Seeing the current scenario and a myriad of websites in the internet, having a website that sets you apart from the rest is the need of the hour. And for this purpose, you can also take help from the professional services. Even though, it is quite possible to create a website with your own skills, but it is recommended to take help from a competent service provider in order to survive in the dynamic era of the World Wide Web. Only the services of a competent professional can turn your website from an ordinary one into a professional website, and moreover. It helps in gathering potential customers towards your websites and scoring above your competitors without any difficulty. An Ecommerce Website designer can make your wish come true.

You will get to know about several reasons that why you should get professional assistance. Read on to find more about it.

Only a professional website can analyze the business structure of an organization and deliver results according to the needs. With the growing flexibility, you can easily reap benefits out of the given situation. The match able solutions given by experts could be applied by the entrepreneurs with the help of the improvised technology in their firms.

Technical assistance is one of the most sought- after qualities by the businessmen, and many are vying to create a website that is user friendly as well as boasts of the strong technical advantage possessed by it. Only professional ecommerce web designers know how to develop a website that is preferred by the online audience because of its no- nonsense USP’s. If your website is not technically sound then forget about the dream of making it to the top position. Ecommerce website design rules the market now.

Creating an effective and efficient website is not a child’s play, and you need to have the professional expertise to develop what is in demand these days, and you cannot achieve this forte in the absence of professional services. Only a competent service provider will deliver you the expected results on time thus saving your money and precious time. Specialists are perfect if you want to design your website and the fee charged is also nominal. There is a growing need of ecommerce web development.

Start up organizations is not aware of the benefits associated with the integrated marketing concept that is why they get lost in the crowd. In such cases, it is essential to take help from the professional as to garner your sales and learn marketing techniques. This way you would be able to achieve what was impossible in the past, and will gain loyal customer ship. Now, you must have understood why you should go for professional help in order to get acquainted with the knowledge of marking tools and techniques.

Only a professional can make you aware of the current trends and the statistics of the competitors.

Hire a professional and enjoy the windfall gains.

In this article, you will get useful information on some crucial dos and don’ts concerning web designing.

Dos

The website created should be easy to load and the designs must have these attributes. It should not take more than 2O seconds to load because that is not a good thing for a website. Web design services are quite helpful.

The designing part of your website should be done keeping in mind all screen resolutions. The effective way to do so is by designing your website in percentage instead of pixels. Layout that is comfortable in any resolution is very pleasing to eyes and gives a professional feel to the customers. The Best Web Designer is not hard to find.

Try including fonts that are readable and gives a professional look. Always include the fonts which are common and are termed right otherwise the website would use the default font which is not good at all. Using fonts like Comic Sans is a mistake rather than this use Arial or Verdana; they are apt for your work. Best Website design works in your favor.

Your text must be easily read by the users. It is advisable to use CSS for this kind of work.

Always use white space, it will work for you. By using white space, the clients will look at your website as a professional one. Spaciousness, well distributed paragraph and neatness determine the visitors to your website.

If you put the menu on the web pages of your website designs, it will be easy for the users to make choices as they will be able to select their kind of thing and navigate easily.

Furthermore, make it easy for the uses to access the home page when they are on other Web Pages so they don’t get lost in the maze when they want to read the contents of the home page.
The links that are important must be placed on the right spot; it is advisable to post them on the top of the page. Get rid of the external links that are dead. The software must be put to use to see whether the external links are working or not.

If you want others to click on the link posted by you then it is better to underline them or color them blue as it will draw the attention of the users to the link. Don’t try using words like ‘click’ or ‘here’ to the next to the link, it is a bad idea.

Optimization of HTML and script tags should be done. It is your duty to check; there are no unwanted tags and scripts in your website.

Compression of the image files is also necessary. Nobody likes to wait too long for the downloading of the graphics ad images so install compressing software to get rid of the annoying problem. Graphic converter and Gif-Bot are a solution to such problems.

