1. Make It Easy For Visitors To Become Customers
If at all possible, you should make sure that you have “buy now”, “download here”, etc. buttons visible on every page of your site. These buttons should appear high enough on the page that visitors don’t need to scroll down to find them (that is, they should be “above the fold” as they say in print media). When you make it easy for visitors to buy, you’ll find yourself making a lot more sales.

2. Include High Quality Product Photographs
Second only to well written content are quality product photographs. Visitors to the site should see high quality photographs of products which can be enlarged without negatively affecting its visibility. The larger and clearer your product photos, the less questions you’ll have to answer from customers; and the less returns you’ll have to process. Provide product photos taken from several angles to give customers a good idea of the size of the product and any components thereof.

3. Polish Up Your Product Descriptions
Industry experts say that the most effective product descriptions range in length from around 75 to 200 words, ideally towards the upper end of this range. In addition to these brief product descriptions, more detailed product information (dimensions, shipping information, weight and so on) should be readily available to customers.

4. Keep An Eye On Your Site Analytics
As an ecommerce site owner, you need to know how your visitors are finding you and where they’re coming from. One very important statistic to keep an eye on is your site’s bounce rate; this is a measurement of the amount of time spent on a page before leaving. Not only is it helpful to know how long the average visitor spends on a given page, but being able to find out what page customers tend to leave your site from can help you to improve your site to retain visitors. Ideally, your visitors would all leave from the purchase confirmation page or perhaps from your contact us page rather than from a product detail page or your homepage.

5. Make Your Site’s Policies Easy To Find
Another way to reduce the amount of questions you and your staff will have to handle is to make sure that customers can easily find information including FAQs, return policies, shipping information, customer service contacts, etc. on your website. Along with ensuring easy access to this kind of information, it’s best to be as responsive as humanly possible to negative comments about your site. Doing this shows customers that you’re engaged and committed to providing solid customer service, which can prevent returns and turn a dissatisfied customer to a satisfied one.

6. Make Your Site Searchable
Customers will have a much easier time using your site if you include a search function on your site which allows searches by size, availability and price. You may also want to consider adding a feature which displays which items other customers who have purchased a given item have opted for. In order to improve your site’s visibility in the major search engines, you may also want to have a look at WordTracker or Google’s Keyword Tool to find which search terms are the most popular for the products and services you sell and integrate these into your site as well as any on-site search you may have.

7. Don’t Make Visitors Hunt For Your Contact Information
Your contact information should be available on each and every page of your site. There are quite a few people out there who will refuse to buy from any website which doesn’t list a phone number. Your site’s contact information should include a street address, phone number and fax number (if you have one) along with an email address in order to allow customers to easily get in touch if they have questions.

Paul