10 Essential Things Your E-Commerce Site Should Have

Shopping, it’s a woman’s thing right? Well, not anymore. There are many online stores with a wide range of tech gadgets which can make any man glued to the screen for hours. Also, there are numerous web stores that cater for kids, parents and teenagers as well. In general, eCommerce websites engage web customers and they are ready to struggle for each and every one of them. These days, you can’t really say that online shopping is a niche market, aimed at a small audience anymore.

I’m not going to talk about the advantages of online stores, we all already know that the system works. What I do want to talk about now are the home page designs and layouts that could really help your online business flourish.

Recommended Reading: Ultimate Guide To Setting Up Your First Online Shop

Surely, there are no universal features or design options which guarantee that your online shop will be elevated to the top throes of popularity but there are several general essentials and even desirable things which should not be ignored when creating an online store.

So, first of all — there should be a clear understanding of the main goals of e-Commerce home pages:

It sounds strange but there are many stores which are designed without a thought on making a sale. They look cool but they are absolutely useless when it concerns shopping. For these sites, it is enough that they are equivalent to the online presence of the brand or physical store, but all the site does was put a big ‘Buy’ button in plain view. Some businessmen, developers and designers don’t draw their attention to such details.

A list of product categories or a grid of them can be the perfect thing to help your online store. Special deals and new arrivals are also good to coax the common web surfers to buy. You probably know that there is a huge chunk of online surfers who don’t know what they want exactly; they just want to hang around. Your goal as an online seller is to tap into that market and show them what they are missing out on.

People watch what they spend on; so it’s only natural to expect that they want to know everything there is to know about the product they’re going to buy, the purchase process, payment methods, the delivery service, warranties etc, that will help them secure a decision and commit to a transaction. So, make sure that you have linked to the appropriate pages from your home page. Such foresight will save much of your support team’s time, and reduce the number of customer’s pre-sale help requests.

And now, we’d like to suggest to you several features which will probably help you to improve your web store usability and increase its profitability. Note that these features are desirable but not obligatory.

A clear and remarkable logo is a business card for both startup shops and branded stores. When it comes to online shopping, a recognizable logo is is a reassuring symbol and an element of trust of the company or organization. The more popular brands can afford to create an online store with a fashionable home page displaying minimum features. A well-known logo or a mascot, a beautiful image or video and the ‘Buy’ button wil suffice for such designs.

Chanel

Sony

Adidas

Mexx

Samsung

People usually decide very quickly whether they like a website or not, that’s why you should grab their interest in a matter of seconds upon their entry to the site; otherwise they will just find some other shop with a more attractive home page. And nothing attracts better and faster than shopping deals. Millions of people lose their minds during sales and discounted periods, and buy anything at slashed prices just because it’s on sale.

Some are attracted by free shipping, some by the major mark downs — but almost everybody is interested in one kind of promo or another. Thus, discounts and special deals are usually the first things that website visitors look for. Alluring promises and unique prices stimulate visitors to spend, spend, spend. So, it makes sense to position eye-catching banners with discount offers on the upper part of the home page of an online store.

Free shipping is also a crowd favourite. You are now selling to the world, not just to the local market, so you should take the shipping costs into account. To save themselves from unwarranted shipping expenditures, many online stores usually adjust the minimum order price to include shipping costs. As for the customers, buying from big retailers and online brand stores usually result in major if not multiple purchases. Hence, the order price for free shipping is marginal and not a deterrent for these buyers. Moreover, buying things on the Web even without the holiday deals may even be cheaper than in shops and boutiques — that’s why minimum price limitation is acceptable.

eToys

Forever 21

Victoria’s Secret

Kohl’s

AbeBooks

When there are news, a sales period or upcoming events that buyers should know about the product, the home page is the best place to house them. Do not make it too hard for buyers to find exclusive deals and hot prices. Moreover, recurring customers will more likely look through several ‘new’ items on sale rather than spend half an hour browsing through the full inventory for something new and trendy.

Look at the following 5 famous online stores which know very well how to draw their customers’ attention to their products and promotions:

Apple

Amazon

Watches

Tilly’s

Sunglass Nut

It’s not always possible to predict what the next customer will be looking for, but it doesn’t mean that you should place all your products directly on the home page. What you can do is have the most eye-catching and interesting offers readily accessible. This trick makes a huge difference for retailers who have a huge product catalog.