Don’t crowd your web Design with too much of graphics, keep it simple and enjoy the increased traffic.

Juxtapose is applied for the contrasting of colors and implementation for the backgrounds that are simple.

If you believe in providing services of supreme quality to your customers, then Ecommerce website design should be your ultimate choice. The revolutionary changes in technology have made the designing aspect of ecommerce website pretty easy and free from any difficulties. If you believe in the magic of Ecommerce website design then no can stop you from turning your dream into reality and having a good loyal customer ship. With the help of Ecommerce webs designers, you can earn good profits too. Such websites are made in a way so the customer feels the need to buy the products and services displayed on the site; they are very different from the regular web design and are quite appealing.

Such sorts of websites are designed in a way so that the company is able to turn its prospective customers into loyal and repeat customers. The website should have such an enchanting effect on the customer that they should be able to feel the environment of a real time physical shop. The physical features must be appealing to the eyes and needless to say, the website should have easy navigation. Navigation aspect allows the user to get through the pages easily and find what he or she is looking for; its layout should not confuse the user. A website with a confusing layout repels the users.

The designing of website should be done by a qualified and skilled Ecommerce website designer. To hire one, look for the useful information provided online. You will get to know about a number of good Ecommerce website designers in your town. Ecommerce web development is very crucial for the growth of your business. With the growing competition, you have to have an edge over your competitors and Ecommerce website design is there to help you.

Services and product information that is displayed on your website must have sufficient information because in an online market the buyer is not physically present to asses the quality of the products, so you must provide them with useful information so that they like your product or service and end up buying them. But the catch is it is not easy to do.

Once the prospective customer is convinced that he likes the product and wants to buy it then transfer of product and financial transaction takes place. It is your duty to convince the buyer that the product which is going to be delivered soon at his doorstep will be of good quality just like it was shown on the website. There will be no compromise in its quality.

The buyer is skeptical about making financial transaction with any new company so you have to assure them that their personal information won’t be leaked and they are completely safe. The crucial information contains the username and password of the medium which is used for sending money for the product or service obtained by the customer.

Market strategy of many firms include money back guarantee in case the customer is not satisfied with the service. It is a good method to attract customers to your website.

When you decide to get a website designed for yourself, it is important that you realize its importance. It has to be good and effective and appealing to the customers. Before, you decide to get one made for yourself, it is better to have a look at the web design of some of the other ones which you visit frequently and check out exactly what makes you visit them every now and then. Next important consideration is the nature of business that you are having. You must realize that the website is going to be your face to the online world and that you have to get a particular brand image across to the people for your company.

So, there is need to ask yourself “What is that the website shall convey to the visitors?” and “how shall it convey the same?”

If you are clear on these aspects, then you are ready to guide the web designer on what exactly you want him to do. The professional web designer shall be able to get the website made for you as per the image that you have in your mind. The web design services providers develop the website on the following essentials, keeping in min you choices:

1. Logical categorization: Due to the usage of certain terms in ecommerce website design over a period of time, these have become the rule. It is better to abide by these rules which arise out of the convention of usage. The logical categorization of the data enables the visitors to quickly find the things that he is looking for in the website.

2. Placement of content and structural elements of each web page: What is the information that the visitors shall look at first? What is the most important thing that you want to bring out to the site visitors? All the important things need to be given the central place on the webpage. Images, text, videos all have their own relevance and the same shall be placed in such a way that the site looks professional.

3. Content-rich but not confused: The tendency to over load a single page (most often the landing or the home page) with a lot of content shall be avoided. The visitor may not find it easy to look for things that he wants and might feel that the site is not organized properly. The web design services shall not give a confused look to any the web pages.

4. Colours: The colour scheme to be used in the designing process is another important consideration of the web designing. If the organization already has a name of itself, then the corporate colours can be picked up for the website designing. However, if the colours are subdued and are not vibrant enough to make into an appealing website then it is better not to stick with this colour scheme.

