The Ecommerce Workshop

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So you’re thinking of setting up and designing a new website or giving an existing website a facelift, you are aware that a website can wonders do for a company. Such as it will generate revenue online, generate leads & enquiries, strengthen a brand and much more in addition. BUT, you are not sure on how to ensure maximum success with your site…

Our 10 step guide (provided by LOS Design UK who offer web design services for the UK) can help you decide if you can develop one yourself or seek professional assistance from companies such as LOS Design UK.

1. What is the purpose of your website.
Do you want it to solely act as an online brochure (information website) for your products and services? Will you use it to generate leads or to present a showcase your skills and previous work carried out. Or are you looking to sell your products online? In which case an ecommerce solution (shopping cart) would be needed.

2. What is your target market?
How big is it? What is the competition up to and what are the buying patterns used by the customers who use that market? Understanding your market and your competition will allow you to identify your customer needs and build an effective site set to this target.

3. Think WHY. Why would a propect want to use my site and what are MY aims?
You maybe looking to reduce your sales resource and allow your prospects to purchase through an online, automatic system? Are you hoping that your prospects will come to the site to see the breadth of your skills? And how often do you expect prospects/customers to use it? Do you need to think about sufficient infrastructure to support high demand, do you need to ensure your website content is updated daily?

4. Site management. In-house or outsourced?
If your website requires frequent updates and you do not have the resource in-house, it might be worth looking at investing in a system that enables you to update information through an easy-to-use web interface (this is know as a content management system or CMS). This would allow members of your organisation  make basic changes to the site. Or you could enter into an agreement with your web development company to pay a set fee for a web maintenance contract. You could of course do any updates yourself, but if you need your website to be compliant with current UK legislation, unless you have a good understanding of writing accessible code, you could jeopardise its integrity.

5. Will your site fit into your marketing strategy?
Will it act as your sole form of communication with prospects or will it support other mediums and sales channels?

6. Do you plan to take payments online?
Have you considered online security and how to show to your customers that their personal details are safe?

7. What budget do you have in mind?
Allocating a sufficient budget to the project is vital. Don’t expect to get a high quality professional website design that meets your exacting needs for pennies. Whilst is it impossible to scope out an accurate payscale for every concept a good rule of thumb is:

Brochure websites: Expect to pay between £500 and £2,000 depending on content requirements
Ecommerce solutions: Expect to pay between £1,500 and £5,000 for SMB’s. Larger corporations can expect to pay upwards of £25k

Remember, if you pay pennies, your results will, in time, reflect this investment. Your website represents your company!

8. Content.
Ensure your content matches your business model and represents your aspirations as a company.

9. Website accessibility.
Making a website accessible involves considering the needs of all the different users who may wish to use your site, regardless of disabilities and of the differences between various Internet browsers.

10. OK, you know what you need, but how do you get it?
Speak to an expert. Web developers are human, you will be able to tap into many years qualified experience, this will ensure that you get the most out of the project. Considering things like search engine optimisation and how business in conducted in the online environment will give an insight that is more likely to result in a successful site. Additionally, experience of making successful websites in such a competitive environment could make the difference for your website.

Thanks to LOS Design UK for supplying this article.

How to Put Your Own Images into Your Auctions and Webpages - a Beginner’s Guide

We have all been there when we started. Wanting to have our own pictures inside the auction rather than just in the ebay box at the end. We have all looked at other auctions and thought, how did they do that?

Well, let me enlighten you….

We will make the assumption that you have enough HTML knowledge to build your own auction page and that you have some webspace for your pictures (if not, there are free services out there, search for free image hosting on the search engines…)

Now we are ready to insert images. If you follow these steps, you will soon have an image inside your auction for the whole world to see.

1 Create or edit the image you wish to use (making sure it is the size you want)

2 Save it to your image folder on your pc

3 upload this folder via your ftp program (that allows you to send files to your webspace or image host)

4 Open up your advert page in your HTML editor (or notepad)

5 insert the cursor at the EXACT point you want the image to appear

6 insert the following code….

< img src=”http://www.yourimagehost.com/your-image-folder/your-image-name.imgext* alt=”your pictures title” width=”your pictures width” height=”your pictures height” >

7 save and paste into your eBay auction.

Just to explain the code above briefly, the “http” relates to where your picture is hosted (your space or an image hosting webspace).

The “alt” is the image title that will show when you hover over a picture in IE

the “imext” refers to your image extension, be it .gif .jpg etc

The “width” and “height” will control your picture size and render it as you wish it to be seen.

This works on all HTML pages so you can use it on your own site too.

Enjoy…

With many multimedia options now available which one is best for my site. What are they and what advantages or disadvantages are there?

As web site design advances, the emphasis remains on increasing user interactivity and ensuring information is user-accessible. The design tactic is to ensure the above without making a web page appear cluttered and adding to the page download speed which the benchmark still remains, aim for a download speed of less then 8 seconds on a 56k connection.

With video and audio files now becoming more and more common place online, this inevitably adds extra burden onto the bandwidth for the viewer. As you design, you may well benefit from a 10mb connection and your site views perfectly. But does it for the user with a 56k modem??

So as you explore the multimedia options available, always keep in mind the users and examine the options available. Keeping a close eye on your web logs will enable you to spot viewer trends and common system specs. More about this in the near future, but now for the multimedia options, we look at two of the front runners.

Animated gif’sThe GIF file format for images allows you to combine two or more images into a single file and to add instructions as to the way they perform upon download. For many years, this was the only option available as viewable multimedia.

Advantages

Easy to construct

Low to medium tech knowledge required

High optimisation capabilities

Dis-advantages

Can be blocked by many firewall configurations

Limited design functionality for complex banners/images

Flash Animation Movies and complex banners/adverts can be constructed with the use of the appropriate software. The results are a higher quality production that is able to be highly compressed.

Advantages

High quality results

High optimisation capabilities

Dis-advantages

Can be blocked by many firewall configurations

Higher level of skill required to compose

Software can be expensive to purchase

Add on required to view by the end user

Whatever option you choose, you must always attempt to compress as much as possible, bear in mind what your target audience is and will require, remember that broadband/DSL is still not readiliy available everywhere and that many users run their firewalls at MAXIMUM PRIVACY which will mean your image will not be viewed so ensure effective usage of the alt tags is in place.

There are far more multimedia options available and much joy can be gleamed from the use. But as far as commerce sites go, advance in moderation and inline with your target audience.