How to Make Shopping Easy on Your Website

You are now on the cusp of building your online business website. It is an exciting moment because the website represents your first real investment in your business. In some ways, it is like building your first home. You have an idea of how you want it to look and the conveniences it will bring you.

But everything starts from an idea. The challenge has always been to turn that idea into a reality. Eventually, you will realize that the transition from idea to reality is more complicated than initially thought.

To succeed, you must approach the website development process with purpose and strategy. Most importantly, you must be committed to building a website that will best serve the needs of your business and your market. When you have these in place, it will be easy for your customers to use and patronize your website.

Defining Your Business

The first step in building your online business website is developing its concept, and that starts with defining what your business is all about.

From experience, this is the most crucial aspect of business planning because establishing your identity sets the entire enterprise rolling. Your brand, your content, your overall design, the messaging, the system, process flows, and campaign strategies; all of these will flow out as ideas representative of your identity and then be developed to help you meet your goals and objectives.

Essentially, what you will be doing is the Executive Summary of your Business Plan. The Executive Summary defines what your business is by setting it against the backdrop of the industry you plan to engage in. You should have an idea of how the industry is performing as a whole to develop your strategies and approach. The Executive Summary will state your purpose, objectives, and courses of action.

Before you start working on your Executive Summary, I’d like to share my approach. Whenever I have ideas on potential business, and I want to firm these up, I always reach in my drawer for the old tried and tested, reliable Yellow Pad Paper and my trusty ballpen.

Why do I use pen and paper? Personally, it gets my creative juices flowing freely compared to an iPad, a laptop, or a PC. There’s a direct link between my brain and my fingertips. There are no filters; no RAM or ROM chips to contend with.

Ideas just flow better; I’m able to adapt on the fly as the pen glides atop the paper and new ideas come in. In my opinion, technology with its nuances stifles the creative process.

If you’re more comfortable using technology, please by all means go right ahead. But give the old pen and paper a try. You might be surprised how these relics from the past can help you further along the Executive Summary. Here’s an example of how you may construct your Executive Summary:

• I. Concept: Health and Fitness Online Business
• II. Industry: Health and Fitness
• III. Industry highlights: Include the following data:
  • Historical development
  • Current trends
  • Data on industry growth over the last five years
  • Growth forecast for the next 10-15 years
  • Key players in the industry
  • Challenges in the industry
• IV. Objectives: Cite at least 5; rank from highest to lowest priority
• V. Purpose: People often confuse “Purpose” with “Objectives”. Purpose refers to the “why” of your business; why did you choose to get into the health and fitness industry? Did you wish to address the obesity problem? Did you want to introduce new training methodologies? Did you want to supply the latest supplements and training equipment?
• VI. Courses of Action: Answers the question, “How do you plan to accomplish your objectives and meet your purpose?”

As you can see, once you’ve gotten this information down, your ideas about your online business start to fall together, and the concept becomes clearer.

Your business will need a website. Now that you have identified your concept, now it is time to determine the type of website you need to support your business.

Types of Websites

Not all websites are alike. Depending on your concept, purpose, vision, and objectives, there are several types of websites you can consider. Among these are:

• Search engine directories. Google, Yahoo, and MSN are among the popular search engine directories. These websites can manage a large volume of data and involve complex programming protocols.
• Informational websites. These websites provide information on a niche topic. Examples of these would be websites that give news updates, sports tickers, TV programming guides, and stock market updates. Tycoon.ph is also an example of an informational website.
• Personal websites. These are the fastest growing type of website because it is easy to make and the content is more random in thought and process.
• Blogs. These function like online journals where you can write about your niche or specific interest. In the last few years, blogging has been thrust into the limelight because of its ability to increase search rankings. Thus, bloggers who have achieved a good number of subscribers can generate a good monthly income.
• Forums. These are online communities that are set up to bring people who have similar interests together. Forums are created to share ideas, address common problems and collectively find solutions.
• Social networking. Who hasn’t heard of Facebook? Or put in another way, who isn’t ON Facebook? The social network is a platform that brings people together to re-connecting, establish new contacts, and promote businesses. Social media has grown in scope and influence that some of these giants like Facebook and Twitter are moving away from social networking and into media advertising to capitalize on their subscriber base.
• File sharing. These are websites that offer collaboration services. A good example would be DropBox, which allows its users to upload and share files with their co-workers. Accessibility and security are highly important qualities to guarantee when you have a file-sharing website.
• E-Commerce. What Facebook is to social networking, Amazon.com is to e-Commerce websites. These are websites that cater to businesses that have eschewed the traditional brick-and-mortar model in favor of an online model. Shoppers can browse through their product pages, scrutinize items through variable angle images and the zoom-in feature, and make purchases through various modes of payment.

Even if you have selected a type of website for your business, it doesn’t mean that you cannot integrate features from other types of websites.

The purpose of website design is to develop a framework that will meet all of your business goals and objectives. There are no set rules on which type of website you wish to adapt. You can create a hybrid website.

For example, you are in the health and fitness industry to introduce new training techniques and methodologies to athletes. However, you are also interested in distributing a line of exercise equipment. You can have an Informational website with a built-in blog page, and a product page where visitors can view your items for sale. In effect, you will have an Informational website with e-Commerce features.

Constructing Your Online Business Website

The first step in building any website is to find a professional website designer. I have already discussed this in the previous chapters, but it bears constant mention because entrepreneurs tend to find ways to create efficiency by cutting costs.

Hiring a professional website designer is a must for every online business proprietor.

Several sites offer free templates such as Shopify and WordPress. They advertise that anyone can set up their website and save money. While that may be true, it is not a risk worth taking because your website is the central hub of business. Internet users are not forgiving if your website is not functioning properly or is inaccessible.