5. Use current technologies and trends: Web designer shall duly consider the requirements of internet marketing methods, particularly SEO. Similarly, these shall also make use of current technologies for making the website so that it does not get obsolete over a short span of time and there is enough scope of upgrading as well.

There is hardly anything more convenient than doing a business sitting in front of computer and doing the sale of the products. While the business might have to do a lot of back-end activities to keep the workflow smooth and to enable ease of transaction of the business, the ease of doing the purchases by the customers is unmatched. The era of ecommerce websites is fast changing the way people shop and also the way the businesses go about doing their works. Ecommerce website design provides the crucial interface for these businesses which are dependent on internet based transactions.

The number of people taking to the internet shopping is increasing year after year. The earlier reluctance of the people due to the issues of security of the data as well as the crucial infrastructural support requirement for ensuring the infallible systems were the main hindrances in the picking up of the internet based transactions. But, over a period of time, these security and infrastructural concerns have been largely removed and there has been an increasing confidence among the people for making the internet purchases. The role of the ecommerce web designer and developer can not be underestimated as well.

The widespread use of the open source programming and scripting languages has been one of the major influences on the ecommerce website design development. Further, the relational database management systems have enabled the management of voluminous data being generated on the website. Further, there has also been a distinct improvement in the user control and management of the website on his or her own end. This has meant that the functionality of the ecommerce website design has been improved by providing the different modules to the users to use as per their wish. The modules are either inbuilt or the same can be had from the third parties. The shopping carts are the ones which make the difference between an ordinary site and an ecommerce one. And, the modern ecommerce website design can make it possible to integrate these shopping carts with the website without any hassles.

It is distinctly possible to allow for integrating the payment gateways, shipping details, correct invoicing of the purchases after duly allowing for the taxes and other special schemes and discounts, maintenance of the databases and many other functions. The ability of the ecommerce web design to be secure by having the SSL levels of security inbuilt into the shopping cart, also ensures that the site can be used without any fear of the data being lost or the transaction being insecure.

The ecommerce website designers and developers have to ensure that the site remains functional and secure all through the functioning of the online store. This requires the regular maintenance work to be carried on the site. The online security experts, developers and designers do need to be employed on regular basis. It gives your business a global reach and the people from not just your locality but also from world over will be able to make the purchases.

Landing page of a website is the page where the visitors come when they click on some outside links to the website. This need not necessarily be the ‘Home’ page of the website. Most of the companies seeking to promote their products or services make their ‘Product’ or ‘Services’ page as landing page. With so much of importance being attached to the landing page, it is worthwhile to make it a real attractive piece. And, the folks doing website design Sydney know all too well how to achieve it. Here are some points based on their working experience:

1. Do not try to put all the best effort in one page only: It is true that landing page shall be attractive enough to hold the visitor on the site but it shall not be the only good page.
2. Control yourself from overdoing: Spread out the content evenly across the site. It is true that the real purpose of the site shall come out in the landing page and every single bit of its space shall be filed with relevant information, videos, pictures and other necessary things. But, overdoing it will reflect poorly on your professionalism and the site may give a very confused look.
3. Well organized: If the landing page is well organized in layout and categories, then it gives a very professional look to the visitors. Website design Sydney experts opine that the landing page shall have some links to other pages of the site as well.
4. Focus: Visitors shall be able to find what they are primarily looking for on the landing page. This will keep them interested and might also compel them to go for a purchase.
5. Be specific: It always pays to give factual information to the visitors rather than offering generalized content.
6. Know your customer well: It is only when you know who are most likely to be your customers, will you be able to get a web design Sydney landing page made most effectively. Then, you will be able to design as per their liking and provide relevant content.

All in all, the landing page shall be simple, well organized, appealing, unambiguous, having links with other parts of the site, easily loadable and shall have all features which can stop the visitors from hurrying away from the site. Some experts also suggest that some client testimonial can also help in providing some reassurances and enhance credibility of the site in the eyes of the visitors.