If you have branded goods on sale, then display them upfront. It’s a great attention-grabber especially with first-time visitors who don’t know what exactly they are looking for. Moreover, there are many large retailers which provide an opportunity to ‘shop by brands’. Customers can find what they need through more targeted and effective channels like those practised in the following 5 websites.

Mom and Popcorn

Toolup

School Specialty

Beauty

Drugstore

The shopping cart, login box and search box features are usually placed together at every eCommerce site. It’s almost impossible to imagine a store without a shopping-cart function included. The most popular shopping cart icon is a simple basket so it makes sense to choose something similar for your site. Many stores also provide their customers with private accounts where it’s possible to check all their previous and current orders.

Every customer who signs up can choose a personal login and password for further access. Besides, owners of such accounts can receive special discount offers from the store owners and participate in different promotions or sales.

If you deal with a large online store that has a wide choice of goods then the search box is a must-have. This will also prove popular with customers who demand a specific product that they just need to locate from your online store to make their order.

M&S

Marchand de Trucs

Online Gadgets Store

Walmart

Chronicle Books

eCommerce websites deal with many customers from all over the world and they each have their own preferred payment system. Moreover, there may be technical limitations to a payment method or option, and that’s why it would be better to clarify payment options in advance. For instance, some eCommerce websites don’t accept international credit cards. Others require the customer billing address and the delivery address to be in the same country as the official store’s location.

Online stores commonly use credit and debit cards, gift vouchers, cash on delivery, PayPal, etc as their main payment system. You can easily find these payment icons at the footer or on the top right corner of sites. As you can see with the following examples, payment details should be displayed on the home page in plain sight.

Play.com

Brand Neusense

Thomas Pink

Shoon

Chocomize

It’s said that almost 20% of online purchases are accomplished after surfing through social media sites. People are inclined to take in public opinion. Social media websites, such as Facebook and Twitter, are the best, if not fastest, source to get the info you need on just about everything.

Moreover, social media accounts bring excellent opportunities for self-promotion: online communities can help to identify the most active and influential customers, or find new ones who are not familiar with the web store yet. For online shops, it’s a good channel to keep customers abreast of the latest news, or special deals which are oriented towards Facebook or Twitter followers only. Here you can find some successful examples of social network usage:

Inkefx

Nineteen 47

Benetton

Newegg

Bass Pro Shops

With online shopping, buyers interact with sellers via computer networks making transactions that aer no longer geographically bound. When there is a problem however, customers would more likely prefer to have someone they can talk with. This is the core of the need for a store support team; 24/7 hotlines and live chats are highly appreciated forms of value-added customer service.

If online purchases can be done all day and all night long, there is a need to provide 24-hours customer services to solve the majority of pre-sale and after-sale questions. Moreover, people can go online from their working places or from home, so a purchase — and any accompanying enquiry — may come at any time of the day.

Just as an example, below are 5 online stores which provide quick and professional round-the-clock help.

Wiltshire Farm Food

FourEleven

Lulu’s

BigBrownBox

Versapak

A store finder tab is a must-have option for web stores that have several local or national retailers. Many conservative customers who prefer to check out the actual store itself may visit the website but only to find the nearest shop location or branch.

More likely, one will find this option on the top or bottom right corner of the site. If the store has a wide trade network then it will be good to create a special store location search box for a country, city, zip code or address search. Check out the store finder tabs on these eCommerce websites.

John Lewis

Next

Flowers

Books-A-Million

Keurig

Trustmarks are small images or logos that show a security guarantee by an external party indicating that it is safe to shop on the site. Some of these trustmarks come from Network solutions, McAfee, Verisign, BBB, TRUSTe, GeoTrust, etc. Such accreditation certificates give customers a sense of security and gives them confidence in sharing their private information. Visitors would be more inclined to make a purchase if they know that their payment details are safe from prying eyes.

It should also be noted that trustmarks don’t matter for big brand stores. They don’t need to pass security and privacy tests to confirm their reliability because they already have a good reputation.

Apart from trustmarks, a clear design, convenient menus, detailed product descriptions and user reviews are also important for creating better online reputation. Just note that trust plays an important role in a customer’s willingness to part with their money.

