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[S332]Set Up Ecommerce Site

by Nguyen Thi, Ngu

Designing an eCommerce site is more than making it pretty. You have certaindesired actions you're looking for from your visitors. You have specific thingsyou want to be sure they see and hopefully act on. Now, there's some researchthat can guide your design. Certainly you want your site to look professional,but you want it to do its job as effectively as possible too.

People are surprisingly alike in some of their basic visual behavior. It's beenargued that our evolution as hunter-gatherers has shaped much of our ingrainedvisual patterns. Whether you buy that particular argument or not there arestill important commonalities.

Typical behavior on initially viewing a site is to do a fast scan of the entirevisible screen with short focusing periods around the areas that attractattention. First pass tends to include headlines, the page logo, photocaptions, subheads, links and menu items. And the big hot spot is the upperleft corner of the screen. I haven't seen any definitive research on whetherthese patterns also hold for users with native languages that read any wayexcept left to right, but I'm assuming most of you are building sites forleft-to-right readers.

The clear message is that your most important real estate is in that upper leftarea and that the lower right (particularly if it's below the fold) is theleast likely to receive much attention.

How you use your words in a headline, paragraph or link can make a hugedifference in your success at capturing a visitor's attention. The concept iscalled frontloading. Wherever you can make sure your critical terms appear atthe very beginning of headlines, links and other text. It's still got to makesense, but the first few words are far more likely to be at least scanned thenthe middle or end of a headline or link or the inside of a paragraph.

The exact same words can have drastically different capture rates depending ontheir order. You want to maximize the probability that the visitor will read awhole headline or link and then act on it. So put the most significant,enticing words first - the ones that are the best grabbers and convey thesubject immediately.

You don't have a lot of time to mess about. It's been reported that a typicalsurfer may be off your page in well under 14 seconds unless something grabs hisor her attention fast. Remember the upper-left? You want to do an especiallygood job with headlines, link and text in that area.

Dropcaps (where the first capitalized letter in a line is in a different, oftenunusual, font and extends below the normal text base-line), bolding, fontchanges and color changes can also serve as strong eye-attractors. If you trythese techniques you need to be careful that you don't overuse them (your pagewill look like a mess), and it's extremely important that you test whether ornot they're actually doing what you want. Annoying as it may be, running testsis the only way to make sure it's an improvement.

Do you use lists? Have you made sure that they're in-line and as close to theleft margin as possible? Don't ever use an outline format with multipleindents. People scan down, not across and they tend to scan close to the leftmargin. Indent too much and it might as well be invisible.

An interesting testing result that I read somewhere said that somewhere between10 and 20 percent of site visitors don't even see centered headlines. Sure theylook nice and a lot of sites use them, but if they're totally missed by even 3percent of your visitors, you're paying a major price to look good. Suggestion?Put those headlines up against your left margin.

This also applies to links. Put those links up against the left margin, notinside a paragraph, centered or off to the right. And if you want any clicks ona link, never put it in that nearly unseen lower right area. Might as well justleave it off your page.

How about indented paragraphs? Now there's a great way to start an argument.Some argue that it attracts the eye, it's different, few sites use it so youstand out. Others insist that you're far better off staying left justified andfrontloading each paragraph. There's only one way to resolve it for yourself,yeah, run some tests and see what works with your visitors on your site.

The bottom line is that once you get beyond the basics of placement,frontloading, and left-justified links and headlines, you need to test if youwant to fully maximize the effectiveness of your website design. I wish therewere a simpler answer too, but in the end only testing will tell you what worksbest for your site

In a recent article I talkedabout Google AdSense placement based on eye-tracking research. However,research by The Poynter Institute, Eye tools and the Estlow Center forJournalism and New Media has a lot to say about more than where to put anAdSense block.

Contact:

Ms. Doanh Nguyen: Sales

Email: sales@blueball.com.vn

Sales Representative

International Marketing Department

Blue Ball Co. Ltd.

Thailand

252/94 Muang Thai - Phatra Complex

Tower 2, 17th floor, Ratchadapisek Rd.

Huay Kwang, Bangkok, Thailand
Tel: +66 2 6932940

Fax: +66 2 6932941

Vietnam

Quang Trung Software City
Ground Floor, Anna Building
District 12, Ho Chi Minh City
Tel: +84 8 4371032
Fax: +84 8 4371033

Have you come up with some brilliant products to sell through online? This means that you need a good ecommerce site or online store to get customers to it. Do you have an idea of the cost and the procedure? Don't worry as this article will give you the necessary knowledge to create, build and promote your ecommerce solutions.

? Research- Before opting for anything, you should do a thorough online research based on your product and its demand. Its no point if you spend building unnecessary ecommerce store which later stands of no use. Try and enter keywords that you think the customers would use to find your website. This will help you estimate the number of customers you can expect every day. If you don't get any positive result then you should reconsider the product you intend to sell or do extensive research by matching your products with others.

? Detailed product information- Try and organize your product well in an excel sheet so that your web designer can add them easily to the ecommerce web site. Always create a detailed spreadsheet in columns like product categories, product options, product ID number, product description, product image, and product price and tax details.

? Easy Shopping Cart- Open PayPal account and integrate it with your ecommerce web site. With the help of PayPal you don't have to bother about payment gateway, shopping cart, merchant account as PayPal does all this automatically with a nominal charge.

? Domain Name Registration- Always try and choose a name that's easy to spell and pronounce. This helps a lot as customers remember simple names. Nowadays it's easy to register your domain name.

? Web Host Company- Before you select a web host company for your ecommerce site, you should understand some features about it like, web space, bandwidth, email accounts, site statistics, auto respondents, database, customer services and price etc.

? Ecommerce site- If you finally decide to build an ecommerce site yourself then you should decide on the number of pages you would want in your site. Then name the navigation links for the web pages according to the main products.

Always have a consistent theme and design. Graphic Designers James Froggart and Christopher Freville recommend to try and maintain a same header, image, logo, slogan, color, copyright and navigation. Homepage should always include a summary of the products and involve the customers into your site by providing more information. Add a contact form to increase your contact list and also include policies like refund, shipping facilities etc.

Building an ecommerce site is not a difficult task but do it methodically so that the customers get attracted to it. If you are unable to build your own ecommerce site then you can select any reputed development company who delivers value added service. The company's team will perfectly understand all your requirements and design the perfect ecommerce site for you as they understand the functions of the site and deliver the perfect item at reasonable budget. So go ahead and choose the right ecommerce solution to intellectually give a boost to your business growth.

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Both Nguyen Thi & Hilary Templeton are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.

Nguyen Thi has sinced written about articles on various topics from Software, Vietnam Travel. Find and more useful information about software partner program on. Nguyen Thi's top article generates over 6600 views. to your Favourites.

Hilary Templeton has sinced written about articles on various topics from Video, Womens Health and Beauty Procedure. Hillary Templeton gives advice to women of all types of ovarian cysts on her website. Click here for more information on .. Hilary Templeton's top article generates over 14800 views. to your Favourites.