There is strong support for the argument to make the landing page SEO friendly and optimized for a set of relevant keywords to generate more traffic on the site. This can be done by having sufficient internal and external links on the landing page of the website. Website design Sydney experts believe that it is a better idea to analyze the competitor’s website for optimized content to make your landing page even better.

Summary: People make a mistake when they plan and work on web design and SEO operations separately. Ideally, it shall be the other way round. Both website design Sydney and SEO shall move hand in hand.

There is a definite and strong relation between a well developed website and the SEO operations. As is well known, the basic purpose of SEO is to promote your website on the search engine result pages. This is achieved by understanding how these search engines sort out the web content to show up the relevant results and then using the same yardstick to make the site SEO friendly. Link building is the most crucial aspect of SEO services and this is done effectively by writing texts for submissions, incorporates videos, blogs, social bookmarking and every other thing which can allow for linking with the site. The best SEO operations carried out by website design Sydney know the importance of provide some value to the visitor.

It is a well known maxim in the advertising world that “A bad product with very good advertising is bound to be a failure”. The same holds true even for the internet based marketing or advertising. Excellent SEO and other marketing activities will be of little or no consequence if these were to lead to a poorly designed website. On the other hand, if the website design is excellent but SEO functionality is improper due to trash or irrelevant content or broken links, all the effort and money is simply put into the drain. So, both web design Sydney and SEO operations shall be well integrated and work with synergy to make the customer hop from one link to another, with each link providing key value to the visitor. Here is how you can achieve this:

1. Planning: It pays to spend some time on planning. Planning shall involve thinking on all the necessary paraphernalia needed to make effective SEO operations and web design and establishing key linkages between them. It shall sort out questions related to what to do, why to do, how to do and when to do?
2. Analyze competition: What shall make your product stand out? What are the distinctive features being offered by your website which can set you apart from others? Is the extent and level of your SEO operations sufficient to beat the heat of competition? These questions will lead you to make a comparative analysis. It is imperative that the web design is futuristic in nature and incorporates flexibility of operations in terms of ease of updating and compatibility of running on different applications and platforms.
3. Do not make visitors wait: First time visitors will not stay for more than a few seconds on one page. And, this is the only time you have to make an impression. If the visitors have come from some outside link, given during the SEO operations, the landing page shall open immediately. It shall not take ages for it to open. To make this possible, it is desirable that the websites are designed in those formats which do not make heavy files. Generally, heavy files like video files shall be used when there is an important reason to do it and the visitors is willing to wait till the time it opens.

So, if you wish to achieve the best results plan the integral website design and SEO operations together and every single work of website design Sydney shall have quality written all over it.

Shakespeare got it all wrong when he said ‘what is in a name?’ If he would have lived in the present times, he would have realized the tremendous value that a ‘name’ aka ‘brand’ holds. And, this ‘name’ is best represented in the visual format by a logo. A logo holds the value of company in the eyes and minds of the people. It’s the logo which remains on top of mind even if the name is not known. So, what makes for a path-breaking logo design? Here are some suggestions of website design Sydney experts on creating a great logo design:

1. Know what a logo means: This means that you shall have conceptual clarity on the objectives which a logo seeks to achieve.
2. Know its principles: Companies do not change logos often. It is a mark of their identity and they weave their brand value around it. Here are some principles of a logo design, like:
   1. Simplicity: Simplicity of design aids better remembrance by common people.
   2. Timeless:  Logos shall not grow old with time. This means that it shall fit well into the dynamic environment even after decades.
   3. Not limited by geographical boundaries: The design shall be well understood and recognizable for the same set of values everywhere. It shall also be acceptable in diverse geographical and cultural settings. Naturally, companies cannot afford to create different logos for different operating environments.
   4. Versatility: It is obvious that the logo will be used in different formats and might be required on different set of applications. So, the web design Sydney and other service providers around the world follow vector design format.
   5. Appropriateness: The logo shall gel with the objective of logo creation. It shall not be out-of-sync with the main function, business or service which it is required to represent. Otherwise, it will leave a very bad impression.
   6. Know the history of successful logos: Why have some logos fared better than many others? Try to find out the reasons for the same. Also, it will also pay you greatly if you can gather elaborate knowledge on why some logos have fared very badly and with what results. This will help you understand how the logo designs are perceived by the people.
   7. Look for inspirations for the designs: Get yourself in a mode which propels your thought process to think creatively. People have various sources to take some ideas or inspirations. Books, architectural structures and shapes, internet and your own mind could be some of these sources.