Softmart

Krista’s creations

True Religion

3balls

eCost

How-to’s are not obligatory. It is however a way to arouse visitors’ interest in purchasing something that they may not be familiar with. For customers who are making major purchases, like a refrigerator or a new LCD TV, they would like guides or at least to know which specifications to look into before making a purchase. This tab has nothing in common with the help desk, which usually answers technical questions and solve problems associated with a purchase.

Here are 3 online shops with informative and worth viewing how-to guides.

Blue Nile

US-Mattress

The Home Depot

And that’s it! We hope that the tips above will help make your online website the perfect go-to page for potential buyers. With all the time, effort and finances put in to generate your online presence, these minor suggestions may actually help make or break your business. If you have other ideas that would be helpful, be sure to leave them in the comments section below.

Here are more articles you may be interested in:

Ann is a young inspired blogger who is always open to trying new things. She works at MotoCMS - an advanced Flash CMS and Flash templates provider. And if you are a fan of web design (like Ann is) you can always follow her on Twitter (@SmilingAnny)

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Introduction to Bitcoins and the Tor Network

Internet users familiar with the underground community are likely to have heard the phrase “deep web”. It combines a set of websites and communications technologies which apply solely to the Tor network. This collective open-source software has blossomed into a revolutionary idea in just a few years.

On a similar note the bitcoin currency has also been gaining some attention. Although these two ideas are not correlated, they do fit together in the subject of underground web technology. Throughout this guide I’d like to introduce you to the topic of bitcoins, how they work, and their connection with the Tor network. Let’s first clarify what Tor is really about.

The original Tor network project isn’t as underground as it used to be. The open-source software was an effort to provide a new layer of Internet protection between the user and the remote website server, thus sheltering your privacy somewhat and providing you with a sense of security. This is accomplished by using 3 different relay proxies which re-direct you along a random path in the network.

Similar to Bit Torrent, users of the Tor network will keep their computers running 24/7 as a relay service. This means when you go to access a website on Tor it’ll pass your request through 3 different computers (called nodes). This level of encryption ensures that no single computer within the proxy chain can determine your physical location and requested content. The official Tor FAQ contains more technical details if you’re interested.

This is crucial for users who prefers to keep their location and privacy unknown, individuals like whistleblowers or abuse victims. The fact that a wider variety of people now use Tor increases the level of security, helping you hide among the many other faceless users who are on the network.

To access this network of proxies you only need to download their package software. If you visit the Tor project downloads page you’ll notice a listing for the most popular Operating Systems including Linux, Windows, and Mac OSX. The software is bundled as a zip archive without requiring any installation.

After opening, just double-click the Tor icon to start up relay services, and shortly after, a new web browser should launch in the Gecko/Mozilla engine. It’s basically a shell script of Firefox which runs under custom proxy settings for Tor.

The entire network behaves as one interconnected and fluid proxy server farm. It’s important to note that you can access regular HTTP websites via proxy, but the load times are immensely slower. The real benefit of using Tor is to gain access into the onion routing network. Within this chasm of the deep Internet lies the hidden websites so often discussed around the watercooler.

This new technology is used within the Tor network to communicate hosts with darknet websites. These are still HTML/CSS pages which have been hosted on servers specifically targeting an .onion DNS address. This TLD (Top-Level Domain) is actually similar to other country codes such as .us, .co.uk, .es and others. However you are not accessing the same websites, as through an HTTP/FTP connection.

The most intriguing part of the Onion routing network is within their unique URL addresses. Instead of human-readable strings such as hongkiat.com these appear as randomly generated numbers and letters. So for example, to visit “The Hidden Wiki” you would enter:

http://kpvz7ki2v5agwt35.onion/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

into the web browser. This redirects to a Wikipedia-style site focusing on everything Tor-related.

To get a better idea of how Tor websites are designed and created, check out some of the other examples I’ve provided below.

