Successful E Commerce

• E Commerce websites are particularly demanding sites to design. There is as much design work “behind the scenes” as on the pages the public gets to see and the sites need to carry out quite complicated functions in a way that feels intuitive to the user.
• Cnx Web Solutions have designed a variety of e commerce websites on a bespoke design basis. Businesses, their products and their customers are all different. Creating bespoke E Commerce solutions is the best way to ensure that the website fits the needs of a client rather than the other way about!
• Key features we have found essential to a successful e commerce website include:

• Clear navigation
• Easily accessible product images
• Logical structure to the product database
• Easy to use and edit “basket”
• Easy to maintain/update/amend product database
• Easy to access contact details for queries
• Web pages that are attractive but uncluttered
• Secure SSL payment

• These are just the main features of a good site – there are many more! A few examples might include Coopers Ladieswear which is a highly specialised E Commerce site. In addition to the products the site includes features to select size and product colour, reducing a great number of permutations to a simple “select button” action by the customer.
• The site is fully controlled by the client who can add stock, descriptions, images etc as needed.

• A smaller but still very successful e commerce website is the Seachest Nautical Bookshop. Meeting this client’s needs involved a less grand approach, visually speaking, but functionality remains important with stock sub-divided into sections to quickly narrow down the search and images of most products available once that product has been selected.
• The “human faces” behind the e store are highlighted in the About Us section which offers some store history and some information on the people who run it.
• In addition to marine books, Seachest’s online store also has sections for sea charts as well as instructional media and software.

• Different again is the Fairtrade Giftshop  retail website. A vast stock range is cleverly sub divided and all product and section navigation is accompanied by product images which combine to make this a visually rich website that really encourages browsing. Some subtle yet eye-catching flash animation has been worked into the header image as a nice visual touch.
• E Commerce is an increasingly lucrative and popular field. The public is turning to website purchasing in ever increasing numbers and though a good e commerce website is not the cheapest to create (compared to a static site) the on going costs are very low, meaning that on-going revenue can provide a very good return on that initial investment.