There are many suggestions as to what makes a good ecommerce website and I have thrown together a few suggestions that I would say are key:
1- Plenty of product information: when adding content to your site it is important to have as much detail as you can. When a customer is in a shop looking at the products they are looking to buy BUT online your eye is their eye.
2- Use images: a good range of images (where appropriate) will support you product description. If selling clothes or jewellery take images of different part of the product such as front and back.
3- Have a variety of payment methods: Ultimately, your site is there to sell your products and the way to help this is to make it as easy as possible for them to carry out the transaction. The customer will need to feel their payment is secure so using payment tools such as paypal will put them at ease.
4- Product guarantees: If you have any kinds of guarantees with your products you should display this on you ecommerce website. It is quite common to offer a full money back guarantee with online transactions which is recommended to increase your sales as the customer feel less at risk.
5- A Privacy Policy: Make sure you clearly state what you plan to do with any customer information that you receive and have all information written in the privacy policy. This is a very important topic currently with a lot of people information being lost and people are wary of giving out personal details. Trust is important with a website and the customer, breach of this can result in bad things being spread about the site.
6- Encourage returning customers: Allow your customers to stay up to date with new products or services available through your site. This can be done with news letters and emails. Also giving out promotional offers to returning customers or people that sign up for your updates. This will encourage a feeling of loyalty from your customers and they are likely to pass the word onto friends.
These are just a few ways I feel maximising your ecommerce website will work for you. Of course, you have to work with what suits you and your business, but generally these things are generic must haves! Good luck with your website and remember its coming up to Christmas so it is a great time to really push your promotions and get people to your site.
Lisa Finneral is a web marketing assistant researching ecommerce website