture the card holder’s billing address and zip code. Manual non-swipe (Internet and MOTO) transactions will require you to capture card holder information. However, card present (swipe) transactions will not. Once you capture the card holder’s billing address and zip code you’re ready to process the sale. Your point of sale system will verify AVS with the card issuing bank. You can receive a street address match only, a zip code match only or a match on street address and zip code. If you do not receive an AVS match you should consider declining the transaction. Approximately 80% of fraudulent transactions in the U.S. are AVS mismatches. Keep in mind, most AVS systems can be configured so be sure to check your AVS settings. Implementing AVS can have a major impact on reducing credit card fraud.

2. Card Verification (CVV/CVV2) – is similar to AVS. CVV is the 3 digit code on the back of a credit card (4 digits for American Express). Like AVS, CVV is entered at the point of sale. The card holder’s CVV code is verified by the card issuing bank when the credit card sale is being processed. If you do not receive a CVV match you should consider declining the transaction. Online merchants should make CVV a required field.

3. Use a Threshold Management Service – Threshold management allows the merchant to set parameters for the transactions they will accept. For example, transactions can be screened based on the amount of money charged per transaction, the number of transactions charged, transaction frequency, average user ticket, etc. Transactions that are marked as a potential fraudulent transaction will require additional review by the merchant. Threshold Management services are usually available an add-on service.

4. Scrutinize Orders from Free email accounts – Fraudsters and thieves like to hide. One of the easiest ways to hide the identity of a thief is to use a free email account. Most fraudulent transactions use a free email service. Merchants should not decline all transactions from a free email service. However, you may want to provide those orders with more scrutiny.

5. Scrutinize Orders with a different Ship to address than Bill to address – The thief with the stolen credit card may have the owners billing address and zip code. If so, you will receive an AVS and CVV match on their order. However, in order to receive your product they will request the order to be shipped to a different address. Merchants should review all orders with a different ship to and bill to address. If the ship to address is a foreign country pay even more attention to the order.

6. Scrutinize International Orders / Foreign Credit Cards – If your business model requires you to ship to foreign countries you should obtain an International merchant account. Since non domestic orders have a higher rate of fraud than domestic orders, having an International merchant account will provide you with a higher level of protection. In additional, an international merchant account will allow you to settle in the local currency. If you require a domestic and international merchant account you should use a payment gateway with load-balancing. Load-balancing provides the merchant with the ability to use multiple merchant accounts in a single payment gateway account.

7. Understand that an Authorization Code does not mean the credit card is not stolen – An authorization code is provided when the transaction has been approved. However, an authorization code simply means the credit card is valid and has the available credit to process the transaction. Ultimately, as the business owner, it is up to you to decide to accept or reject the transaction.

8. Use an Advance Fraud Protection Service – Advanced Fraud Protection services allow the merchant to block transactions by IP address, Country of Origin and other fraud filters. Advanced fraud protection services are usually available an add-on service.

9. Use a PCI Compliant Data Storage Service – Merchants who have a requirement to store the customer’s credit card data should use a PCI Compliant Data Storage Service. A PCI Compliant Data Storage Service allows merchants to transmit and store the customer’s payment information in a Level 1 PCI certified data facility. Once the customer record has been securely transmitted and stored the merchant can then initiate transactions remotely without having to access credit card or electronic check information directly. This process is accomplished without the merchant storing the customer’s payment information in their local database or payment application.

10. Review and Implement PCI (Payment Card Industry Standards) Policies – Merchants can review PCI Standards online at pcisecuritystandards.org. If you’re using a PCI Compliant point of sale solution and you do not store payment data you’re already in good shape. However, merchants should contact their merchant account provider for more information.

Fraud prevention is a necessary activity for traditional and online merchants. Exposing your business to fraudulent transactions and high chargeback ratios is bad for business and could cause you to lose your merchant account. The leading real-time payment gateway services provide advanced fraud protection tools. However, many fraud prevention techniques can be implemented at no additional costs.

