How the Recession Affects E-commerce

Whether your company is massive with thousands of clients a day or you are just starting a small e-commerce business, you have felt the crunch of a less than perfect economy. E-commerce has been a booming industry ever since the Internet hit mainstream. People are able and often willing to purchase anything and everything on the Internet. It should only make sense that in a poor economy, people will spend less and e-commerce will dwindle as all other industries are. Well, fortunately for you, e-commerce is thriving and is predicted to increase with each new year.

Why is this so? Why would Internet sales be so resistant to our current economic downturn? Speculators suggest that everyone associates the Internet with saving money. Sure you can shop away and waste your money, but shopping on Amazon or eBay or other e-commerce websites can save you loads of money. This would cause more and more penny pinchers to fire up the computer instead of driving to their local department store. Also, it is shown that a fair majority of Internet buyers are considered affluent. This would be the kind of person that can get whatever they need or want so they go to the place where anything they could ever need or want is located… the Internet! This is the kind of person you want viewing your products.

What does this mean for you? This means that your Internet sales are more important than ever! If you don’t have an e-commerce solution that works for you, now is absolutely the best time. You need to make sure that your visitors have a very easy experience with your products or services. Make sure that everything is very simple to purchase using “buy this now” or “BUY” buttons. Give them an easy to use shopping cart solution. Also, you need to make the customer feel welcome to your site. Try offering them something for free, like a sample of your products or services or simply just some helpful information pertaining to your industry. Whatever you do, realize that e-commerce is vital now more than ever.

So e-commerce and Internet sales have proven to be pretty resilient in the face of our economic woes. This should spark everyone’s desire to get a piece of that pie! More and more people are flocking to the Internet for information, products, and services. Regardless of who you are, what you sell, how much you sell, and how big your business is, you need to have and e-commerce solution. ]]> http://blog.createdbydesign.net/e-commerce/how-the-recession-affects-e-commerce/feed/ 63 http://blog.createdbydesign.net/e-commerce/how-the-recession-affects-e-commerce/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CreatedByDesignnet/~3/jn8IzpKrOJc/ http://blog.createdbydesign.net/web-design/what-to-look-for-and-what-to-do/#comments Thu, 26 Feb 2009 21:20:20 +0000 classic1 http://blog.createdbydesign.net/?p=6

Your website is a global storefront for your company. Every day, visitors are scanning your pages, viewing your products, comparing prices, looking for your contact information, and ultimately making a judgment of your e-commerce business. There are many mistakes, most of them simple, that a flawed website design will show. We want your business to appear credible and trustworthy, as do you. Here are some things that are telltale signs of less than par web design.

Content: This is a very wide topic but there are some basic things that you should watch out for and try to avoid. Your content should be written so that visitors can see what they want and gather the information they need in a very efficient manner. This can only be done when one writes clear, concise copy. For example, if your e-commerce website has a home page with the copy, “Welcome to our home page, we are glad that you have visited. Take a look around our site, view our products, and see some customer reviews. Check out our Contact page if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions.” While this is very nice and all, it is not necessary by any means. People know how the Internet works and how e-commerce business happens and they know that they need to navigate your pages to find out about your product. Your content needs to be succinct and to the point while your web design takes care of the visitors’ needs, which leads to the next point.

Navigation: The actual design of your website is as important if not more important than the content of your website. This holds especially true for an e-commerce website. Depending on how your pages are laid out and where the different links are located, you could be giving your visitors a pleasant or not so pleasant experience. The key here is to keep visitors from being frustrated and provide easy access to the parts of the website you want them to navigate to. Broken links and dead ends are a serious turn off to potential customers and just generally inconvenient. It is common sense but sometimes it just takes a quick revision to take care of any links that lead to outdated or deleted pages or to find parts of your website that don’t have a home button. Also, make sure that you aren’t opening a new window or tab every time a visitor clicks a link. Most modern browsers are outfitted with extremely convenient tabs but that doesn’t mean that everyone want to use five of them for one website. Clean up the frustration of dead ends, broken links, and excessive tabs or windows and make the important links stand out.

Visual Appeal: Last, but not least, your website has to have a certain level of visual appeal. Most people don’t require this consciously but almost everyone makes a subconscious judgment based on appearance. The things you want to avoid are all things in excess. Lots of colors, lots of fonts, and lots of graphics are a very common pitfall for websites today. You should use a maximum of three or four colors in a color scheme and usually two to three fonts. We don’t want visual overload for you viewer. We want to make sure that the important parts of your website are what stand out, not the scrolling marquee of clipart at the top of your page.

If you feel like your website is riddled with all sorts of these flaws, don’t fret, a makeover is very achievable. Just keep in mind that the Internet is only going to get more popular and more important to your business so cleaning up your website design is always a good investment.