The Purposes of E-commerce Website and Web design

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Since the importance of eCommerce website is increasing day by day, the importance of e-commerce web design is also increasing. Before going to discuss about E-commerce web design, everyone should know about e-commerce website, and its purposes. Here are some details of E-commerce Website and Web Design.

Introduction to E-commerce website

E-commerce means “Electronic Commerce”, which term is also used for “selling on the internet” or “online-shopping”. E-commerce is a kind of trading, products or services; which is conducted via the internet. Electronic Commerce includes many categories into a single platform, such as online funds transfer, internet marketing, electronic data interchanging, supply chain management, online transaction processing, and data collecting. Into this awesome business platform a business can receive their orders, sell their products and receive their payments through online. Modern people are well-known with this term, as now they like to get their purchase done from their own home. Thats why; now almost all businesses started building e-commerce website to increase their selling and spread their business to the customers of all over the world. That is why; these business people are giving much importance on eCommerce web design much.

Why do people want to build an E-commerce website?

You may have already known that E-commerce refers to the modern selling method where a business store can sell their products both psychically and digitally. If you have a departmental store in your local area market, you can sell your products to your local customers who used to visit your store physically. But, how can you reach your products to those, who dont have enough time to come into your store. E-commerce web design will help you in this regard. You can sell to the remote customer by offering your website to them. Your customer will visit your shopping site, choose their products and place order to your website. You just need to have a representative team to supply customers products at their home.
From the below list you will be able to know why most of the businesses consider on a successful eCommerce web design.

An e-commerce website enables a business person to get their potential customers worldwide.
E-commerce web design will help you to build your second store in online. So, you can sell your products both to the local customers and remote customers.
Having an electronic commerce website will make you more dedicated to your services. You will get reviews of your existing customers. That means, it is the platform where a seller and a customer can interact even after selling of a product.
It is not possible for a customer to know the details of your business, but with your eCommerce website you can allow your customer to know about your company, its background and the purpose of starting the business.
Your eCommerce website will save your customers valuable time. Modern people are too busy to come to your store to buy their products. An easy-to-use e-commerce web design will help those busier people get their products at hand.
Consider E-commerce Web design before starting your e-commerce website.
Though, it seems easier to start an e-commerce website and sell products to customers, but it requires a lot of tasks. You need to consider on “E-commerce Web design” very carefully. Most of the expert eCommerce businesses emphasize on these following factors. You can also consider on these.
1)The key to success in every electronic business is “content”. It is one of the most important things for a successful e-commerce web design. Using content you can provide useful and interesting information to visit your website and buy products. Update the site with fresh and high quality articles to increase your business sells.
2)Another thing that you need to consider for eCommerce web design is a well-planned structure.
3)The E-commerce website design comes in next. When you have well-written content and well-prepared structure, you should design your eCommerce website by allowing simplicity, consistency and readability.
4)Navigation comes to the 4th place for an excellent E-commerce web design. When it is about sites navigation, dont make it too complex. Make the internal and external link simple and easy-to-use to the customers.
5)”SEO” is another important thing that you should consider for eCommerce web design. It is the best method to increase your selling and getting more potential customers.
E-commerce website is required not only to increase sells, but also for solving customers problems. So, while you are designing an e-commerce website, you should maintain some proper guidelines.

The E-sign Act and UETA, Two Laws that Enabled E-Commerce

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Two laws were passed with the intention of making electronic signatures valid as a regular means of validation. These two laws are the ESIGN Act and the UETA, both of which made a lot of positive changes possible for e-commerce. Both laws have expanded the functions of electronic signatures, ushering in many new ways for companies to do business in the modern world. E-commerce is now alive and well, thanks to the passing of both laws which particularly support new business practices geared towards online business operations. Both the UETA and the E-sign Act are there to support and protect electronic signatures and the documents they are in, and have provided many benefits for e-businesses in the process.