These valuable suggestions from web design Sydney experts can be used to design a logo which rightly matches the organization, is futuristic and is easily memorable by the people. That will be the best bet for establishing brand identity, creating brand awareness and developing brand loyalty of the company among the people over a long period of time. It is interesting to note that effective and successful logo designs help in beating the competition since these create product differentiation based on successful branding.

Websites are your face to world. These need to be designed in such a way as to provide some constructive value to the customers so that they feel compelled to visit the site again and again.

1. Layout: The construction and layout of the page shall be designed to promote easy navigation and search. Simple, well structured sites always get more attention.
2. Content Organization: Irrespective of the volume of data on the site, it is desirable to have the content well organized into separate sections. For this purpose, the web design Sydney company might require the client’s assistance on regular basis. Improper content organization restricts the navigability of visitors. Do not expect the visitors to spend time for leisurely navigating the site looking for information they want. Always put your best foot forward and write the most important parts of the website on the first, landing page.
3. Right color mixes and graphics: Colors convey certain meaning. The web designers know what color(s) shall be used for a particular site. Some organizations which already have a well established corporate identity might require usage of corporate color combinations to retain the coherence in online and offline brand identities. Light and soothing colors could be used for some whereas ‘loud’ colors might be a better option in some others. Select only a few colors. Do not go for the overkill in color usage. Similarly, different color effects and gradations shall be used to make the site more appealing. selecting the right background colors is equally important.
4. Do not over-monetize: If the main purpose of your site has been to generate income from monetization, you could do well to remember that monetization will have value only if there are good number of visitors to the site. If the page has been designed by web design Sydney in such a way that a major part is occupied with the ads and there is pretty little for the visitor to get some value, you are actually turning them away.
5. Do not use too many keywords: Using too many keywords for making the website content SEO-friendly will, in fact, make it very SEO-unfriendly. Overshooting the keyword limit is a fit case of spamming and the search engines may not pick up your site at all.
6. Website shall not give confused look: Sites shall be well balanced in usage of different elements. They must have right informative content, right number of color combinations, judiciously chosen ad-space and the content shall not get lost in other things on the page.
7. Fonts size and style: This might seem to be a very simple task. But, it does require experienced website design Sydney minds to make out what type of text font size shall be used at what all places to make the site look more appealing.

So, the crux of all these points is that the various elements of website designing shall be incorporated in a very balanced manner and after giving due thought on all its aspect.  All in all, it shall hold on the customer to itself and make him come repeatedly on the site.

Conducting sales through a website is no easy task. Surveys reveal that 3/4^th of the e-commerce endeavors end in a fiasco as the management did not realize the tasks needed to conduct the business online. With unrealistic expectations of profit and no strategy firmly in place, e-commerce is bound to fail. After extensive research however, experts have come up with some kind of framework and guidelines based on which an e-commerce hub can survive. Here’s a brief synopsis of the seven fundamental guidelines or pillars of an e-commerce site. 

Marketing Strategies — Online

Although online marketing has been in the online market for more than a decade, many e-commerce webmasters don’t realize its importance. The fact that sites should make their presence in the search engines, create brand awareness, and showcase their products to attract traffic is not new. 

One of the most important survival tactics by e-commerce site is to promote their Internet marketing strategies by making their site optimized with keywords, creating search engine spider friendly website design, and ensure products are categorized well for all to find it through search engine result pages. 

