Making Your Web Site Customer Friendly

Online selling! This can be a profitable venture or a complete disaster. How do you stop it from being the latter? By making your website ‘Customer Friendly’

Lets define ‘Customer Friendly’. It means that you provide an environment where your customer can come and purchase your product and does not face any hurdles in the way.

There are certain rules to good online selling.

1. Categorize

Divide your products into categories and sub categories. Don’t lump all the products together. Imagine a site selling shoes, clothes and jewelry. It will be very difficult to find what you want if the products were all jumbled up. It will be difficult even if there were categories like Tops, Casual Shoes, Casual Dresses, Pendants and they were all mixed up. Imagine a page full of these categories. The best way to go about it will be to have links to three different pages … one with clothes, one with shoes and the third with jewelry and then have sub categories on each page.

2. Products per Category Page

If you have a lot of products in each category then try not to put all of them on the same page. If you have, say, 50 products, then it is better to break them up into may be 10 – 15 products per page…the break-up really depends on your design and space each product takes.

3. Product Pictures

Always, always have product pictures. This can’t be stressed enough. Even if you think what you are selling is generic stuff and people should know what it is like, give a picture. People want to see what they are getting. One thing that is missing on the net is being able to pick up an object, turn it over in your hands and feel it. Pictures are the closest you can get to showing the product to the customer. Don’t let go of this opportunity. This is one way to convince the customer … no one wants to buy what they can’t even see … especially if they are a first time customer.

4. Prices

Try to keep your prices slightly below off-line prices. The reason being that the person who is going to purchase from you is also going to pay shipping cost … lower prices lets them justify the shipping costs.

5. Shipping cost

Don’t state that shipping costs will be added, always give an estimate of the shipping costs. No one wants to order and then have a huge shipping amount charged on their credit cards. You can charge a minimum shipping cost or you can charge according to weight. The former will get you customers with larger orders while the latter will get you customers who are ordering very small quantities as well. Your choice will depend on your handling and packaging cost of each order. The customer will of course prefer to not have a minimum rate. This can really help in getting first time customers. Say, someone orders something for just $1 and is really pleased with your customer service ..they might place a larger order next time. Having a minimum shipping rate may not get you this customer.

6. Discounts and Special Offers

Retaining customers is very important. Give discounts and special offers to old customers. A rewards program can really help repeat purchases. Your customers earn points on every purchase they make … these points add up and can be redeemed for prizes or discounts at your site. If your customer has the choice to switch to another online store offering the same prices, they may not because they wouldn’t want all those points to go to waste. Special Offers for old customers can make them feel welcome and important. They will keep coming back.

7. Customer Service

Always try and answer your customer’s queries in time. Within 24 hours constitutes excellent customer service and 24-48 hours is the average time within which you should answer all queries. Go through all the emails first and see of there are any urgent ones that should be answered first. Remember to write a professional reply. Try not to write one liners…if they have ordered something then make sure you tell them it was a pleasure doing business with them and thank them. If you are a home-based business don’t give your customer an impression that this is just a side business that you are running to keep you pre-occupied … give the impression of a professional who is serious about their business. Image is everything!

8. Secure Server and Credit Card Processing

If you have a website and are selling online … then let it be online. Too many sites open up a website and let people order via email or telephone. True, you will get some customers this way but there are so many potential customers that you will lose as well. Not having a credit card option means there can’t be any spontaneous purchases … people get time to think over things and may decide not to spend that money after all. Not many people will give their credit card information over a non secure server. So always use a secure server to get that information.

Read: Accepting Credit Cards without a Merchant Account

You might think that you do not need to do all of this because you are getting some customers from your site … and if you are getting customers, then why do you need to do anything more? But you must remember the customer who comes to your site and goes away because they do not find it ‘customer friendly’ are most probably not going to write and tell you about it. In other words you will never know you lost that customer. Making a ‘customer friendly’ site ensures that a customer will not leave on the account that they are unable to make a purchase due to these reasons.