Effective Ecommerce Web Design
Using Webplus Shop’s hosted ecommerce solution to sell products has always been the focus, but now you can promote your store and inform your customers like never before. Learn how to take advantage of Webplus Shop’s latest feature – Custom Web Pages.
Custom Web Pages allow you to publish web content for your online store like an “About Us” page, customer testimonials, privacy policy, sizing charts, event calendar/schedule, shipping policy, or almost anything else that you would like to provide for your customers. Once you’re logged in, simply go to Appearance > Custom Web Pages and click the Add New Custom Page button to get started.
1. Page Filename - Set your page filename to whatever you want. Use something easy to read and understand like “about-us” or “holiday-specials”.
2. Links to Page - Tell your store where to put links to your Custom Page. The label is the clickable text that your customer uses as a link. Link placement is discussed later.
3. HTML Content - Insert your own or use the easy HTML Editor to build your page. Customers will view your Custom Page like your other store pages that have the header, navigation links, category lists, and footer.
4. SEO Tags - To help search visitors find your site, fill out these fields that help search engines identify your Custom Page content.
1. Navigation Menu Button - These links appear in your Navigation Menu between the Home button and My Account button. Save these for important site pages, like your About Us page or an Event Calendar.
2. Category List Link: Beginning/Top - These links appear above or at the beginning of your store’s Category List links. Put your “must-see” product related info here like special promotions or limited-availability info.
3. Category List Link: End/Bottom - These links appear below or at the end of your store’s Category List links. Use this out-of-the-way location for your shipping/privacy policies or sizing charts.
4. Use the Page Web Address - Use the Page Web Address to insert a link to your Custom Page from anywhere. You can put links in your store’s HTML areas like your Homepage Store Intro, Featured Products Heading, Product Long Description, or your Store Footer. You can also link from outside your store in your web advertising and marketing on blogs, forums, and message boards.
Have fun making your new Custom Web Pages!
Making your online store look great doesn’t have to be difficult. A simple graphics set can make all the difference between an ok looking store and something that stands out above the rest.
You really need to set yourself apart as soon as possible. This can be done by using the free graphic sets in Webplus Shop, uploading your own, or have Webplus design something for you!
A few tips when thinking about a graphic set:
Try to make it work with the colors that your web store uses. Think of complementary colors and using easy to read text colors
Try to stick to a solid background color or a fairly quiet background picture: if there is too much going on or too many contrasting colors, this makes the text very hard to read. If you choose to use a image, make sure that it can be tiled. This means that it will repeat nicely across the background at any resolution.
 Here is a background image that will work well with a dark text.
  Now, these two are great examples of what not to use for a background image.
Any color of text appearing on these backgrounds would be un-readable because of the varying amounts of color and the patterns.
Any header image you upload to Webplus Shop is aligned to the top of the menu bar. The footer image is anchored to the bottom of your content, NOT the bottom of the screen.
Any text you put in the header or footer HTML editor boxes in the merchant interface will appear on top of the header or footer images. This means you can have a simple graphic without text, making it easier to change that text later.
If you have a hard time with color theory, check out Adobe Kuler where you can choose a color and get complementary colors quick and easy.
Finally, when making a header or a footer for your store, try to keep the width at or under 960 pixels and have a minimum height of 150 pixels. By using the 960 pixel width, that will keep the image the same length as the menu bar.
Although Webplus Shop offers a variety of places to add content to your Homepage – the Homepage Header, Store Intro, Featured Products Header, Category Header, and Homepage Footer – the key to using them effectively is to not overload your customers with information. The good folks over at Smashing Magazine, a web design blog, echo this idea in their How Simple Web Design Helps Your Business article.
“E-commerce sites have taken this “scatter shot” approach of trying to slap the potential buyer with as many options as possible. Instead of making the landing page solely about one product, sites usually clutter the page with unnecessary information, ads and related products.”
Setting up to feature just one product might be a little extreme, but if you feel like your homepage is a bit cluttered, here’s a couple of ways you can create a clean, simple store landing page.
- Have too many Featured Products? Try using a featured category instead, or better yet, group similar products and create a unique category just so it can be featured. Since products can belong to multiple categories, you won’t have to “move” the products. Name it descriptively, like “This Month’s Sunglass Specials”.
- Have too many Categories? It might be as simple as adjusting your Number of Levels to Display in Category Tree setting in Appearance > Home Page. If it still seems like you have too many categories, consider a new structure where you have a fewer “top-level” categories. Think of it like the areas of a department store – Men’s, Women’s, Kids, Shoes, Jewelry, and Home Goods. The less specific, the fewer. The fewer, the better.
