subject: How To Build Professional Looking Web Sites With Free Ecommerce Templates [print this page] As competition heats up among the many ecommerce solution providers out there, merchants and reaping the benefits. Because of the stiff competition, ecommerce software companies are offering lower prices and topping it off with free useful features like free ecommerce templates, free live chat software and content sliders.
That said, many merchants are still not too convinced about using free ecommerce templates for their stores. Many still associate free templates with low quality designs which look like they were designed by a 5 year old. Who can blame them, really. Back in the day, shopping cart software creators seemed as though they were providing free templates just so they could claim they were giving out something for free with their software. They soon realised that crappy looking template designs were not considered value added by merchants.
Since then, designs of free ecommerce templates have improved tremendously with the trend leaning towards more simplistic Web 2.0 type designs.
But how a page appears does not only depend on free ecommerce templates solely. There are many other shopping cart features which are also available for free that may also influence a page's appearance considerably.
Take the content slider for instance. We all know that moving images help attract the attention of visitors and thus helps make a page more 'sticky'. If a page is more sticky, perhaps visitors will tend to remain longer on the site and have a look around, probably buying an item or two in the process.
Content sliders are an available feature with many shopping cart solutions and there are available for free. Merchants can manipulate the size of the slider window and place them on various pages. Creating links from slides to pages improves internal linking. Sliders are great for promotional purposes as well as a good cross selling tool.
Take care not to overdo the designs and text on the slider images. Keep in mind that just like everything else on the page, they must be functional. What I usually do is ask myself, before I add anything to a page, what do I want visitors to do after they see this. That helps me keep things in focus. It also helps make it easier for visitors to make up their minds.
Think of it this way, a visitor takes less time to consider 3 options than 10. And the possibility of visitors taking a positive action on any of the 3 options is higher because they are still in the zone and their thought process has not been derailed by too many options.
So before selecting a free ecommerce template, think about what you want your page to look like and what you want the elements on the page to achieve. Use other shopping cart example stores as a guide. Do not worry about not getting the mix right the first time, no one does. Tweak things here and there until you get the optimum result.
How To Build Professional Looking Web Sites With Free Ecommerce Templates
