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E-Commerce: Selling Online Tutorials
Basics / Site Layout Considerations
Subtitles of the Movie (E-Commerce: Selling Online / Basics / Site Layout Considerations)
In this lesson, let's talk about your Site Layout Considerations for an E-commerce site. When you begin to create a new site, or maybe you just want to revamp your old E-commerce site, there are some key features you need to institute. Every single thing you have available on your site needs to be customer centered. If you want to make a profit, customers need to be your main focus. They need it easy to purchase the item and finish the payment. Now the first thing you need to think about is, when you open your site is it obvious what you're selling? Right here, VTC software training. It's very obvious what they're selling and what their purpose is. Make sure that it's really obvious on your site. Next, make sure your site feel matches the products that you're selling. Now if it's a kid's site, does it look kid friendly? This VTC site, of course, is for adults. It is adult friendly. Amazon.com, they're selling all kinds of products. They have awesome pictures with their products. Now if I'm building a site that typically has items and products for men, make sure it looks manly, that they're going to want to come to that site. All the coloring that you use on your site and all the images portray a feeling. Make sure you're using the right colors and the right images. You can do a quick Google search and it'll tell you what people think and feel when they see different colors. Make sure your site is simple. Make sure it's easy to follow. Can they click on things and automatically find what they need? If I go to Amazon I can very simply search for something or look at my account. Now that navigation, if I click on something, notice this is still at the top. It makes it really easy to understand the site. Make sure this navigation at the top is always consistent. Another thing you can do is add social media to your sites. For example, here's all your social media links, and on different articles and pages you can have Facebook-like buttons or comments. People can Tweet things. That will get your product out there more often if you can have social media connections. Make sure you have your logo on there Ð typically the top left. Make sure it's small. People don't need a gigantic logo. Also make sure that if people click that it always takes them back to the home page. Now because you're doing an E-commerce site, make sure that it's easy to update. Make sure you can add products very simply. You can change prices or tax rates. You want to make sure it's simple. Make sure all your pages load quickly. Don't have gigantic graphics that take forever. Use small thumbnails, then they can click that thumbnail and get a bigger picture if they'd like. Make sure all your links work. If I clicked on something at Amazon.com and it took me to Pizza Hut instead of my product I would not be impressed. I'd move on. Make sure all your links work. You want to make sure that you actually schedule some link checking a few times a year. You can use programs to do that, you can use people; just make sure that everything on your site works well. The most important part of a site, I believe personally, is contact. You've got to have contact information. Typically at the top right there's some sort of contact. It can be live support, like VTC has, or we could have an e-mail or a phone number up there. And also, a lot of people have a contact link. Many times, at the bottom of the page, typically there's a little contact link or at the top right. And they have all kinds of ways that you can contact them. Give them multiple options. Give them your physical address. Give them a phone number. Give them an e-mail. Make it very simple for them to contact you and they'll more likely buy your product. And, of course, make sure you have a site search, just like VTC has, just like Amazon has. People want to buy a product but they want to do it fast. If I'm looking for that SEO video I want to be able to type it in and I want it to come up quick so I can get a hold of it and move on. Now if you're going to create your site totally from scratch, brand new, you've got to be flexible. Now you can design it yourself, you could take a template, you could just tweak that template and that'll make it a move a little bit faster. Or you could hire a freelancer to create it for you. But when you do that if you hire somebody to build the site for you to your specifications, consider that freelancer's advice and stay flexible. Most people cannot create and build a perfection Amazon.com site. They're going to come close, but Amazon's got a ton of money and a ton of developers. So stay flexible if you're going to build it from scratch. So here's what I would do. If you're going to actually build a site or revamp your site to sell your products instead of using like an online hosted store or just selling a product on eBay, I would start out right now looking around at sites that sell products like yours or similar to yours. See what you like about their sites and also take a look at what you do not like. Make some notes so you can avoid those things that are not customer friendly and you can add the things that are very customer friendly. So just take a look around, make some notes of some good sites and some things that you really like if you're going to build an entire site for your E-commerce.
Tutorial Information
| Course: | E-Commerce: Selling Online |
| Author: | Melanie Hedgespeth |
| SKU: | 34370 |
| ISBN: | 978-1-61866-064-0 |
| Release Date: | 2012-09-25 |
| Duration: | 8.5 hrs / 144 lessons |
| Work Files: |
Yes |
| Captions: | No |
| Compatibility: |
Vista/XP/2000, OS X, Linux QuickTime 7, Flash 8 |
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