TorStatusNet Microblogging – http://lotjbov3gzzf23hc.onion/Tor Web Design Guidelines – http://wf4df37hrebhwzts.onion/Freedom Hosting – http://xqz3u5drneuzhaeo.onion/MyBitcoin – http://xqzfakpeuvrobvpj.onion/BitLaundry – http://yhngvp3q5h4s7d3e.onion/BitLotto – http://jpjyhljziw2glwfg.onion/lotto/index.htmlSimple PM – http://4v6veu7nsxklglnu.onion/SimplePM.phpAnonymoose Chat – http://c2hluuzwi7tuceu6.onion/

Let’s take a break from Tor for a moment and examine the underground currency, bitcoin. Bitcoins behaves just like any other monetary system; it can be exchanged and traded for Dollars and Euros. It is not too difficult to comprehend with a bit of reading but I feel that this video really clears up some of the confusing areas for beginners.

Now, the bitcoin currency has a few benefits. Notably there is no central banking group which manages and loans out these coins. They are created through computer processing – theoretically nothing more than time and GPU compression. This also means no central authority is issuing “clearing” for bitcoin transactions. Thus instead of waiting 2-3 business days for a bank you can transfer bitcoins between addresses in just a few hours.

Although it is an exciting endeavor, the average btc user does not spend time mining for bitcoins. The process is too intense for a single computer and you likely won’t find the payoff worthwhile. Professional miners work together in pools and will sometimes run a series of rigs setup with dual video cards (Graphics Processing Units) for the highest turnout rate.

But for the majority of beginners it’s unrealistic to jump into this right away. The much simpler method of collecting bitcoins is to transfer in your own cash, or alternatively provide service work. A lot of btc users are willing to trade coins for Internet marketing, web design, development, and similar odd jobs. But moving cash into your bitcoin address (or wallet) is also just as simple.

The biggest issue with gaining bitcoins is the exchange rate between world currencies. The simplest method is to purchase coins directly from an exchange such as Mt Gox. But in order to get money into Mt Gox to purchase these bitcoins you’ll need to follow one of their accepted methods.

Dwolla has been the most pleasurable experience in my eyes, and transfers much quicker than any other method. But in truth the bitcoin marketplace is growing rapidly. Keep your eyes and ears open, as there are new services launching practically every month!

The ultimate goal is to use this alternate currency and hold our reserve coins in some type of wallet. Then we can use a unique wallet ID (or bitcoin address) to shop where bitcoins are accepted. This coin archive can either run through a desktop software or a third-party browser solution.

Those who value ultimate safety and security will want to keep their bitcoin assets local, i.e. in their computer. But I feel more comfortable using online wallets, including Mt Gox, as I have direct access to my accounts from any computer. You can read up more about btc browser-based wallets from their wiki article.

Now putting aside the possible earnings from buying and selling the currency itself, you can purchase a lot of things with bitcoins! A few websites such as Search Bitcoin behave as customized engines for locating items around the Web. For example I entered the keyword “iphone” and found this bitcoin classifieds page for a black iPhone 4 unit.

But if you truly want a catalog of shops, you cannot go wrong with the official bitcoin trade wiki. This includes a detailed list of physical and digital items you can purchase with no shortages of URLs. These categories include clothing, video games, books, electronics, and so much more.

On the surface it appears that these two topics don’t have much in common. But there are a lot of underground networks within the Tor project which discussed bitcoins as the next level of our world economy. It’s difficult to say where things will go from here at this point, but it’s certain that the underground community have created an astounding system. And both of these technologies are only in the early stages of adoption and development.

(Image source: Fotolia)

I feel the problem with a lot of monetary solutions is a general lack in privacy and security. I would not imply that PayPal is an unsecured website, but it’s difficult to understand why only a handful of people is allowed to control that website’s policy. In the bitcoin marketplace, digital exchanges are held between buyer and seller. Purchasing through the Tor/Onion network adds an extra layer of security.

If you are interested, check out how you can maintain anonymity while using bitcoins. I really enjoyed this article by The Daily Attack. It goes over why security is so important and how the bitcoin marketplace has begun to plant its roots in modern civilization. I’ve included some additional links below which I hope you’ll find useful in further research!

The underground Tor network and bitcoin marketplace are just two examples of emerging technologies. We may be at the verge of a technological breakthrough in restructuring how we access and trade currency through the Internet. I’m an early adopter of both these ideas and will be following the news closely on future developments!

Jake is a user experience designer for both web and mobile platforms. Having over 4 years of freelance projects under his belt, he frequently writes articles on topics of modern design trends and social media. You can check out some of his work on Dribbble or follow his tweets @jakerocheleau.

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