10 eCommerce Website Best Practices

At TwinEngines, I lead manufacturing automation initiatives and specialize in eBusiness and integrating eCommerce to back-office systems and business processes. I recently guided a client through the process of opening a new sales channel on the Internet, following ten eCommerce website best practices.  A retailer has a store in the Savannah, GA area, and wanted to reach more consumers and businesses along the east coast.  We started by mapping the existing order and fulfillment processes figuring the best way to integrate the web orders into their processes and financial and shipping systems.  Pulling current item counts and pricing from their inventory management system was an important customer service consideration, too.

The web presence was created following a custom web design approach; after the goals and objectives of the website were documented, compositions showing the look and feel and the information architecture were crreated.  Once the design was finalized the product pages were described in wireframe drawings.  The analogy to building a house describes the necessity to pick out the style of the structure and decide on floorplans, before starting to build the house.  Don't make the mistake of having a web developer start building and then determining what the website will look like and how people will interact with it.

We followed these ten eCommerce website best practices:

1. State the security method for transmission of payment information, adhering to the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard for storing cardholder data.
2. State the return policy clearly and accurately during the order process and incorporate an interaction for the shopper to accept the policy.
3. Provide a complete description of the products and services you offer, including photos and availability.
4. When providing age-restriced products, clearly state the age restrictions and have an age-verification process.
5. State the shipping method and policy clearly and accurately, and incorporate an interaction for the shopper to accept the policy.
6. Include unique meta titles, descriptions and keywords for each individual product category and product detail page.
7. Display your store address so it can be seen during the checkout process - the page footer is usually a good location.
8. Display your customer service contact including email and phone number.
9. State clearly your consumer data privacy policy and website terms of use.
10. Allow anonymous orders where the consumer does not have to create an account as a prerequisite to making a purchase.

We successfully launched the website on our hosting platform in Atlanta, GA, and now we are focusing on search engine marketing, social media and email marketing efforts.