4. Be prepared for traffic spikes
“For ecommerce businesses, problems generally occur at the checkout stage when a website malfunction means the order is never received in the first place,” says Dominic Monkhouse, UK MD at web hosting firm PEER 1. “Customers won’t notice these issues until their orders don’t arrive.” Such problems are often the result of high customer traffic or page requests, causing an overloaded server or network.
Check that your hosting provider can scale up quickly to meet demands in traffic and bandwidth, and how they charge you for over-usage. Monkhouse recommends using a tool such as Load Impact (www.loadimpact.com) to test how much traffic your site can handle. “You can simulate behaviour right down to the shopping cart, and anticipate situations such as 10 times the normal level of traffic. If the site crashes or is incredibly slow, you know you’re not ready for busy periods.”
If the shopping cart on your site does encounter a problem, call your web hosting company immediately. “Insist on a fixed timing for when they can get you back online, and ask if they’ll be issuing credit for the downtime, which all responsible providers will,” Monkhouse adds.
5. Try out reviews and recommendations
Online bathroom retailer SplashDirect.com recently introduced ‘behavioural merchandising’ through Avail Intelligence, which controls how 3,500 product lines are displayed depending on user behaviour. Providers will often allow you to trial this type of technology for free before you buy.
“We are now able to generate personalised recommendations for individual shoppers in real-time based on the behaviour of similar customers,” explains MD Ted Charalambides. “Automating merchandising has meant that we can expose our customers to far more products than was previously possible. We’ve already seen a remarkable return on investment, with increases in both conversion rates and average order values.”
SplashDirect also recently introduced Bazaarvoice’s rating and reviews platform. “While it is still too early to quantify the impact, it does without question add value in my mind,” Charalambides continues. “It allows shoppers to share their views on products using colloquial language that we might not have considered. It also builds a steady stream of new content that helps with our natural search, which our customers drive for us.”
6. Go mobile
As users increasingly access web content via handheld devices, developing a mobile optimised version of your site is worth looking into. At the very least, load up your site on a mobile device and check its appearance and functionality. If you find it hard to navigate or frustrating, potential customers will too.
“Mobile versions need to be stripped of all unnecessary content and graphics in order for them to be easily navigated and viewed,” says Brennand. “If companies are already rationalising content on their website, they will be well placed to produce a mobile specific version and stay one step ahead of the competition.”