The E-sign Act is officially known as the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act, and is one of the United States laws that facilitate the use of electronic signatures and records for legal electronic contracts and documents both for interstate and international transactions. The E-sign Act makes sure that electronic documents are made legal and scrutinized under similar legal effects as regular paper documents. Nowadays, electronic records and signatures are considered just as valid and effective as regular paper contracts and documents thanks to the E-sign Act. Because of that, these e-documents are also under similar regulations as those imposed on paper documents.

The UETA (Uniform Electronic Transactions Act) is an act that was originally proposed by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws. The NCCUSL has since then influenced the District of Columbia, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and 47 local states into absorbing similar regulations within their own laws. The UETAs purpose works hand in hand with the E-sign Act as a means of having a governing law that concerns the retention of paper records and the use of electronic processes to validate e-documents as an alternative.

Prior to the UETA, physical copies and printouts of many documents were required by most states. This presented a problem with regards to storage and production of waste, especially in the case of banks, where every check had to be kept in storage for processing. The UETA made it possible for these companies to use paperless processes instead of handling physical paperwork all the time. Keeping everything in electronic data form not only makes storage a lot easier and less space consuming, but also supports the green movement by eliminating a lot of paper wastes and the need for carbon production via paper production.

The E-sign Act and the UETA have both contributed to the now widespread use of electronic signatures in many industries. Companies have seen the many benefits that these laws offer, and are looking at other ways to maximize the convenience present in using electronic signatures and records. The ease of use has helped many companies in wrapping up even the most complex transactions and business deals within a day. With the ongoing trend of businesses going towards web site-driven operations, these laws have definitely made the future of e-commerce a lot brighter.

Ways that Website Analytics Can Save Your Online Business

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Website analytics is probably the last thing an online business owner wants to worry about. With 15 things to do every day before 10 am and another 50 to do before you can call it a day, sitting down in front of a bunch of web traffic stats seems like a waste of time. While I agree with the sentiment, it’s completely wrong. In fact, website analytics should be the first and last thing you review every day and I’ll give you three reasons why:

1. Web Analytics Help You Detect Fraud and Incompetence

Have you hired an SEO expert? PPC marketer? Social media guru? If you have people on staff or retain contractors to help you with your site, website analytics are your best friend.

Forget about the reports these experts create because all stats and data can be manipulated or ommitted. What you need is raw, reliable data to calculate the ROI of the services you are paying for.

Specifically, programs like Google Analytics can help you quickly isolate specific traffic streams and provide a host of useful data to calculate ROI, including:

Conversion Rate of Specific Traffic Channels
Conversion Rate for Specific Targeted Keywords
Average Time on Site for Specific Traffic Streams
Bounce Rate for Specific Traffic Streams

Of course, the conversion rate data for specific traffic streams (or Internet marketing experts) will help you calculate the ROI. But the average time on site will also help provide a rough gauge of overall traffic strength. If a specific traffic channel can’t keep visitors on site for more than 2 minutes, the traffic is either weak or you have significant issues on your landing pages.

2. Web Analytics Help Assess Site Health

To put that another way, web analytics essentially help show you where you need to invest your money most to boost online profits. Specifically, website traffic analytics will help you assess:

A. Traffic Strength
B. Sales Funnel Effectiveness
C. Shopping Cart Function and Conversion Rate
D. Website Conversion Rate and Rates for Specific Services/Products

For instance, high bounce rates and low average time on site typically indicate weak traffic or exceptionally poor landing pages. You can confirm which by looking at the data for specific traffic streams to see if there are significant variations in performance. If there are, then the issue is likely a weak traffic stream but if all channels are doing poorly, it’s more likely to be landing page.

The point is, the data tell you what’s wrong with your site so you can best channel your investment dollars to the most critical areas.

3. Web Analytics Eliminates Needless Split Testing

In most cases, optimization of landing pages and product descriptions is completed via split testing. That is, decide what sales tool you want to test (like a headline or CTA) and then create a new one to split test against. If your new sales tool performs better, conversions will increase and your hard work rewarded. However, this is rarely how it works.

You see, the thing people always forget about split testing is it’s sheer expense. To statistically verify even a lead gen site with a non-monetized CTA, you need at least 1,000 visitors or more to each version.