Initiating Orders — Online

Can a user order a product online? Theoretically its all perfect in most e-commerce site, however the scenario changes in the practical world. This is what most users say while transacting an online shopping mall or a shopping guide. The second pillar to success on any e-commerce site is to ensure that the ordering process is easy and through online means. 

Conducting Sales – Online

Conducting sales is the next pillar of success for any online business site. A website design should be created in such a way so that financial transaction and shipping is completed without any hassle and that the customer should not be compelled to follow up through phone or mail. 

An online payment option – whether through online payment website, such as Paypal – or credit card payment, should be hassle free. When asking for personal information from the client for identity verification, ensure the information does not leak. 

Transaction of Goods and Money — Online

The fourth pillar of success is to complete the entire process of shipment with ease and on time. Whether tangible products or information-related ones, ensure that the customers gets the value for his money. 

Boost Interest — Online

Advertising one’s skills through various Internet marketing techniques or simply showcasing one’s abilities through articles, virtual tours is the next pillar of success for e-commerce site. 

Direct Marketing — Online

Direct marketing works wonders for any sites conducting business through online means. The one-on-one marketing helps to be more specific, personal, and sincere in the effort to increase sales prospects. 

Initiating Support System — Online

Last but not the least, is the online support system. Having a round-the-clock customer cell to cater to all issues related to the e-commerce business is one of the best pillars of success for a site. 

So, get, set, and go with your online endeavor by keeping in mind these salient pillars of success.

Your website is your tool for showing the online community an image of your Drop Ship retail business. Whether or not your business succeeds depends heavily on your website. If your website design is user-friendly, more visitors will purchase your products or subscribe to your newsletter. This will ensure that you are not wasting the time and money you spent attracting visitors to your website. It does not pay to drive large amounts of traffic to your website and have 99% of them leave due to poor content and navigation.

When designing your website, it is important that you switch from your own profit-oriented perspective to the prospective customers’ perspective. First place yourself in your customers’ shoes. After which, you should take some time to sit down and plan how your website should look like.

Below I will describe the factors that contribute to a successful sales-optimized website for a Drop Ship business.

1) The critical components of your homepage.

- Your title tag. It should describe your website effectively and concisely. For search engine optimization purposes, it is necessary to include your main keywords in your title, without it being unnecessarily long. For example, a good title would be ‘Renaissance Oil Paintings ½ Abstract Oil Paintings’.

- Your headline. Being one of the first few elements of your homepage that captures the attention of the visitor, it should clearly and concisely state what benefit your website can offer to the visitor. For example, your headline can tell your visitors how to earn extra income, how to lead a healthier lifestyle or how to save them time or money. In short, it should offer a solution to their problems, or address their needs. The headline should be placed strategically right at the top center of the page. You can also use the italics or bold functions to draw attention to your headline.

Internet surfers are not known for their patience. That is why it is crucial to capture their attention during the first few seconds of their stay at your website. Your headline plays the most important role, as it is usually the first thing that visitors see. Research has shown that you have about ten seconds to fully capture the attention of the visitors and compel them to read on, before they leave your site.

- Your content body. In your main body of your homepage, you have to describe in further detail the benefits your website or your products can offer to your visitors. Note that you provide the benefits, and not the features of the products you are selling. This is the basis of effective marketing: you tell the customers what is in it for them. You must also give strong directions to action in your content body and tell them the steps they need to take in order to benefit most from your website. For example, you can include links like ‘Click here now to discover why our oil paintings are among the best in Europe’, or ‘Sign up for our free newsletter now to get the latest tips and guides on good gardening practices.’ Note that you have to be concise in your content body so that you can include the most attractive benefits near the top of the homepage, without the visitor having to scroll down.

- Your opt-in offer. Ask for your visitors’ names and email addresses in your opt-in offer box. Email marketing is central to the success of your Drop Ship business. First-time visitors who leave your website without buying anything have a chance of signing up for your free newsletter. This allows you to keep in contact with them and send them promotions in future, and your effort and money in attracting them to your website would not be wasted. This feature should be placed somewhere near the top left or top right of your homepage because of its importance.