Top Real-time Payment Gateway Services

1. Planetauthorize (Domestic USA and International)

2. Authorize.Net (Domestic USA)

3. PlugnPay (Domestic USA)

4. Skipjack (Domestic USA)

5. eProcessing Network (Domestic USA)

Ricky Bracken is President & CEO of SaleManager Merchant Services. SaleManager provides enterprise class payment solutions to small and mid-size businesses.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ricky_Bracken

http://EzineArticles.com/?How-Merchants-Can-Reduce-Credit-Card-Fraud&id=5141319

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Multi-channel marketing is the tactic of reinforcing your brand message by utilizing numerous channels to sell to customers. Not just for large retailers, small to medium eCommerce businesses can reap the benefits of multi-channel marketing and should examine strategies to do so.

As Multi-channel marketing has become “par for the course” in online retail, retailers need to serve customers in multiple channels to stay competitive. Due to rising customer expectations, retailers must provide a consistent experience that allows customers to shop via the method that they feel most comfortable. Whether the method is over the phone, by mail, online, or at a brick and mortar storefront – retailers that facilitate customers to shop via multiple channels typically get a higher level of customer value.

The numbers speak for themselves. In a cross-channel study by JC Penney, the company found that internet only shoppers spent $121 per year, retail only spent $194 per year, catalog only spent $242 per year – while a customer who shopped all three spent over $1000 per year (source: ebusinessiq.com).

In a separate study of over 500 retail and enterprise businesses, consulting firm The Aberdeen Group found that 38.4% of respondents classified “multi-channel customers” as significantly more profitable.

So where to start?

So multi-channel consumer behavior generates incremental profits – but where do you begin if you are a small online retailer? How do you progress your online business towards this new opportunity and take advantage of these developing trends?

The first step for an online retailer would be to evaluate the creation and distribution of a print catalog. A print catalog and an online store work extremely well with each other, as the strengths in each channel complement the other’s weaknesses. Consumers typically browse the catalog as they shop for products and then frequently go online to purchase them.

The tangible nature of a print catalog makes it great for product browsing, as it is readily available and visible for weeks on end. Another plus is that competitive offerings are limited when merchandising via a catalog, making the catalog even more valuable in niche markets.

Small to medium online retailers should examine the costs for development, including: list management, creative design and layout, distribution processes, and postage fees. Conversion rates in catalogs frequently trail their eCommerce store counterparts however, so utilize conservative conversion metrics when developing your ROI model.

Within the first page of the catalog, consider outlining your unique value proposition (Why would a consumer shop at your store?) and provide details to your cross-channel policies (how orders can be placed and returned etc). Make sure to include your URL (ex. http://www.yourstore.com) in bold writing on every page in the catalog and include catalog “quick shop” numbers (usually 5 digits) so shoppers can quickly locate exact products viewed in the catalog on your website.

Unique strengths within each channel

Now although catalogs can be great selling tools, they are sometimes limited in their ability to provide deep levels of customer interactivity. Product content and imagery may be limited by catalog page space constraints, leaving the shopper with unanswered questions. In businesses with large assortments, not all products can make it into to the catalog. This can also create consumers being unaware of products that may meet their needs.

It is for these reasons why the web works so well with a catalog. The eCommerce store can tailor the user experience to meet the scenario needs of a visitor, while offering a complete selection of all products. The eCommerce store is able to reduce purchase hesitation by educating the customer through enhanced content, while simultaneously generating action through time sensitive promotions. Online components such as buying guides, comparison charts, or visualization tools, instill confidence on core product benefits – while cross/up sell functionality increase the average order value (AOV) of the sale.

Similar to how the catalog promoted the eCommerce business, it is important that the site promote the catalog as well. Online stores should provide the “quick shop” search capabilities mentioned earlier, provide the capability for a consumer to request a print catalog online, and also have a rich media version of the catalog online that can be emailed to a friend or family member.

When utilized together, an eCommerce store and a catalog can be a powerful way to drive incremental product demand. To maximize the potential of your online business, consider a multi-channel approach to meet the expectations and build the overall loyalty of your customer base.

