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Home > Hot Tips > Top tips for a successful e-commerce website
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19 November 2008
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With the rising cost of rents, the slump in high street sales and a significant increase in online purchases, it is not surprising that many small businesses and start-ups have seen the economic benefits of selling online and chosen to incorporate e-commerce into their sales strategies. If you sell, or plan to sell, using your website, we have some top tips to help improve your sales.

1. Communicate extensively with your customers (and potential customers) before, during and after a transaction. This includes confirmation emails, web chat sessions, forums etc.

2. Be honest about delivery times and P&P. Most of the complaints about online retailers concern the shipping or posting process. Choose your shipping partner carefully.

3. Offer as much information as possible on your products. Provide photos, specifications, details, reviews and external links to make sure that the customer knows what they are buying.

4. Ship internationally. This is a common way of boosting sales. However, you need to be careful about not getting stung by scammers or fraudsters by extending credit.

5. Offer different languages. A controversial, yet-easy to implement, feature is translation. Google site translator allows you to choose between 25 pairs of languages. While the resulting translation is often approximate, it is better than nothing and is certainly cheaper and faster than having to get a full time translator.

6. Update your website as often as possible. This will almost certainly insure that your website occupies a good place in search engine results plus there's nothing more worrying than to read that an e-commerce website was last updated in 2005.


About the author

This article was taken from the Business IT Guide, a resource developed in collaboration with industry experts to help small businesses find the right IT solutions. To find out more about selling online, see their guide to selling online.

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