2) Professional look/atmosphere. Your website must not be full of graphics, banners or flashing advertisements. These only serve to distract your visitors from your main product offers. You should avoid flash animation as well. When formatting your text, use only a single type of font like Times New Roman, and two different colors at most. Page backgrounds should preferably be white or plain, and not be patterned or fanciful.

Another important factor to keep in mind is to minimize the time that your webpage takes to load. Since visitors are normally very impatient, they are likely to leave if a page is slow to load, hence the need to exclude large graphics or animation which slow down your loading speed.

3) Good content. Most online retailers sell products in a niche they have expertise in or which they are passionate about. For visitors to be convinced of your authority in the niche, you need to establish yourself as an expert in that area by providing useful, reliable content. Customers tend to trust retailers with strong background knowledge as they can recommend the best products for the customers’ needs, or answer any queries well. Fly-by-night businesses, on the other hand, are just out to make money, and normally do not have the necessary expertise to earn the trust of customers. It is thus critical that you make a consistent effort to update your website regularly with the latest tips, resources or articles to serve your visitors well. At least even if visitors do not buy from your website on their first visit, they would continuously return to your website for useful information. After a period of time, when you have earned their trust, they would feel more compelled to buy your products. This form of marketing, which develops an online community, is a very cost-effective method as it costs next to nothing to supply the necessary information.

4) Good navigation. This is another strong determinant of the success of your website. For a website to look ‘professional’, it has to be well organized into categories, and the pages must be linked to each other and to the homepage. Your navigation bars must be placed consistently at the same area on every page of your website. Navigation bars are most commonly placed on the left hand side of the page or at the top of the page. If you have numerous different categories on your navigation, it makes sense to place them on the left of the page. However, if you have only about five to seven options, you can place your navigation bars at the top of the page.

Use text links for your webpages on your navigation bars instead of graphic links. One factor that search engines like Google use to determine the relevance of your webpages is by the inclusion of keywords in the text links to that page.

It is also crucial that you name your navigation accurately and descriptively. Visitors would instantly know which link to click on to find what they want. If your website is cluttered with many obscure links, visitors would feel lost and leave your site immediately.

Organize your content well so that your visitors can navigate your site easily. They should be able to find what they want with the least number of clicks possible. Research has shown that for any extra click that visitors have to take to reach their goal, the number of visitors leaving your site can reach as high as 50%!

When deciding what to include in your navigation bar, first place yourself in your customers’ shoes. Think about what they would be most interested in when they visit your site, and place these links near the top of the page. Other links, which are secondary in importance for the visitor should be placed nearer the bottom of the page.

5) The standard pages. Like every other online business, your Drop Ship business website should also include some important pages that serve the customer.

- Testimonials. This page is considered as a ‘must-have’ for many online businesses. When you display the testimonials of other customers on your website, your credibility is established. Testimonials are like votes or ratings for your business that shows the real value of what you offer. The better the comments from customers, the better your website would appear to prospective customers. You can choose to place a separate testimonials page, or you can select a few of the best testimonials and place them on your homepage.

- Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ). After you have described your benefits in detail, visitors would still have several queries about your products. It is thus useful to create an FAQ page to write down the answers to what your customers are most likely to ask. When visitors have questions, they can simply visit your FAQ page, instead of sending you their queries by email. This saves you a lot of trouble for answering individual emails. Remember that most customers are not willing to make purchases when their doubts are still unanswered.

- Contact Us. Having this page boosts your reliability as a business. Remember to include your email address, mailing address and telephone numbers on this page.

- About Us. Describe what your team and your business aims to do.

