The shopping cart software you use will determine the success of your ecommerce store because of the functionalities it must have in order for you to do the things necessary to succeed in eCommerce. You must optimize certain aspects of your shopping cart ecommerce platform in certain areas.
To ensure your ecommerce website success you must have a plan in place and have an idea what you're doing before you get started if not it will be a very long and hard road ahead for you. So, where do you start?
You have to make sure you choose the right shopping cart software to make sure you have the right platform to sell your product. There are many ecommerce shopping cart software companies out there so make sure you choose a reputable shopping cart. Make sure you do your research on the platform you choose as there are many resources out there for you to do so. Once you have chosen your platform, start thinking about your design and how you envision your website to look. Most ecommerce software's have ready-to-go templates that will allow you to choose a design and can literally be up and running in minutes.
You want to make sure you already have a logo in place and it's very important you have a nice and attractive color scheme. You must optimize your design and that starts with making sure the basic elements on your website are in the right place. One way to ensure that is use services such as CrazyEgg which is a heat map service that you can see where people are clicking the most. You can also use Google Analytics which is free of charge and also provides a site overlay that tells you where people are clicking the most. You should always be testing different buttons on your website such as add to cart' or buy now' on your products to see what is working best to make sure you're converting at optimal levels.
Once you have a layout of your website, you should start uploading your product. Before you do so, I strongly recommend doing comparison shopping on products you are selling and really study your competition. One common mistake among many starting in ecommerce is not doing enough research on their competition. Coming into 2010, the internet has grown to be a worldwide market place and in order to survive; you must compete with the very best. When creating your products and website, it is very important to have search engine optimization in mind. Search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing literally drive millions and millions of people a day through the web to different sites.
If you are selling a product, there is a big chance there are many people out there a day looking for it and you want to make sure your site has the visibility it needs. Your site should have the right meta tags, in all the product pages. Make sure your individual products are well optimized and that is achieved by making sure your meta tags are on point starting with the title and then to the content of the product. Search Engine Optimization is something that takes time so to get instant traffic, you can start Pay-Per-Click marketing which is offered by all the three major engines. Google, Yahoo, and Bing are great traffic drivers and depending on your product and keywords you choose, that will determine how much you pay per click. It is a good marketing model as you can really see your return on investment. Now you're ready to embark in the world of ecommerce and see how far you can take it.
Like all businesses, you must start little by little and with time and experience, you'll see different things you can implement to your ecommerce strategy. It is essential you have the basics down to begin your ecommerce business. There is a ton of great content on ecommerce on the web, so make sure you read ecommerce publications and blogs and that should get you ahead.
