E-Commerce Services
The Shop Front
This is the face that is presented to your customers which displays the products and services your are selling and enables your customers to find a product they are looking for, read and see more detailed information about that particular product or service and enable them to place it in their shopping cart basket for payment later.
Remember your customers are unable to pick up the goods and handle them as you would do in a conventional shop so what do you think you must do if you are going to convince your customers to buy your product.
- Excellent Photography
- Clear, accurate and detailed information such as dimensions, material or specification
Excellent photography with clear sharp and professionally produced images is an absolute must have, avoid being cheap by doing it yourself unless you know what your doing. Preferably employ a professional photographer who has been recommended to you with studio facilities and some experience of creating images for the web. Have one main image with at least 2 alternative images to provide a rounded view of the item and close up detail of any particular special features.
Detailed Specification when you decided to buy a car or camera, TV or piece of equipment you researched your product and asked the shop assistant about the specification of the items on display. When you buy clothes you ask what material it’s made of, the size etc before you try it on. Likewise when you’re selling products online you must be even more vigilant to provide very clear and detailed information as the customer is totally relying on this information and the imagery to make an informed decision and parts with their credit card so make it clear, be totally honest and easy to read without having to hunt for the information.
You customers should be able easily navigate your shop front and find what they are looking for with ease and to be able to see enlarged pictures of that product and read an accurate description to confirm the product is exactly they are looking for and the specifications meet their expectations and the price is agreeable to them.
The shop front experience must be smooth and crystal clear and accurate detailed descriptions and intuitive always anticipating what your customers might be thinking to do and always keeping the customer informed of what stage they are at in the buying process.
As a general rule there is a 10 second buying process if a prospective customer is able to find the product they wish to buy within 10 seconds from the home page to the product page then the chances are they will stay. On the other hand if they cannot find what they are looking for then they will most probably click away to a competitor’s site.
The on-line shopping experience is made up of 4 main components:
Shopping Cart
Check Out
Payment Page
Confirmation
Shopping Cart
The Shopping Cart is the clever bit of software code that enables your customers to collect goods in an imaginary cyber shopping basket just as they would in a supermarket and then take them to a check out desk where their goods are totalled to present to the customer the products, short description and total price payable including any sales tax and shipping postage costs.
The shopping cart summary should provide your customer a summary of their purchases to date and to permit a printable copy. At this point your customer will either check out to payment or remove an item and or continue shopping so these options must be clearly displayed.
The shopping cart symbol must be always visible on every page and instantly accessible to show the customer what’s in their basket and monies spent so far. It should allow them to delete items if they change their minds about and to continue shopping to add more or replace them.
Once the customer is satisfied they have completed their shopping a check out link should be clearly visible on all pages in the same place so that the customer can elect to ‘check out’ at any time to make their payment.
Check Out
At Check out your customers will be almost ready to make their payment and at this point they will be required to complete their personal details and delivery address or retrieve them if they have registered with your store before. Your customers still have the option to abort their purchase so you must ensure the check out page is secure as customers will feel happier if they know their personal details are stored securely. We would advise you to apply for a SSL Secure Socket Layer certificate. Contact us
Customer Confidence is the key to the conversion of check outs to payments and gaining a satisfied customer who will hopefully return again.
Payment Page
This is the final stage of the buying process where your customers are actually going to pay for your products with their credit or debit cards and is the point at which you either make a sale or you don’t. Paying for goods and services on the internet has now become an accepted way to purchase most products and services and is growing daily.
There is still however a degree of suspicion by many would be internet customers who are still not happy about entering their credit card details onto a website.
This is why it is crucial that your customers are confident at all stages of their purchase and payment if they are actually going to complete the transaction and pay.
To take credit cards online requires you to one of 3 things
- Sign up for a Ecommerce Merchant Account [Talk to your Bank]
- Sign up for an approved PSP Payment Service Provider
- Set up your online shop within a virtual shopping mall
Unless you are a major store such as a department store who can afford to have a fully integrated online payment processing system in real time you will be required to sign up to a merchant processing company to handle your credit and debit card payments for you.
Confirmation Page
The confirmation is the conclusion of the shopping experience where your customers are told that their payment has been accepted and that their goods are going to be dispatched. This can be as simple as a thank you page or with more sophisticated scripts auto responder confirmation emails can be sent out automatically to the customers email with a personalised message within seconds. Separate personalised emails can also be sent to include unique user name and passwords for your customers newly created account. Your database will store their details and remember your customers so that next time they can login and not have to complete their personal details again.
If you have made a purchase online you will know how important it is to keep your confidence throughout the process and make it seem like a seamless easy process from selection of goods to payment. If you want to be serious about taking payments online then you have to invest in a ecommerce platform that provides that confidence to your customers.
For more information and to get a more accurate price and time of completion please use our Quotation Form
All prices are per website and multiple website owners
will be quoted separately.
We are prepared to provide fixed price quotations based upon specified jobs as an alternative to other quotations you may have received, we don't promise to be the cheapest but then the cheapest isn't always the best bet but what we can assure you of a well structured service based upon years of experience.
