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ECommerce

Our approach to setting up a new E-commerce website normally has 2 phases. This is because an E-commerce website needs visits to make sales. Generating the visitor levels that you will need normally takes a minimum of 6 months unless your marketing budget has provision for offline marketing and pay per click advertising.

Phase 1

First we recommend building a site including as much information about your products as possible, in a design which will then easily translate into E-commerce at a later date.

For this we can either

(a) Create you a 1 page site purely to get the domain established in search engines, then expand to E-commerce later, or
(b) launch a full-size catalogue site with an enquiry facility instead of a basket and payment facility. This option is initially more expensive, but is prefferable as we can then establish the sites product categorie pages aswell as the domain itself.

We can then use that site to start getting you found in the top search engines which is where most E-commerce websites generate the majority of their visits and sales. This way your initial budget does not need to include the programming required for your shopping cart or the ongoing expense of setting up a payment gateway. Rather we place your budget where it should be for the first 6 months; in establishing your new website online.

Search engines drive around 80% of all internet traffic. The primary search engine you need to consider is Google as it has by far the greatest market share; 4 or 5 times that of its nearest competitor Yahoo. Google uses incoming links to rank websites. It doesn't trust new links unless they are from what they call 'authority' sites. These are very hard to get. So when you launch a new website it takes time to rank because it takes Google time to trust your links. How long depends on your market; the more competitive, the more trusted links you need. This is often referred to as the 'sandbox' and usually lasts at least 6 months. During this time, the expense of a running a fully operational E-commerce website (monthly fees for a payment gateway for example) may not be justified.

Phase 2

Based on what we learn about your company and your products in the first 6 months, we will tailor a bespoke shopping cart to yours and your customers needs. There are many different options available to you which will help sell your products, all of which we will discuss with you before providing a list of recommendations consider. It may be that your site would benefit from features such as a members area for repeat buyers or a trade area for regular bulk buyers, featured or related products or a newsletter. Every company is different and we need to identify your unique selling points and exploit them as much as possible through the site . Every shopping cart we create is different, nothing we provide you is off the shelf!

We provide a detailed statistics package for all the websites that we host, so you will be able monitor your visitor levels. When your site reaches a pre-agreed level of visitors we will roll out your fully operational e-commerce website.

Upgrading to E-commerce?

If you already have an established website and would like to upgrade it to e-commerce, please contact us and we will provide a free evaluation of your site and the potential it has for making sales. Please call us to speak to one of our advisors or CLICK HERE to send us information so that we can have a look at the site before we call you.

Is your site not selling?

If you already have an E-commerce website but its not achieving the sales that you had planned then we can help you. We provide an evaluation service which will culminate in us providing a report detailing why your site is not achieving, and include a list of action points to consider. This will be chargeable at our consultancy rates.