Website Design and Ecommerce
The main ingredient to develop an information rich website, re-design or ecommerce site is to contract with a professional search engine marketing and natural search engine optimization company that designs and develops websites. Their marketing and optimization experience will be of great benefit to you during the development process.
By taking this suggestion, you will be employing the following specialists in their respective field of expertise.
- Webmaster/seo technician
- Graphic designer
- Copywriter
- Marketing Team
- Consultant
INET OPTIMIZER builds custom websites that are NEVER built from templates, and always include Natural Search Engine Optimization techniques
Whether you intend on starting an online business or want to increase your current online sales, the INET Optimnizer team is your answer to fulfilling your company’s performance goals. What it takes to develop and market your product/service online is no small task. First, like most anything you do in life, you need a plan. In addition to the overall website development plan, you need to make a commitment to a strategic online marketing plan.
First, some of the web development plans initial components are technical tasks consisting of:
- Writing markup
- Backend programming
- Page coding
- Web server configuration – including load time
- Database Development
Natural Search Engine Optimization techniques is an important factor to incorporate in the beginning stages of development
Second, you have the aesthetic and functional criterion, which focuses on the user and includes the website’s content design and navigation.
Third, you have to beta test the site after final development and it needs to be published and uploaded for access by the web community.
And lastly, it’s time to begin your Internet marketing campaign to drive your intended target market to your website.
Now you need to draft the plan. As in all plan development, you need to decide now what to do, including when and how to do it. This includes assembling the team and appointing a team leader.
When you contract with INET Optimizer to develop an information rich website, re-design or ecommerce site, we involve you in every step of the process. We can’t stress enough the importance of your involvement. By working together, you stay informed on the progress, making any necessary changes along the way. This helps ensure that the finished product meets the plans business objectives.
Now we’re going to talk about the discovery process. It’s time for the INET Optimizer team to consult with you and/or your team. Our initial objective is to determine what you want your website to accomplish. If your objectives is to create a new information rich website or ecommerce site and haven’t already obtained a domain name, now is the time.
If you’ve come to INET Optimizer for a website re-design, we’ll determine your strength’s, weaknesses, opportunities and threat’s (SWOT). The review includes your Internet marketing programs and strategies that have worked well and which have not.
In any case, our goal is to create a website that is appealing, has compelling content, is easy to navigate, provides a seamless order process and achieves your business performance goals.
In order to accomplish this, we have to consider the following implementation strategies. First, similar to building a house, you need to have a strong supporting foundation, the websites technical tasks. The lack of a well built foundation will lead to cracks, such as broken links, slow load time, page errors, missing graphics, etc.
Ah, to build, to build! That is the noblest of all the arts, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Michael Angelo
Second, a story board will be created and take into account your purpose, audience and content. It will determine the visual of how the pages will be laid out and interconnected. How you portray the content for your audience, the design concept, page elements and its location are crucial to providing that “Enter or Do Not Enter” first impression.
In all advertising, the advertiser has a varying degree of seconds to catch and maintain a viewer. Research has shown you have less than 30 seconds to convince visitors to navigate through your website. The prime real estate of your webpage is located at the top of the page. Your most appealing product features and/or service benefits need to be strategically located.
INET Optimizer design tactics influence the visitor’s time spent on a page and the number of pages they view
Let’s take a look at just 12 of the design aspects that are considered when designing your website:
- Consistent look & feel – theme
- Logo – branding
- Best Practices – trust
- Contact information – clearly identified
- Page clutter – buries your message
- Instant messaging – reduces abandonment
- Scripting languages – functionality
- Web colors – appealing
- 508 Disabilities Act – accessibility
- Animation, video, video clips & sound
- Templates – newsletters/ezines & email mktg – retention tool & customer acquisition
- Competitors/Subject related site analysis – intelligence
The competitor and subject related website analysis should consist of reviewing their back and front end site specifications and their online marketing efforts. The review process will determine their:
- Optimization strategies
- Keywords
- Search engine rankings
- Link popularity
- Etc.
- Design elements
- Site features
- Product descriptions
- Pricing
- Etc.
After the design review stage, you need to consider optimizing the copy for the content of your website. You need to conduct a keyword analysis. This is yet another crucial aspect. The keywords are incorporated into your Meta tags and used in conjunction with your link building strategies.
Proper use of keywords will increase your natural search engine optimization efforts and determine which keywords searchers are using to find company’s like yours
After the competitor evaluation has been completed, you should have addressed all of the following pertinent points thus far:
- Website objectives
- Technical tasks
- Storyboard
- Design
- Copy
- Keyword analysis
- Link building
If you’re developing an ecommerce site you need to consider these additional aspects to your plan.
"E-Commerce Driving to 170 Billion This Year"
For customer ordering, you need a shopping cart program. Unfortunately, approximately 60% of shopping cart visitors fails to complete the order process. Therefore, INET Optimizer takes measures to carefully craft the user experience at the order process level. Design elements, navigation and trust building are imperative at this stage of development to provide a user friendly purchasing experience.
Here are 14 techniques to increase your conversion rate:
- Secure server icon located in the footer of the page
- Best practices statements
- Hacker safe icon
- BBB online certification icon
- Testimonials
- Clearly defined return policy
- Prominent display of company contact information
- Customer service instant messaging program
- Detailed product information
- Reviews
- Factoids
- Chat room
- Loyalty program
- Promotional incentives
There are many more elements and trust building techniques that Inet Optimizer incorporates into ecommerce websites.
Having a secure server and hacker proof icons from known organizations instills a great deal of trust for the buyer
In order to accept payments online, you need a payment processing system to accommodate secure transactions. It ensures that the buyer’s personal data will be protected. Once the buyer provides their personal data, it’s sent through a private payment gateway which sends the data to your Merchant Account. The Merchant Bank’s Processor submits the transaction to the Credit Card Interchange (a network of financial entities that communicate to manage the processing, clearing, and settlement of credit card transactions). The Credit Card Interchange routes the transaction to the buyer’s Credit Card Issuer.
I’m ready to go online, what do I do now? Once your website has been beta tested, it’s time to institute your search engine submission process. Your options are to be included in the major search engines, directories, specialty topic and shopping/comparative engines. Generally speaking, no two are alike. Therefore, INET Optimizer will suggest the appropriate search engines and directories that will target your intended market. See submission. Get started creating your website today by speaking with one of our professionally trained and educated web development consultants. |