Baltimore Web Design Blog

july 23, 2010

Using Your Web Site to Sell

Though a company's Web site is always a sales tool, some Web sites sell directly to consumers via the Web. For these companies, there are additional Web design challenges that must be considered and that go well beyond the "look and feel" of the Web site. For e-commerce Web sites, there are multiple back-end development issues that can trip up any but the most seasoned Web developers. This makes it imperative to engage with a Web designer who understands the unique challenges of a site conducting online transactions and how best to maximize sales and minimize any transactional headaches for you or your customers.

Several special considerations for e-commerce sites that are different from non-commerce sites include:

Shopping cart. You will need shopping cart software on your site for people to make their purchases. This allows them to shop online, much as with a traditional store, and then “check out” and pay for their purchases

Security. People will be very wary of sharing their credit card information with your site if they are not completely confident in its security. You can assure them of this with security software and an online statement of your site's security.

Inventory. Make sure anything you are offering for sale on your site is actually available for purchase. If it is not, your customers will be disappointed and may not return in the future.

Analytics. For your e-commerce to be continually (and increasingly) successful, you will want your site to have analytics capabilities so you can analyze where your customer traffic originates, what they buy, and how often they return for additional purchases. This will help you with your future website marketing efforts.

Optimization. If people can not find your site, you will not sell much. Your Web site will need to be optimized for Web searches. This means that you will want to leverage the keywords commonly entered to find companies like yours and use them repeatedly in your Web content.

Because of the complexity of e-commerce sites, they are almost impossible for an amateur Web developer to do on his own and should not be attempted in-house unless the skillset already exists. You will want to work with a professional Baltimore Web design consultant to achieve both the quality and functionality you need for this level of Web presence. You will be glad you took the time to get this right as your sales and revenues increase.

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