Every website owner should know that when online visitors come to your site, there is a pretty good chance that they are looking to make a purchase. If you think I am just stating the obvious, you’re about to be taken back! I browse through numerous sites every day that offer everything to online visitors except give them a reason to make a purchase, donate, click, call or take any sort of action. With in a brick and mortar business, this could lead to devastating results; yet, it’s even worse for eCommerce merchants.

A good example of this would be making a laptop purchase. You would start by looking at “example store A” which from first looks seems like a great store, except nothing is categorized. After spending hours clicking  link after link you finally come across something that meets the criteria of what you are looking for in a laptop. After looking over the features you note down the price and model number. You’re finally done with store A!

The next eCommerce site you visit, looks almost the same, as example A, except for the logo. It has the same navigation, links and prices. The shipping amount is the same, and the delivery policy is almost impossible to tell apart from example site A. As you click from laptop site to laptop site, you realize that most of them look the same. How can you make a decision what to buy when all your options are identical? What will be the decisive factor between site Example site A and Example site B?

In the next post I will conclude my series on the importance of getting the edge in eCommerce.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 31st, 2006 at 1:28 pm and is filed under Criteria For Shopping Cart Software. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.