Don't lose sales from these 5 stupid mistakes!

June 9, 2008 | 1 Comment

Some of the most simple mistakes will undoubtedly lose your website sales. What's most unfortunate about these mistakes, is that you probably had a guaranteed sale until you irritated or scared your customer enough for them to find another store to shop at.

Mistake 1 (Old dates and information):

The internet is a very dynamic machine. When a visitor shows up on your website and sees your copyright date "Copyright © Anything < This Year" it instantly brings up questions. Are these prices still correct? Is this company even in business?

Unless your website has an enormous amount of perceived trust and you have a very strong brand (in which case your copyright date would most definitely be current), you will undoubtedly lose sales from this date alone.

The same thing goes for about us pages, and other information pages that can be date specific. If your about us page states that you specialize in computers with Windows 98, and Windows 2000 while Windows Vista is the current release, it brings up questions to which there is no good answer.

Mistake 2 (SSL related error messages):

I come across sites on a daily basis that serve up secure pages with some problem in their SSL configuration. When you send a visitor to a SSL protected page, there is a good reason for it. And, when an error message precedes that secure connection, all confidence in your security is lost. If you can't figure out how to properly encrypt a website / page / sub-domain without errors, you need to hire someone who can.

Does this make you want to continue checking out?

Also, to help prevent this from ever happening, make sure you do not permanently install mis-configured ssl certificates. If you do get a ssl error, make sure not to click the permanently allow this connection option.

Mistake 3 (Not showing payment and shipping options immediately):

You should display your accepted payment methods on every page of your website! Don't make your customer click on the about us, faq, or any other link to get this information. I've got securely hosted credit card logos here, if you need them.

You should display the shipping options and prices as soon as technically possible, on the shopping cart page is best! Also, do not make your user enter all of their shipping or billing information, (or worse yet, make them register) before you give them shipping prices. Much of the time, your customer won't even consider filling out that much information just to get an idea of how much shipping will cost.

Use a single zip field to calculate shipping and ask for the rest of their information further in the checkout process.

Mistake 4 (Improper add-to-cart functions):

With the Web 2.0 craze going on, it's common to see spiffy Ajax and dynamic add to cart functions where some small area of the website is updated when an item is added to a shopping cart. This is not only a bad idea, but it can be usability suicide.

While these actions may seem obvious to you, a lot of users don't notice a small box being updated, and it's rarely what a shopper is expecting to happen. It's always best to redirect your user to a shopping cart each time they add something to it. You can then provide a return to last item / category / brand or whatever else link from the shopping cart page as needed.

Mistake 5 (Poor internal search):

Google became popular because their search results were quick, and highly relevant. Search function on your website is extremely important, and should be quick and relevant. You need to be able to account for things like misspellings and incomplete words. If you don't have the ability to implement a solid search function yourself, you should look for a 3rd party application to use. If your website is well indexed, Google offers a custom search engine that you can integrate into your website.

The only thing worse than showing bad search results is showing none at all.

Posted by jestep | Filed Under Development, General, Usability

Oh my stock, photos that suck

January 30, 2008 | 12 Comments

Almost every website with any resemblance of professionalism uses stock photography. Although it is usually very high resolution, it is so often very low in realism.

Do people actually respond to fake, photographs? Only your own testing can tell for sure, but one thing's for certain, if the images on your site are actually unique and speak to your customers, you have an advantage over everyone else.

Here's my favorite examples of the too-stock photography that we see everywhere!

Posted by jestep | Filed Under Development, Marketing

Adding Google Business search to your ecommerce website

July 19, 2007 | 17 Comments

The internet is abuzz with news of Google's new business custom search engine. Google is allowing business sites to have their own custom search engine for $100 per year (<5,000 pages) or $500 per year (up to 50,000) pages. This includes some cool reporting and an XML API so that you can customize to your heart's content.

After messing around with Google's javascript code I decided to write my own little script to better integrate it into my website. The javascript code was giving me some major problems with the width of my pages, so I canned it and went to their XML version of the search function.

The following is a very simple php & html script that you can use for your own Google business search engine. It was made for a php5 server as it uses the built-in simpleXML class. Save this in a separate file, configure one or two lines based on your Google search account, use php to include it between in the body of your site, and that's it.

Posted by jestep | Filed Under Development, Scripts

Ecommerce How-to List for Do-it-yourself'ers

May 16, 2007 | 2 Comments

Following a post from Matt Cutts, I have been collecting how to's every time I come across one that I use. I have about 900 saved up now, in just about every area imaginable.

There are so many how to guides that people need for running their ecommerce website's. With that in mind, this is a list of very useful how to's related to ecommerce. Hopefully this post will be a good resource for site owners, and those looking to get into ecommerce. Topics include everything from setting up a web server, marketing, to integrating a website with a payment gateway.

Posted by jestep | Filed Under Development, General, Marketing, PPC, SEO, Security, Usability

Want a better ecommerce site, learn by example.

March 9, 2007 | 4 Comments

I along with thousands of website owners am always trying to improve my ecommerce sites. Hopefully that little font tweak that I make half asleep at midnight will lead to some huge increase in sales. Most likely not, but maybe…

In truth, one of the best ways to get good ideas about what to change on your website, is by looking at other websites that have their crap together. Not every mega site does the right things, and you definitely don't want to go start incorporating every bell and whistle that you can find, but these sites spend a lot of money on testing, so if they have some feature on their site, is it normally for a reason.

Here are some sites with very good features, some of which may be a good idea for your website. These are only ecommerce sites that sell products through a shopping cart and checkout system.

Posted by jestep | Filed Under Development, Usability

Some Excellent Free Vectors

February 13, 2007 | 3 Comments

I recently was referred to a website giving away free vector elements for websites.

http://www.bittbox.com/

There are some great buttons, glass shapes, backgrounds, headers and a lot more. The blog looks new, but the free stuff is super high quality. Check them out

Posted by jestep | Filed Under Development

Using Ajax with a Business Website

October 18, 2006 | 3 Comments

Taking a step away from my previous post critisizing the use of Ajax and other dynamic website features, Ajax does have uses in business and other website designs. Ajax has an ability to simplify a user's experience on a website when used properly. It 'can' provide very user friendly interfaces that work smoothly, quickly, and better than traditional programming.

However, Ajax creates a usability gap when a measurable percentage of visitors don't have javascript enabled on their web browser. Coincidentally, business and ecommerce websites are a group that often has that measurable percentage. Traditionally, business and ecommerce websites and their images in general rely on clean, simple, and static features. Their visitors know exactly what to expect, what to do, and how to so it, and that creates stability both in the minds of customers, and for the people running the website.

For business websites, care should always be taken to provide non-javascript friendly alternatives because the visitors without the ability to interact with the Ajax application, may be the best customers.

A savvy website owner asks the question, How can I integrate Ajax into my business website while still maintaining a usable website with a professional appearance?

Here is my list of usable Ajax for the business and ecommerce website.

Posted by jestep | Filed Under Development, Usability