Once you have selected your designer, the next step is for him to do research. It is an important component of website design. The purpose of the research is for your web designer to determine the following information:

• Your purpose, vision, and objectives
• Target market or audience
• Behavioral or consumption patterns
• Industry trends and forecast
• Leading competitors and their websites

The research paper or the Creative Brief will help the web designer develop the concept of the website. Make sure your website designer includes you in the design process.

A professional web designer will always welcome input from his client because he knows that for the website to be effective, it must capture and reflect who the customer is.

After the Creative Brief has been presented and discussed, these are the areas of web design that must be taken into consideration:

Design and Functionality. Specifically, the elements which compose aesthetic sensibilities and functionality, web pages. When it comes to aesthetics, the web designer will consider the use of the following features:

• Color
• Images
• Lines
• Rhythm
• Contrast
• Balance

Of course, a beautiful or aesthetically pleasing website will be useless if it will not function well and functionality includes the following criteria:

• Ease of navigation
• The convenience of the User Interface
• Browser Accessibility
• Download speed
• Mobile responsiveness

Content. If design presents your image, content provides your substance. One of the keys to having a successful online business is increasing the probability of your website being found.

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is the process that employs strategies and techniques to increase the organic search ranking of a website.

One of these strategies involves the use of keywords; these are the terms or phrases most often used by Internet users to search for a specific item. But these keywords are meaningless if you cannot create content that is relevant and engaging to your viewers.

Search engine giants particularly Google have emphasized the importance of fresh and original content as prerequisites for high search engine rankings. If your content is not fresh, relevant, or engaging, visitors who find your website will not stay long to explore further. It increases your website’s “bounce rate” or the rate at which a visitor exits your website after viewing one page.

To create great content, you must have an idea of what your audience needs. Specifically, you should be able to identify a problem, concern, or issue which demands an immediate solution or recommendation.

Going back to our previous example, if you have a health and fitness website with the purpose of introducing new training techniques, you should write content that differentiates new from old methodologies. You should also write in a manner that invites your reader to engage.

The biggest mistake of entrepreneurs who assume content writing duties is coming across as too technical. In their effort to become recognized as experts, they use terms that only those in their industry or profession have heard of. Instead of impressing their readers, they end up turning them away.

If your reader cannot make heads or tails within six seconds of arriving at your web page, they will click out and find another website.

Story-telling is a proven, effective approach to generating engagement. With story-telling, the reader is transported behind the lens of the writer and can understand the content through his filter. Story-telling is also naturally ingrained in our DNA as a natural means of communication. Besides, who doesn’t like a good story?

Web Copy. The value of your web copy lies in that it should deliver the message to your target audience right away. When an Internet user clicks on your link, he will find himself on your Home Page. You have a few seconds to get your message across, and if it doesn’t resonate with the Internet user, he will click out.

Here are key guidelines for writing great web copy:

• It should include the main keyword.
• Keep it short, and concise but direct to the point
• It must be relevant to your value proposition
• It should either educate, entertain, or engage users

Product and service details. If you are selling products and services you have to consider the following components:

• Marketing copy. Similar to web copy, marketing copy must be short and direct to the point. Highlight the strong selling points or features of your product or service. These are the features of your product or service that differentiate you from the rest of your competitors.
• Images. Images are very important if you have tangible products to sell. The pictures must be of high quality. Since most PCs have a resolution of 1920 x 1080, your images don’t have to be larger than this for easy viewing.
• Special Features. If you look at the website of a retailer like eBay, it has a zoom-in feature that can be activated simply by moving the mouse over the image. There are also products the images of which were captured at different angles to give you a better idea of how the item looks.
• Payment options. Payment options will be discussed in detail in the next chapter but if you are selling services or merchandise you should make sure the buyers have some options to choose from.
• Shipping costs. Internet users will appreciate it if you could indicate the costs of shipping per destination. You should also include the estimated arrival period of the merchandise.

As a final piece of advice, make sure that your website is responsive. A responsive website will ensure that your website will be accessible not only to desktop users but also to a user that uses mobile gadgets and smartphones.

How to Maintain Your Online Business Website

As the main engine of your online business, your website must undergo regular upgrades and maintenance work. Here are the key areas that you should look into when maintaining your website:

Content Management. Taken as a whole, the content will include your blogs, images, and design elements.

To improve your search ranking, you should frequently post fresh content. Ideally, you should blog at least three times a week (more if possible). Make sure your content is unique and original.

The images you use must also be periodically updated to reflect changes in your approach or strategy. As previously suggested, it is always better to use original and customized images instead of default or stock images.

You should also consider implementing changes in the use of the design elements. Market demographics can change without warning so the elements currently in place may no longer appeal to the intended audience. Thus, research must be an ongoing activity.

Functionality. Periodically check on the functionality of your website. Prepare an audit checklist with your web designer or developer and run tests to make sure all of the website’s features are running efficiently. The audit should include among others website download speed, accessibility from other browsers, and the working condition of the internal links.

Security. In July 2014, 50,000 WordPress websites were hacked. The cause of the hack was a popular newsletter plug-in that was used by hackers to access and compromised these websites.

Security upgrades should be part of your website audit. These should include the following measures:

• Change passwords frequently
• Backup your website
• Remove plug-ins that are rarely used
• Decrease the number of log-in attempts

When you are building your first online business website, it is not enough that you and your designer will base inputs on who you are, your business specifics, and industry data.

Always keep in mind who you are building your website for. You should never lose focus on who you are catering to in your products and services.

Market research serves another purpose beyond determining aesthetic design elements and functionality. Market research helps you identify your market. The website must be accessible and its features convenient and easy to use for them.

Next read: How to Accept Payments on Your Website