- Trying to say too much in your Intro HTML area? Make use of your About Us page. You can find the editor for this page in Appearance > Custom Pages. Now your Store Intro HTML can be clean, short, and to the point.
- Does it still feel like too much? Did you know you can actually hide your Categories and/or Featured Products from your homepage? Simply go to Appearance > Home Page and make sure that the options for Display Categories and Display Features are -not- checked.
A final consideration is that there is no requirement to using each and every Homepage HTML area. If you’re not sure how to best use your Category Header or Features Header, perhaps it is just best to simply leave them blank. At least then they can’t get in the way.
One of the first questions facing many merchants new to selling online is whether they should set up their new online store themselves or pay for professional online store setup. It may seem logical that if you are able to set up the store yourself you should. Why pay someone else to do something you can do yourself, especially if you are on a tight budget? However this is not always true. Below is a brief discussion of the pros and cons of setting up an online store yourself vs. paying a web designer to do it for you.
First off, I should say that many shopping carts do not leave an option for you. Many are very complicated on the backend and require a programmer to do all setup and future changes. Unless you have programming knowledge I would not recommend attempting to set up a store yourself with such a shopping cart. For the average merchant, I would not recommend this type of cart at all since all future changes will require you to hire a programmer which can get very expensive. Only in the event that you have a programmer on staff or happen to be a programmer yourself would I recommend a cart which is this technical. With that said, Webplus Shop, our shopping cart software, leaves both options open for you as it is simple enough for you to set up yourself and we also offer affordable website setup for just $349.
So back to the question, should you set up your online store yourself or pay for professional setup? In most cases, if resources allow, I would recommend paying to have your online store set up by a professional web designer who can make the website look great and get it done in a timely fashion. Web designers usually have years of experience in what makes a website enticing to visitors and can showcase your products in a way that, in most cases, would be better then if you set up the website yourself. The initial setup of your online store is very, very important to the future of your online business so you want it to look as inviting as possible. You should use the initial setup of your online store to learn from your web designer which you can apply as you make changes to the store down the line. As you get more experienced running your online store you can begin to add your own touch. Then there is the time factor. As if it weren’t time consuming enough running a small business now you have to worry about setting up a website as well! For many small business owners just finding the time to get all their products entered into their online store can take weeks. In ecommerce, time is money! You are missing out on sales every day that your store is not online selling for you. For this reason, the couple hundred to couple thousand dollars that most web designers or shopping cart companies charge to set up your online store is well worth it and a small investment for the long term. Our company charges $349 for complete online store setup and can usually have your website live within 48 hours.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not completely against setting up your online store yourself. There are some cases in which it makes sense. If you have a very limited budget or are simply experimenting with a product concept, it may make sense to set up an online store yourself to test the waters without much of an investment. If you are good with programming or graphic design you may want to put your skills to work as well. Or if you have adequate time to learn new software and do the store setup, again, you may consider setting up an online store yourself. This may be true of retired individuals or those whose business is currently more of a hobby. Webplus Shop is very easy to use with no programming knowledge required. We usually figure it takes under an hour to learn. If you are looking for an online store solution that is easy to set up yourself please do give it a look.
Previously, we discussed an excellent way to begin setting up your online store with good search engine optimization (SEO) by setting the <title> and <meta> tags in your store’s pages. Now, we will take it a step further by optimizing the category pages.
Your category pages are some of the most important pages in your online store. After the home page, the category and product pages drive sales the most. Optimizing them for search engines will significantly increase your sales and add a boost to all of your other promotional efforts.
Like the other pages you optimized by setting <title> and <meta> tags, you can do this on your category pages. By default, the <title> tags are set to match the name of the product or category displayed. This will help your store somewhat, but adding additional relevant keywords to the product and category name will give your customers a better chance to find you.
Here is a simple method for setting the <title> and <meta> tags for your category pages:
- Login to the merchant interface of your webstore (link opens in a new browser window).
- Click on the “Inventory” tab.
- Click on “Categories” option that appeared.
- Select the category you wish to optimize by clicking on it’s name.
- Click on the “Marketing and SEO” section to expand it.
- Enter your desired <title> and <meta> tag keywords. Keep in mind that the most relevant and important keywords should be first. Also remember to refrain from repeating keywords too much, or your business website may be considered spam and be rejected by search engines.
- Repeat this for each of your categories to customize the keywords for each specific category.
Customizing the SEO information for each category will drive more customers who are looking specifically for the products you sell in that category. This will help them find your online store and place an order with greater ease.
|
|