- Privacy Policy. Customers value their privacy highly on the internet. When they submit their personal information like email address or mailing address on your website, fears about privacy may arise. You thus need to include a privacy policy to reassure your customers that their personal information will not be abused or given to any other third party. Remember to place links to your privacy policy on your order pages and also your opt-in offers.

eCommerce web design is a lot more than just putting your company brochure on the net or adding an internet shopping cart to your existing product catalog. There are some fundamental differences between doing business online and doing business the traditional way. Before you design your business web site, you must know what specific goals you desire to achieve with your business web site, determine how best to meet your goals based on your budget, and then determine what software and services you will use to design your e-commerce web site.

Web Site Business Objectives

A small business web site can do many things. This can include:

- Generate Leads. Pre-sell your business services and products to generate telephone, e-mail, or online form leads from customers.

- Generate Sales Quotes. Solicit or generate automated quotes that in turn generates a customer sale or lead.

- Generate Advertising Revenue. Display online content and free services with affiliate or ad network advertisements that generates advertising revenue from your merchant partners.

- Provide A StoreFront. Host online catalog that fully automates the customer purchase and communications process.

- Generate Customer Traffic. Generate customer traffic from search engines and business directories to pre-sell your product or service. Traffic is then re-directed to you main web site or product web pages.

Your e-Commerce web site design is greatly influenced by your specific web site objectives for your small business.

eCommerce Web Site Design Fundamentals

A web site is a lot more or even a lot less than a traditional store. There are more considerations with ecommerce web site design versus a traditional store. Web design considerations include:

Customer Friendly: Present a professional image, offer customer convenience, have good sales copy, and just make it easy for the customer to make the desired response (click, lead, sale).

Search Engine Friendly. For most online businesses, most customer traffic comes from search engines like Google, Yahoo!, or MSN. If part of your e-Commerce web site design strategy is to generate search engine traffic, you will need search engine optimization expertise to succeed. Buy it or grow it.

Web Site Automation Tools. There are thousands of web site tools such as shopping carts, content management systems, e-mail auto-responders, payment processors, search engine optimization tools, online bulletin boards, traffic analyzers, and advertising management tools. Some of these tools are cheap and some are expensive. If you do not have the expertise to evaluate these products, it is probably best that you do not make any major investments in expensive web site tools. Wait until you become knowledgeable enough to evaluate web tools and add-ons for your business web site and that you have a specific need.

Costs. Costs, of course, are a key consideration for any e-Commerce web site design solution. You can usually purchase web site tools and services up-front or by subscription. Subscriptions can help you with your cash flow up-front. Usually you do not need to make any long-term commitments with subscription software or services. Subscriptions are good because as you become more knowledgeable of specific web site solutions you can add and drop web tools and services at will. Buying software up-front is good if you know that you will definitely use the software for a long time (1 to 3 years).

Web Site Design Options

eCommerce web site design options can range from doing it yourself with web design software such as Microsoft FrontPage or outsourcing the entire web site development to a web design company. For a business, a free site with a free web site builder is not the answer. A free solution will not generate the desire response from the customer, is not search engine friendly, and is limited in growth for web site add-ons. A free affiliate site can be OK for making a sale, but have another method to generate traffic to your affiliate site as search engines will rarely give high rankings to cloned affiliate sites. Here are some e-Commerce web site design options:

Do-It-Yourself. Buy web design software and do it yourself. Good option if: technically inclined, marketing skills, part-time web publisher, limited budget.

Do-It-Yourself Using Templates. Buy web site templates, web design software, and do it yourself. Good option if: technically inclined, marketing skills, supplement with low cost web design services.

Do-It-Yourself Using Web Site Builder Solution. Buy business web solution service. Good option if: not technically inclined, have marketing skills, and willing to make some investment. Do not waste your time with a site builder that just clones a snazzy web site. You will not get a web site that generates traffic or sales.

eCommerce Web Site Design Company or Consultant. Outsource your web design work. Good option if: not technically inclined, limited marketing skills, medium-to-large budget

As with any business there are risks. In evaluating an ecommerce web design solution it is best to know your objectives, have enough business knowledge to evaluate your web service suppliers as well as your business web tools, and maintain a positive cash flow.