Making your website as effective as possible at helping visitors to find what they want  isn’t difficult, here are some points to consider. If they can find what they want then they are more likely to get in touch with you. Take a look at your website and see how many of our tips you have already implemented and if there are some others you could add to your pages.

Visible contact details
You can make life easier for visitors to your website by including your contact details on every page. This doesn’t take up much space and it makes certain that whatever page they land on (if they have found you via a search engine they may not necessarily land on your homepage) they can call or email you when they see the product or service they are interested in, or if they want to ask you a question. Contact details can be included at the top of each page, perhaps close to your logo to reinforce who they are calling. Also place your details at the bottom of the page in the footer so it doesn’t matter if your page scrolls when customers browse your website.

Place links to any social networking accounts that you control to allow customers to contact you in a way that suits them. Your customers may want to find out more about you than what appears on your website and making it easy for them to follow your day-to-day activities on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn can help to build their trust in your brand.

Where are you located?
Having a map and address listed for your office reassures web visitors because it shows them you have a real presence, not just a virtual one. It can also be highly relevant if they want to visit you or make a purchase that would need to be collected or courier dispatched as distance from your office could make or break their decision to buy. Your map could be quite a simple drawing representing local main roads and any significant landmarks or you could choose to use a mapping service like the one Google provides.

Your image
Having photographs of you, your staff and your premises helps people to recognise you, making you more ‘real’, and assists customers to find your premises. The photographs you use should be taken with care. Consider if you can see other company premises or signs, rubbish, dilapidated cars and vans that block the view of your building.  Take the photo on a day with reasonable weather and bear in mind a photo taken in sunshine creates a positive image. When taking photographs of people make sure that they appear professional and well-groomed and try to make sure the lighting used is flattering, natural daylight is often better than fluorescent strip lights. Also, what background will appear behind these people? Try to avoid also photographing plug sockets, untidy office interiors and mountains of unfiled paperwork.

Tips for finding stock photographs online.

When they do decide to make contact
Make sure you have a method for collecting contact requests that come in from your website and put someone in charge of responding. If there is a form on the website when customers part with their contact details in order to ask you a question or to request information they will expect a response in return for disclosing their contact information. The opportunity to make contact with a new customer and to make a good forst impression should not be missed.

Your company newsletter
Concentrate on writing your newsletter with the interests of your customers at the front of your mind if you want them to actually read it and recommend it to others. A newsletter full of sales messages and company news that is only of interest to your staff will not encourage customers to eagerly open the next edition when it arrives. It should also be well written and checked for spelling and grammatical errors before being sent. Don’t neglect to include you logo and contact details with your newsletter so customers can use it as a way to contact you if they want to.

Feedback and testimonials
Genuine testimonials on your website are helpful because they build up a useful picture of your services for other customers. Build up a collection of testimonials so that you can regularly change them on the website, have a process in place and put someone in charge of asking every customer if they would provide feedback.

Blog about your business
Like your newsletter, blog about issues that will interest your customers about your products and services and the hot topics in your industry sector. Show your customers that you are an expert in what you do by writing about it and help to build up customer confidence in your ability. A blog can also help your search engine rankings by providing updated content on a regular basis.

Read our Top 10 Blogging Tips

Review your website
Spend time reviewing the pages on your website and check that there are no unfinished pages or pages that could benefit from expanded information or better images to illustrate your products or services. Your customers may need more information before making a purchase and incomplete information and unfinished pages will not help you to win their business.

If you need help to review your website we offer a website MOT

Like this? Try these:

Top ten tips for your e-commerce website
Forget the technology, it’s all about sales and marketing
The unofficial ‘rules’ that make great web pages visitors want to read

Looking for new web design ideas?

Visit our web design gallery.

This article originally appeared in our company magazine ‘The Bulletin’ where we write about design, websites and marketing for small to medium sized businesses.  For your free copy please contact us.

An e-commerce website needs careful consideration and planning beyond the normal preparation for designing a website, that is to say what it will look like and how many pages will be needed. The reason being that it will be more than just a “sales and marketing” window on the world, in the majority of cases it will be that business’s only interaction with their customers, so the buying, ordering and fulfilment process must be faultless

So what do you need to consider before setting up an e-commerce website?

What countries or regions will you operate in, i.e. just the UK, EU or globally?
Technically from the web developer perspective it is not a problem. But what tax issues might that raise with Customs and Excise? Do you know which customers you should charge VAT to and those you shouldn’t? Do you understand what tax records you will need to keep and what information you will need to supply to a customer on an invoice/receipt?

Delivery and carriage
This can be a problem, our advice is to keep it simple, but you have to consider your typical order value. Many retailers of low ticket priced items just write off goods lost in transit, or customer claims that goods never arrived, as it is the cheapest option. This may not be something that you can afford or wish to do with a higher price items, so your chosen delivery company will need to offer a parcel tracking facility, and your customer will have to sign for their goods.

Which currencies will your website accept?
The universal Web currency is the US Dollar, but is that appropriate in all your markets?

Language?
If overseas markets are important to your business, should you provide multi language versions of your website?

Consider the logistics of running the website, the areas where online retailers traditionally struggle are:

Order tracking
Website software can include order status information, but for most small retailers that has to be updated by a member of staff.

Returns and refunds
Clear terms and conditions can avoid a lot of problems from the outset.

Stock control
Not realising the space and money required to keep reasonable stock levels, on line shoppers expect next day or delivery in at least 3 to 5 working days not weeks.

Dealing with product enquiries and technical information requests
Failing to provide enough or confusing information on your website at best will generate a lot more work in dealing with questions and enquiries, at worst your customers will go elsewhere.

Credit card fraud
Depending on what you are selling you need to be aware of this problem. Consumer electronics and IT are seen as high risk by the credit card companies and they will charge you a higher fee or impose strict conditions. Do not use the terminal in your shop or office to process website transactions before checking with your card processing company as you may find that you will not be covered for loss or fraud.

Making day to day website updates and adding new products
Most of the sites we build have content management to allow shop owners to update and add products, but most still struggle as they did not appreciate how long it takes to collate the information about a new product, work out its retail price, source and choose the right photographs and then compose the words of the description.

Marketing
Time will be needed on a regular basis to market the site, be that Google Adwords, search engine optimisation or traditional advertising in key journals and the press, it all takes time.

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If you need help with an e-commerce project then contact David Woodroofe on 01962 737989 or david@createdesignstudio.co.uk.

Useful Links:

The unofficial ‘rules’ that make great webpages visitors want to read
Create Design Studio Web Design and Build Services