CRAIG SMITH is the founder and managing director of Trinity Insight LLC, (http://www.trinityinsight.com), a consultancy dedicated to improving the ecommerce performance of multi-channel retailers. Trinity provides services in the areas of ecommerce strategic planning, interactive marketing, web analytics consulting and ecommerce user experience. Smith can be reached at 610-638-1047 or at csmith@trinityinsight.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Craig_A_Smith

http://EzineArticles.com/?Create-a-Catalog-to-Supplement-Your-eCommerce-Business&id=213520

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The process of setting up a drop shipping business is pretty simple. It can be broken down into six steps:

In this article, we will learn how to source for a drop shipper and how to do business with them.

Source For An Ideal Drop Shipper

There are several ways to find a drop shipper for your products. If you’re looking for a supplier based in the same country you’re living in, you can simply check the Yellow Pages or other business listings for wholesalers or manufacturers of your products.

Contact them by phone and inquire if they would like to enter a drop shipping partnership with you. Although many manufacturers and distributors are not willing to drop ship, some of them do offer drop shipping options. You may prefer to arrange face-to-face meetings with the drop shipper to discuss business issues like the wholesale prices of your products and also shipping. Face-to-face meetings build up an atmosphere of trust, which is beneficial for your business.

If the wholesaler or manufacturer of your products is based in a different country from where you live, the internet is the way to go for locating your drop shipper. Simply go to a search engine like Google, and search for ‘Your Product Keywords + Drop Shipper’ or ‘Your Product Keywords + Drop Shipping.’ Although there are indeed many drop shipping scams on the internet, you can still find reliable drop shippers if you conduct a thorough search.

In my opinion, the easiest way to source for a drop shipper of your products is by purchasing a Directory of Drop Shippers. The Drop Ship Source Directory by WorldWideBrands, Inc is the one I recommend. The company staff does research on the authenticity and reliability of the drop shippers, so you can be sure that the drop shipper you find on the Directory is dependable.

Doing Business With Drop Shippers

After locating a drop shipper of your choice, you have to decide on how you’re going to do business with your drop shipper.

First, most drop shippers require you to open a business account with them, and make an initial deposit with them to show your commitment as a retailer. The exact deposit value depends on the specific requirements of your drop shipper.

After starting an account with your drop shipper, you will then have to get your product images and descriptions, and incorporate them on the shopping cart of your website. Most drop shippers offer the product descriptions and images. If these are not available from the drop shipper, you will then need to write your own product descriptions, based on your own understanding of the product features, and also take your own pictures of the products.

Points To Note:

So far, you’ve learned the basic process of sourcing for drop shippers and how to start doing business with them. Apart from this, there are also several important issues you need to look out for.

One – be careful of ‘drop shipping’ scams on the internet. There are many ‘lists’ or ‘directories’ of drop shippers on the net that are actually padded with middlemen and resellers. They purchase the products from the wholesalers and manufacturers, and resell the products to you at a marked-up price. This can cut into your profit margin significantly, depending on how much they mark up the prices. Always be sure to choose a legitimate and established wholesaler/ drop shipper, and not a reseller.

Also, most middlemen or resellers are also ‘fly-by-night’ businesses. These are businesses that may disappear entirely when they run into slight financial difficulties, and are definitely non-dependable for the long term. This is another reason why you need to select a reliable and established wholesaler/ drop shipper, so that you can rely on them to continue supplying you with your products.

Thus, always select an established and reliable drop shipper for your products. You benefit from a higher profit margin, because the products come directly from the manufacturer/ wholesaler of the products (without any price mark-up in between). Your online drop ship business is also more likely to succeed if you have a consistent supply of products.

Ray Yee is the founder of Dropshipperscentral, a website that provides a wealth of informative articles, guides and resources on everything you’ll need to know about setting up a Drop Ship Business and marketing it. Click here for the Drop Ship Directory [http://www.dropshipperscentral.com] from [http://www.dropshipperscentral.com].

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ray_Yee

http://EzineArticles.com/?Sourcing-For-Drop-Shippers&id=206596

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Wondering what pages to include on your website and why? Here is a list of important information that should be included on your site.

Before you start thinking about what to write, it is important that you create a plan, which outlines what each page will contain. That way you won’t repeat yourself or forget vital information. The most common pages on successful websites include:

1. Home Page (First Page)

This is your “sales” page and should provide information about what you can do for your customers. It should also give your visitors a brief overview of what they can find on your site.

