Tips for Selling Online

Once you have a website created you are ready to optimize it for shoppers. One of the most important things to do is have all of your products categorized in a way that is easy to understand. Simple category names are important, like electronics, home goods, furniture, and the categories should be easy to find. Usually, listed on the side bar of the site to the left works best. The side bar should be visible on every page of the site so that customers can easily navigate to a new category should they decide to do so. An integrated search engine within the site is important, too, if you are selling more than two dozen or so products. You want customers to find what they are looking for quickly and easily because the faster they find the product they want the more likely they are to buy it.

Keep in mind that designing your ecommerce site like the big sites isn’t going to get your site lost in the shuffle. Instead, it’s going to give customers a feeling of safety and security because your site is well designed and looks like the other trustworthy sites. You don’t want to stand out, necessarily, in your site design. Instead, you want it to feel good to customers, comfortable, familiar even, so they are willing to buy from you.

Remember, too, that despite how great your site looks if you make it difficult for customers to complete their purchase they will look for another website. Most of your shoppers will want to pay with a credit card, which means you must accept credit cards. MasterCard and Visa are the most common, but you will have shoppers who want to use American Express, Discover, and even Diner’s Club. You will need top process cards in real time to keep customers happy. To do this you will need a merchant account. Some websites use PayPal as it is an easy option although others choose to have a dedicated merchant account. It really depends on your website and what makes the most business sense. When you accept credit cards you will sell significantly more products and services than otherwise so in almost all cases it is highly recommended.

Another important tip is to have excellent content on your site. What this means is the content on your site is well written, there are no grammatical mistakes, and it is obviously written by a native speaker. Nothing is a bigger turn off to online shoppers than websites that look like they were written by a five year old kid or else someone who doesn’t even speak the language. This will turn customers away, which is the last thing you want to do.

Another step to keep in mind is to start out small. Starting small and growing gradually will allow for more success than starting out offering everything under the sun like some of the bigger sites. If you are new you can’t possibly accommodate all those products/services, so start slowly and you will be able to grow at your own speed.