So if you think a landing page or product description might have problems with the headline, value proposition, and credibility tools, that’s at least 3 tests you need to run at 2,000 visitors per test. At even $1 a click, you can see how that would get very expensive, very quickly.

And the worst part: You have no idea if the headline, value prop, or credibility tools are even suppressing conversions. You are just split testing one sales tool versus a new one and hoping for the best, seriously.

But with web analytics, you can pinpoint the issues and eliminate the guesswork saving loads in unnecessary testing costs and content creation.

In conclusion, web analytics really are vital to your online success because they provide you with an accurate assessment of site health and your investments in traffic generating services. If you don’t know the true health of your site, then how can you possibly know what it needs to grow and be more profitable?

Benefits of e-Commerce Website Design

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In this era of technological advancement an increasing number of people prefer to do business transactions via internet. More and more businesses hire a company to design and develop e-commerce websites, considered a vital aspect in the process of using the internet to help increase sales of their respective products and services. As a result, e-commerce websites have become indispensable, as most commercial enterprises have their own e-commerce websites through which the organizations interact with their customers in addition to selling their products and services.

It is imperative to take into account certain factors that influence e-commerce website design. Appropriate images and pictures should be utilized in order to make the e-commerce website visually appealing. Making a good impression and grabbing the customers attention depends on the design and layout of the website. It is important to maintain a professional look which is also user friendly and not complex. Including a search engine and advanced filters would ensure that customers will have access to the product easily. Keeping your site uncluttered and navigable is essential in order to enable the visitors to obtain the necessary products and information.

Generally, a customer does not like to spend more than 30 seconds in the process of evaluating a website. Therefore, it is important that the customer gets the information he or she is searching for within that time. As a result it is possible that they would explore the website ultimately making a purchase. An effective e-commerce website therefore, must be able to give a business this advantage over others.

A merchant account that accepts all types of credit cards is essential for the success of an e-commerce website. Install a secure server and a reliable payment getaway to ensure that the customers information is safeguarded and verified at the same time. For this purpose, use companies that offer SSL certificates.

E-commerce websites help create new business opportunities with potential customers, potential business associates and new product manufacturers. Customers who initially did not know you existed will know about you, and other businesses will approach you about partnership opportunities.

Another benefit of an e-commerce site is that it gives you the ability to possess unlimited store hours, providing your customers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week access to shop and buy products and services from you. In addition, brand or product awareness will increase as you will be able to reach out to millions of consumers all over the world.

A bitter taste in the mouth

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We’ve had our first ‘negative’ experience since starting www.LensLocker.co.uk. Not one, but two of our orders did not came back! Obviously we have had a few occasions where parcels have turned up late, nonetheless, in such cases a quick call to the customer has confirmed that the lens or camera has been returned and the delay is with the courier.

Not this time around…..despite all of our efforts we have been not able to contact the customer on the phone, email or letter, and we now have recognized that we’re highly unlikely to retrieve our photography gear.

We’ve spent a couple of days feeling hopeful (maybe they will arrive!), frustrated, disappointed, angry and then very angry! I am now feeling resigned that this type of thing happens and hopeful the police, which are now involved, will have the ability to allow us to resolve this case.

As the whole experience leaves very bitter taste the only factor that we’re certain of is the fact that we must learn from this experience. What will we do in order to minimise the danger without deterring customers from using our services? So what can we provide when it comes to delivery and collection which supplies added assurance our equipment is going to be sent back? What further inspections are we able to do ahead of time to flag potential risks? These are things that have now been pushed very rapidly towards the top of my ‘to do’ list!

Despite this slight setback we still love our business and helping our customers. We’re ongoing to further develop the business and we our expanding our selection of equipment and our stock levels. We take great pride within the service we provide and we’re getting receiving great customer feedback. We are starting new and exciting offers, we are keeping our website fresh with new ad banners and pages and we are working with our designers to ensure we are getting the most from our stock and our website.

And also the best little bit of news now….we hit number two for several key phrases around the search engines like Google – pretty good for a company which is not even 6 months old.