A retail website should:

1. offer estimated delivery times
2. offer information on the product page regarding in-stock availability
3. answer an e-mail question within 24 hours
4. offer in-store pickup of orders if there is a brick and mortar store
5. offer free shipping for certain areas or with bulk orders and special packages
6. provide shipping costs early in the checkout process
7. have an easy checkout process
8. offer customer reviews

 

 

 

 

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416.619.7769

 

 

 

Give Your Website a Health Check…

Because Looking Good Isn’t Enough

In recent times, a lot of attention has been paid to ensuring that an organization’s website reflects
its culture, corporate identity and professional work ethic. The result is an abundance of really
good looking websites. Maybe your site is one too. In this edition, we urge you to look beyond the
surface to the actual "health" of a website. A healthy website should effectively draw greater
qualified traffic and influence customer conversion.

There is no underestimating the power of good looks – a beautifully designed and maintained
store, a well-groomed model, a bountiful garden, an aesthetically laid out buffet – all of these will
attract attention. So will a great looking website. Provided it is found by the people who are
looking for the goods and services it provides. And then goes on to deliver what they need in an
efficient manner so that they keep coming back, and bring others along.

With the variety of graphic design software, multimedia technologies and Web designing skills
available today, it is fairly easy for a business to have a website that looks good. This is wonderful
because you do want your "house in order" before inviting people in. What you don't want is for
visitors to come in and find a leaky roof (broken links), shaky furniture (typos and other errors),
old, peeling paint (outdated information) and dusty corridors (poor navigation).

It helps to be aware at all times that a website of any nature must have a persuasive purpose.
Start by defining your business objectives and matching these to your target customers /
audience. Keep in mind, that your audience is profiled primarily on their needs broken down into
demographics, psychographics and where they are in the buying cycle (which decides their
behaviour on your site). Your goal then is to ensure that every element of your website persuades
visitors to take the actions that lead to the delivery of your objectives (conversion). Monitor and
measure your results to ensure that your efforts are bringing results. Visitor satisfaction with every
click on your site should build confidence until they reach the final click where they convert into a
customer. If your Web solution isn't bringing customers through the door and driving profits to
your bottom line, it's probably not in good health and it's time you gave it a vitamin boost!
For instance, customer conversion is pivotal for the success of businesses in the online retail
industry. A retail website in need of a "vitamin boost" can benefit from benchmarking against
industry best practices. A few basic health checks have emerged as the must-haves for a retail
website:

• Must offer estimated delivery times
• Must offer information on the product page regarding in-stock availability
• Must answer an e-mail question within 24 hours
• Retailers that also have physical stores must offer in-store pickup of orders
• Must offer free shipping for certain areas or with bulk orders and special packages
• Must provide shipping costs early in the checkout process
• Must have a checkout process with less than four steps
• Must offer customer reviews

If you have an online store, take a moment to think about how your website would rate on all of
the above best practices. Read on to find out how WSI can help.

Knowing where on your site and your page is the best place to put your permission request, or
your order button to get the most visitors to use them cannot be shown by past Web statistics
alone. All the numbers can tell you is how many did or did not click that button. A clear diagnostic
can instead determine the "health" of your website and provide useful suggestions on remedial
actions for overall improvement. WSI can give you an accurate picture of:

• Your business' ranking in the top search engines as compared to your competitors'
• A high level review of key elements on your site that may be hindering your business' ability to
  attract and convert visitors into customers
• Recommendations on what you can do to improve your competitiveness on the Internet
  To secure your competitive advantage, contact WSI to request a review of your site today.

 

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