How to build an #ecommerce store

Advansys create award winning ecommerce solutions that can be scaled to give you a global presence with our multi-lingual and multi-currency modules.

The biggest headache for most retailers is managing their multiple channels: ecommerce, telephone, retail shops, and marketplaces such as eBay, Amazon and Play.com.

Advansys provided 10 top tips on how to build an ecommerce store:

1. Quality Design
   A quality design takes care of the customer’s first impressions of your ecommerce website. A quality design gives a boost to both customer confidence and will help in the decision making process immensely.
2. Fast load times
   A very attractive site is a bonus but no customer is going to stick around to see it if the site takes more than a few
   seconds to load. A faster load time gives a double advantage as Search engines favour faster sites in their listings pages.
3. Attractive products
   It sounds obvious but make sure that your product images are well shot and consistently styled. If you can, try to use your own photography and not the images supplied by the manufacturer, that way you can keep styles
   consistent and also add some extra value to the images, maybe an angle of the product that is unavailable on other sites selling the same thing.
4. Simple delivery rules
   Keeping your delivery rules as simple as possible means that you will have less customer confusion, lower support call volumes and also greater customer confidence that the actual product will arrive in the time stated.
5. Transparency of contact information
   Keeping your information clear on the site is a good start to reducing the number of support calls you receive, but when a customer really does need your assistance it is a good confidence booster for them to be able to find your contact details easily and to actually talk to a person on the phone. This will ensure them that your company is honest and genuine and once the support issue is resolved will result in a good deal of customer loyalty.
6. Promotions
   Running promotions on your site is a great way to gain new customers and to reward customer loyalty. It is also a great way to clear out old stock without having a bargain bin, or discount section which you may feel is inappropriate for your company’s image
7. SEO optimise
   Make sure that your content pages, product text and any other content on your site is rich in keywords relating to your target audience and your products. This will help boost your site’s performance in Google and other search engines.
8. Customer Feedback
   While opening your site up to customer feedback may be a risk it is invaluable in building customer loyalty and confidence. It will also act as an early warning system for products that may not perform as expected and let you discontinue that line before poor performance of a product affects your site’s reputation
9. Easily managed CMS
   While not technically something that affects your customers directly, an easily managed CMS lets you keep content on the site fresh, add new product lines easily and update feedback entries in a timely fashion, all of which
   will keep customers interested and loyal to your company.
10. Straight forward checkout
    Keeping the checkout process simple will ensure that sales go through with no fuss, no panic and no calls from customers who have missed part of the payment process and think that there is an error. Keeping payment processes simple also mean that customers will feel that the site is safe and after an initial order they will surely return for more.

Discover how to generate more revenue online and how to turn visitors into customers at Ecommerce and Payments World Middle East