ECommerce Store Design?

What to include?

[andmunn]

Hi Guys,

I'm in the final phases of designing and implementing my online store selling items for a specific niche. I'm scratching my head whether i should implement the below features, or, if they may take away and draw attention away from actually purchasing the said items:

On product pages:

1. Product Rating (Star Rating)

2. Customer Reviews on Product Page (can review the product in question).

On Main Page:

1. Newsletter Signup

2. A brief Paragraph about the store (i.e..// free shipping, direct from manufcatur, quality guaranteed..etc).

Curious to here opinions.

Andrew.

[ishans]

The options you are considering are certainly elements that will help your conversions. However, if you are selling a proprietary product or want to build a brand image of your store or company you want to consider how those elements will effect your branding strategy and the mind-set of your prospective customer base.

Overall, customer ratings on an item page (star ratings) are only worth the space if the user can read the rating comments. Also, the comments should read as if they are from an actual customer ;). If the comments come across as made-up and don't convince the prospective shopper, you might loose the sale.

Your newsletter sign up option is most certainly a must do. It may take a while to build up your email mailing list but your repeat sales through an email offer will prove less costly than your acquisition cost via PPC or other paid online advertising.

All-in-all testing each option for a set period of time under the same conditions (i.e same ads, non-seasonal time, same offer) will give you the exact answer you are looking for. As you are still constructing simply create those elements into your page template and post each option up for a 1-2 week period each and see how you fare.

[sun818]

Meta data about the product is extremely important. Look how Amazon encourages the submission of user content. First it was customer reviews, but now they include image submissions, manuals, wiki, etc. I use Amazon frequently for research part of the buying cycle. If my research needs are satisfied, I am likely to make the purchase through them (as long as the order total is within a reasonable range vs other merchants).

[slick_uk]

it's also worth having "recommended extras" - i.e. upselling. People like advice on what else to buy, especially those buying (presents) for others where they don't know the market well.

newsletter signup very important, I didn't have this on for over a year, then put it on and got loads of sign-ups, makes me wonder how many i've missed

Main page - get in as many links, text, headers and key words as possible. Optimise it well for the search engines, a link to a good sitemap will do no harm!

[Abdelrhman Fahmy]

NO; for the first two options unless the products are really needs to be reviewed

And yes for the second two options