5 Essentials For Your Ecommerce Website
Make the most of your business website by including these 5 elements.
No one likes a slow, clunky website. In fact, no one likes a slow, clunky website with a garish design. And absolutely no one likes a slow, clunky website with a garish design which is hard to navigate. When you’re taking the online business plunge and setting up your very first website, there are a whole host of things you need to remember and include. There is also a range of decisions to be made, and you must give them some serious consideration if you hope to become a contender online.
The online business market is so incredibly competitive that you can’t afford not to get a thumbs up for each of these elements:
1. A simple, memorable domain name.
Before you actually get down to designing and building your website you need a web address to park it at. Your domain name is a vital part of your business website as many of your site visitors will find their way onto your site using it. For this reason it’s important to ensure it’s simple, memorable and as short as possible. Domain names which are easy to remember and type into a browser bar will serve your site well; consider registering a new generic top level domain (gTLD) if your preferred .com is unavailable.
2. A pleasing layout.
Just what constitutes a good-looking website is much disputed among web designers, entrepreneurs and online shoppers alike. One tip we would give is to keep things simple and as neutral as possible; garish colour schemes will send site visitors running from your site, and if there’s too much going on it can make it hard for customers to actually reach and get through the checkout.
3. A simple sitemap.
No matter how much money you throw at your website, it won’t be effective if it is difficult to navigate. Ensure that your customers can see just where they need to go to make their purchase: “buy it now” and “add to cart” buttons should be prominent on each product profile and “checkout” should be available from every page.
4. Good quality content.
Content truly is king in the world of online business. Your business website should showcase every aspect of your organisation with relevant, informative content geared towards your customers. Your content will form a large part of your search engine optimisation efforts; Google will crawl your whole website to determine how useful it is for internet users and rank it accordingly. Make sure you provide valuable information that will be useful to your potential customers.
5. A powerful web hosting solution.
Website visitors will typically abandon a website if it takes longer than two seconds to load, so you need a powerful web hosting solution to make sure your site loads at lightning speed. For small business websites a shared hosting solution may be suitable, although once your site gains popularity a dedicated server will provide you with the resources you need to keep your site up and running smoothly around the clock.
To create a stunning site which works seamlessly across all devices automatically, check out our Online Shop Builder. With over 140 professionally designed templates and a simple drag-and-drop feature for easy customisation, Online Shop Builder is the ideal ecommerce site builder for your business.