subject: Take Time To Perfect Your Retail Site [print this page] Take Time To Perfect Your Retail Site Take Time To Perfect Your Retail Site
Your site has the ability to make or break your product sales, so spend as much time getting it right as your products.
As any retailer and manufacture knows, developing a new product can take a very long time. From concept to creation, you're probably used to seeing several years pass for certain projects, while others can be rushed from drawing board to the real world in a matter of months. While this process can be frustrating for all those involved, most successful business people know that it can't be rushed. If you want a quality product, you often have to wait until it has been carefully designed, tested and tweaked.
While the majority of businesses understand this process perfectly, many seem to be unable to apply the same logic to their online campaign. There are a significant number of businesses who seem to believe that, unlike their actual products, they can rush a web campaign, fail to give it the amount of time and attention it deserves, and still expect to see good results. However, this is clearly not very often the case.
It's true that the immediacy of the online communication can mean some businesses enjoy quick wins when they implement new online strategies or improve their websites, but successes such as these are often few and far between. As a general rule, the best way to ensure you are making the most of your business and its web presence is to create a long term plan to grow your brand and position in the online sphere.
This means that instead of treating your website as something you can play around with in the hope of attracting more customers willy nilly, you need to assess the capabilities of your current site and have a good look at ways to improve them. For example, rather than rush into changes on your site when you introduce a new product range and notice no one is buying, you should spend plenty of time analysing the reasons behind their failure to purchase.
There are a variety of ways you can examine your site in this respect, from having a look at the bounce rate of your pages to checking where potential customers are abandoning their journey. Additionally, you could find that things such as a session of user testing could give you some valuable insight to the way customers navigate and perceive your site.
By working with a specialised consultant, you can also ensure that all potential changes to your site have been vetted for their suitability and that you will not inadvertently damage positive aspects to your web presence - such as your search engines rankings - by making false or unnecessary changes to your site. Don't plump for redesigns that seem like a short term win, but end up being a failure for your business instead. Conversion rate optimisation, usability assessments and technological audits can help you make sure that when you use your site to promote new products, you are doing it in the best possible way for your business in the long term.
