|
|
|
|
 |
| Tech Update |
|
A crash course in e-commerce
Site design
By Eamonn Sullivan
E-Business
April 10, 2001
[an error occurred while processing this directive] |
The two primary goals in designing any e-commerce site should be speed and professionalism. The two often conflict. For example, in order to give prospective customers the feeling that they are doing business with a respectable company, designers may overload a site with graphics that slow it down. Or, to make a site blaze, the business puts up a simplistic design that makes it look like a fly-by-night operation.
Design is a balancing act, with the fulcrum on the user experience. For an e-commerce site, the most important activity is the commercial transaction -- the buying, selling, or trading. The design should make the user feel comfortable, answer all his or her questions quickly and easily, and extract his or her money (or order) in the shortest amount of time and fewest number of steps possible.
It sounds simple, but Web design is an inexact science. How do you make a customer "comfortable," for example? For some sites, that means a community bulletin board, where customers can share information with each other. For others, it may mean real-time contact with a sales representative.
Most businesses need to hire a Web designer, but do so carefully. There are lots of designers, but relatively few good ones. Ask for references and carefully check out other sites the designer has worked on. (For more, see "How to hire a Web site designer.") | [an error occurred while processing this directive] |
worked on. (For more, see "How to hire a Web site designer.")
Whether you hire someone or do it yourself, keep the following criteria in mind:
Consistency. The Web site should have a "look" that makes customers think of your business. If yours is an existing business, try to incorporate existing elements, such as logos or store designs, into the Web site.
Performance. The Web site should display quickly, even on slow connections. If your customer is a home user, then "slow" means a 28.8K or 56K modem. If your customers are business users, a slow connection may be an ISDN line or heavily-loaded T1 connection.
Usability. Make it easy for customers to find what they are looking for. Test it on customers, not just on someone who already knows where everything is (like yourself or the designer). Analyze your Web server's log files to find where or why customers abandon orders and to see where they spend most of their time.
Efficiency. Make the purchase process as quick and painless as possible.
ZDNet has many resources on this topic, including its Best Practices section, which evaluates good and bad examples of e-commerce design, with particular attention to how design improves or hurts the customer experience.
 |
|
|
|
|
![]() |
|
[an error occurred while processing this directive] |
![]() |
|
![]() |
|
|
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
|
|
|
|
