Owning a quality website is a great pride but this joy is the result of a good payment for the creator. It’s worldwide recognized that quality means money, hence the bargains where an individual invests a small amount of money to receive the best services are rare. One of the most challenging projects for a web designer is to create an ecommerce website, these are situated at the intersection of business with design and the final purpose is not a beautiful header or a good informational resource, it’s all about money and profit. Any mistake in the conception of an online store is equivalent to a smaller profit and no one wants it.

In spite of these challenges, any web designer must have the courage to take these kinds of projects, only in the worst conditions the qualities of a person are clear for everyone. The evolution of e-commerce reveals to us that these online presences will become more and more frequent and the “fight” between them, harsher. Translating into the language of web designers this means that more clients will ask for many e-commerce layouts.

The tips below are the result of a complete study of the issues regarding present online stores and these constitute a very useful handbook for everyone in need for advice looking to build online stores.

1. Select a good domain name
People are everyday bombed with new brands, logos or any other kind of promotional materials and it’s quite difficult to retain all these, usually one remembers only these that are catching or the best in the respective field. Any future owner of an online store must select a smart domain name for his business, the more interesting it is, the less money must be invested in advertising and branding. The example is self-explicatory: which name is the best and more easily to retain for an online store selling shoes, “supershoes.com” or “andreeaonlineshopbusiness.com”? It will be a nice experiment to select the last name to see how quickly someone is declaring insolvent.

2. Design with the user in mind
An e-commerce layout must be the beginning of a perfect usable and accessible website, here the user is the single person who takes decisions and from classic commerce comes the axiom: “our client, our master” that is valid also in the online medium. A good web designer creates a website, by simply thinking in advance about any decision of the user. Some best practices as making the payment process very quick, inserting the call-to-action buttons where is the best seen by buyers, reaching any product with fewest clicks possible, or excluding any aggressive promotional banners are only a few things that must be taken into consideration. The best idea is still one related to the mentality, an online store doesn’t have visitors, it has potential buyers or buyers.

3. Security is capital
The tentative of frauds are common and many people lose much money because of various transactions that aren’t fully secured. There couldn’t be a worst way to promote yourself than having trouble with the security of transactions. No matter which solutions are adopted or which platform was used, security is decisive.
A secure online store is associated with quality, safety and professionalism, great features that are the ingredients of good profit.

4. Use newsletter for the clients

It’s quite normal to have promotions or to offer discounts but these amazing news must be heard by the clients, or else it’s just a useless offer. A good solution to attract more people and implicitly to gain more money is to create newsletters that inform the public about novelties. The algorithm is simple: to anybody that has bought something a discount is offered, in case he agrees with receiving promotional emails.
It’s okay if the receivers of your newsletters aren’t bored with these promotional offers, therefore emailing them daily isn’t quite the smartest solution.

5. Make a balanced report between the quality of the images and uploading time
It’s practically impossible to replace the touch of a product or the sensation of seeing it in reality but having quality images and a user friendly slide may satisfy the potential client. Anyway, the images of the products are vital in the overall success of a website. Any visitors must be impressed by the quality of the website, the common conception is that a website that is designed to match the highest standards, will sell the highest standards products.
On the other hand, a quality image has a decent size and the immediate consequence is a longer time to upload which isn’t liked by visitors. The web designers must find the proper formula that assures the perfect balance between the quality of the images and the upload time or else it’s difficult to survive.

6. Allow feedback and comments for the products
Customers know that for promotional purposes, all the products are presented as the best solution and sometimes it’s proved that it’s a big difference between reality and the words of the seller. A more trusty recommendation comes from the others buyers or other people comments. It’s the best for any owner of an online store to allow feedback from previous shoppers; this transparency is highly appreciated by the common users and creates a more reliable perspective over the website.

7. Create the best conditions for shopping
Deliberately, I have let in the end what is most important: a visitor must enjoy the process, it should be a pleasure and not something difficult and challenging. To fully accomplish the best conditions for shopping is mostly an art, a modern art with major influences in the online economy. The web design blogosphere offers good rounds up of the most beautiful and usable example of e-commerce websites and the implementation of the best features to make online shopping a pleasure is mandatory.

Some specialists says that in the future the e-commerce websites will be more numerous and people will use their services intensively and with confidence while others agreed that the present is the apogee, but really no matter what the future will be, a good web designer will create online stores that will be stunning and useful at the same time.

About the Author: Lief

Lief is one of the creative designers at DesignArticleWriters, he love to play with tools commonly useful for designers and media lovers. You'll find him playing with Photoshop, Youtube and Youtube to mp3 in his free time.