e-ditorials - Issue #6: e-commerce Part 3

e-commerce site design, development and technology

The most important part of your e-commerce strategy is your overall plan. You can download our e-commerce action plan (PDF format 15kb), which addresses each of the topics below. This will help guide you as you plan your budget for your e-commerce web site as well as in speaking with web site developers.

Examine the following as it relates to e-commerce site design & development.

• Budget
• Design and Usability
• Content
• Technology
• Marketing
• Maintenance
• Security
• Hosting
• Customer Support

Budget

• Prioritize your needs
• Determine items that are absolutely necessary for your business
• Price different options and then find a solution that best matches your budget
• Remember to price set up and site maintenance and ongoing fees.

Design and Usability

$21 billion in potential online revenues are estimated to have been lost last year due to frustrated customers prematurely leaving sites. (Zona Research)

You will need to think about who your customer is and the reasons they are coming to your site. Planning at this stage is critical - poorly planned sites cost more to maintain and are less efficient at selling

• Design should be simple and unobtrusive -- Especially with E-commerce or Informational web sites
• Customers should be able to easily find what they need
• Customers should be able to order quickly and efficiently
• Brand Continuity. If you have a web site, will this new e-commerce site integrate with your current web site?
• Customer Focus Groups. Ask your customers what they want from your site.
• Promise only what you can deliver
• Strive for the least amounts of clicks.

Bottom Line - Make it easy for your customer to get what they need and pay for it with the least amount of clicks as possible.

Content

Determine the goal of your web site and tailor your copy to instill that goal in your customers.

• Identify your customer's need and satisfy their need.
• What sets you apart from your competitors?
• Show devotion to your customer with available and pleasing service
• Create customer loyalty and retention
• Entice the viewer by changing the web site frequently to encourage your customers to keep coming back
• Create an electronic newsletter offering special incentives for customers to buy from the web site and/or to announce new products or services.
• Email and Customer Support standards that keep your company's web site activities consistent.

Technology

Be an informed consumer. It's not about the technology; it's about what's right for your site.

There are many buzzwords that you will hear such as

• Cold fusion programming - a method of getting data from an online form into a database.
• ASP programming - another method of getting data from an online form into a database.
• Database - a computer-based list that stores the order and credit card information for each transaction. (e.g. MS ACCESS and ORACLE)
• Cookies - a method of storing data for a one time order or for repeat orders so that a user may enter information only once.
• Shopping Cart - a program that allows order information to be carried from page to page of a web site through to the completion of an order.
• Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) - An encryption system that allows consumers and merchants to safely enter personal data into a web site form, or view data on a web page.
• Firewall - Hardware and/or software that protects the web site server and/or a computer attached to the Internet from unauthorized access.

A good web site developer will suggest multiple technologies and/or brands to accomplish the same thing and there will be a range of pricing. It is also important in this stage to put the programming in place to measure the return of investment of your web site.

The object here is to be an informed consumer and know what the technology can do for you not necessarily how to implement it. Remember, it's not about the technology; it's about what's right for your site.

Marketing and Sales

If you build it, will they come?

• Fully integrate your e-commerce strategy into your existing marketing plan
• Investigate new Internet marketing options
• Design your site to generate meaningful customer tracking data. Tracking the effectiveness of advertising is often overlooked. With banner ads, it may be easy for you to see click through rates but how many of those people that clicked on an ad bought something on your web site?
• Track purchasing behavior both online and offline. How many bought a product as a result of :
  • Online ads
  • Magazine ads
  • TV
  • Radio

Keys

• Visibility
  • Search engines - getting listed in the 10 most popular search engines is more important than being listed in 200+ others. Check out searchenginewatch.com to learn more about getting listed in the search engines.
  • Banner ads. Recent studies have shown banner ad click rates are low; you will need to determine whether banner ads are effective in your industry.
  • Reciprocal Linking. This is a very easy and powerful tool. Ask someone who has a web site with complimentary services to link to your site from theirs and vice versa. This will boost your "popularity" to the search engines and they may rank your site higher in search results.
• Mine existing customers. Keep people coming back to your site through a newsletter or other online promotions
• Customer Satisfaction creates Referrals & Positive Publicity

There are a wide variety of Internet marketing partners with varying pricing to help with your campaign. Do your research and ask for guarantees.

Maintenance

The type of maintenance you will need for your e-commerce web site may be based upon whether you chose to build it yourself, use a template provider or a custom provider.

• Who will maintain your site?
• How will your new e-commerce system integrate with your existing business systems
• What amount of time will be dedicated to updating and maintaining the e-commerce web site?

For example, you may have chosen a custom provider who created your e-commerce solution and they trained you in using FrontPage software with your new site. Or maybe they built a browser based administrative interface which allows you to manage your information. There are many solutions, all with varying degrees of participation from you and your staff.

Security

There are different levels of security available. The main components are:

• SSL encryption: A technology that allows a user to enter information into a form in a browser, and the information is secured as it is transmitted to the server.
• Firewall: Your web server should be secured with a firewall to protect it from hackers accessing your database of credit card information.
• Database encryption

Many of the automatic payment systems, such as Verisign, go beyond the basic protection measures. As a consumer, read about your options and make sure you at least have the basics in place.

Hosting

You will need a place to host your e-commerce web site. Will you host the site with:

• your current web site hosting provider
• At another location

Your Choice is often dictated by the e-commerce web site development choices you have made. For example - You have an existing site with a hosting provider and you have selected a template provider for your e-commerce solution which also charges hosting. With this plan, you are paying two hosting fees; whereas a custom provider may build onto your existing web site without incurring an additional hosting fee.

Customer Support

Delta expects to save $40 million in customer service costs this year due to online customer services. Cost savings are great but it is important to also plan for customer satisfaction. You may have any combination of the following options:

• Phone support
• Real-time online support
• Written FAQ
• Outsource Support to a different company

Be Prepared to Change

• Keep in touch with your users to get feedback
• Track and examine your users behavior. From your server log files, you can find out where your visitors came from, what pages they visited, and how long they stayed

Analyze customer behavior to improve your web site, your marketing and your behind the scenes e-business processes.

Winning E-commerce Strategy

This 3 part series is a brief overview of some of your e-commerce options. Remember, it's important to evaluate your business model before beginning your e-commerce project and if you are already doing e-commerce online, make sure you often evaluate how you are doing and what you can do to make the experience better for your customers.

Do Your Research + Be Prepared = Success

• Anticipate success
• Implement Your E-commerce Action Plan
• Be an Informed Consumer

Remember it's not about the technology; it's about what's right for your customers. Good luck with your project and let me know how you're doing.

— ©2002, Set Now Solutions, LLC. All rights reserved.