2. Products / Services

It is useful to have a separate page for each product/service and write as much detail about each as possible. Start each page with a brief summary of the product/service, then provide whatever information you can. If the page appears too long, you can always break it into more pages. When people are searching for information on the internet, they want to know it NOW. They don’t want to wait until tomorrow when they can speak to you on the phone. The more information you can provide about your products/services, the better.

3. Contact Us

Place contact details in as many places as possible. Make it easy for your customers to contact you. Create a special “Contact Us” page, include your details in “About Us” page and also at the bottom of each page. Information to include: business name, physical address, mailing address, telephone, fax, email, emergency number, website address.

4. Pricing

Whenever possible include the price of your products/services. Even if you can’t be specific. It is helpful to put at least a range of prices, eg. Carpet cleaning ranges between $40 – $60 per room.

5. Testimonials / Product Reviews / Before & After

Include testimonials from your current customer to show your potential clients that you are trustworthy, reliable and that you offer great service and/or products. Make sure the testimonials are real and if possible provide contact details of the person who supplied you with the testimonial. If you don’t have any right now, get them! Simply email your customers and ask for their feedback on your business and service. Most happy customers will gladly provide this.

You could also include before and after photos. Show the problem picture and beside it show the picture of resolution, with an explanation of your product’s benefits.

6. Frequently Asked Questions

This has proven to be a great time saver for many companies. Instead of having to answer the same questions over and over again, place them on your website and keep adding to them. The more information you have on your website, the less time you will need to spend answering questions by email or phone.

Frequently Asked Questions should address your customer’s concerns that may otherwise be an obstacle to making a sale.

7. Response form such as “Subscribe” or “Enquiry” form

An absolute must if you want to build a mailing list. Most people don’t like giving out too much information, so ask only the basics, such as Name and Email Address. Then keep in touch with your customers on a regular basis by sending out information that may be of interest to them. You may even wish to develop your own on-line magazine (ezine). There are many fantastic free or inexpensive programs that can handle this for you. We will discuss these in more detail in future articles.

8. On-line Magazine or Newsletter

This is a great marketing tool. Not only does it help you keep in touch with your customers, but provides your website with fresh content. You can set up your Ezine in 2 different ways:

1. Email subscribers on a regular basis or 2. Publish it on your website. Or both. Include information about your business, industry or anything that may be of interest to your customers.

9. Resources/Articles

Add value to your business. Provide information that is complementary to what you do. For example, if you sell wedding dresses include information about reception venues, wedding planners, wedding cakes, flowers. By adding extra information you encourage more hits.

10. About Us

This is a very important page as it tells your customer about who you are and why they should buy your products, services and/or trust your organization. It can also feature your business hours (if you have a bricks and mortar store) or when they can speak to someone live. Many companies also include their mission or purpose on this page, details of their staff (photos, biographies, qualifications), recently completed projects. Other information to include: ACN or ABN, logo, directions to your store/office.

11. Guarantee

Offer a money back guarantee. The longer the guarantee, the more effective it will be. It could be 30 days, 60 days, 1 year or lifetime.

12. Survey

Find out what customers think about your website, business or product.

13. Events Calendar

This can relate to your business or industry. If you are an artist, you can feature dates where and when your art will be displayed or if you are a singer, where you will be performing.

14. Search My Website Feature

Some visitors to your side may not know exactly what they want but if you include a search function on your site, they can look for it very easily. Like search engines, this feature will allow your visitors to type in a word or phrase and then search for it on your site. It’s like having your own mini search engines, only instead of it searching the world wide web, it just searches your website.

15. Return/Refund Policy

To make your customers feel more comfortable when making a transaction at your website, you should provide then with your return/refund policy. Ensure it is easy to understand and spelt out step by step.

16. Privacy Policy

Privacy continues to be a major issue for customers shopping online. Concerns about how their information is going to be used is a major barrier when making a sale. Internet shopping experience is built on trust and privacy is the number one ingredient in trust.

17. Site Map

A site map is similar to a contents. It shows visitors how the site is laid out and which sections are where.

18. Copyright Information

Your website should carry a copyright notice to protect its intellectual property. It is generally in the form of “Copyright

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