Website Design Archives Page 6 of 7

5 Reasons to Add a Shopping Cart to Your Website

Adding a shopping cart to your e-commerce website design announces your intentions and credibility to the internet. It says, “I’m here to do business, with a site you can trust.” As mobile browsing continues to grow, so do online sales. Shoppers are flocking to websites such as Amazon, Etsy, or their favorite online store to take care of everyday purchases and seasonal gifts. Making this experience secure, easy, and profitable has become the number one goal for entrepreneurs selling their goods online.

A shopping cart is more than just a centralized place for a user’s potential purchases. It helps them calculate total costs, keep track of their order (or make edits to it), and makes the payment process painless. When a shopping cart is installed, it can offer the business owner just as much, if not more.

Here are five reasons to suit up with a shopping cart if you want to be taken seriously in the e-commerce arena.

You want your website to be an e-commerce site

You absolutely need an online shopping cart if you’re trying to become an e-commerce website. A shopping cart is a crucial component to a successful e-commerce store as it allows you to fluidly process payments, take orders, and encourages users to continue shopping after they’ve made an initial selection. This multifaceted component acts as the customer user interface, an online product catalog, back-end inventory infrastructure, and even the payment gateway. Responsible for so many invaluable aspects of an e-commerce site, shopping cart software will really end up doing most of the work for you.

Convenience = customer satisfaction

From allowing multiple payment options to keeping tabs on everything a customer wants to purchase, shopping cart software makes the buying process easy. Without a cart, users would be forced to make multiple purchases, checking out several times in the process; or worse yet, call you to confirm your order. This creates an uncertainty in the shopper: every time they type in their sensitive information, they run the risk of having that data skimmed, hacked, or stolen.

Customers are also able to remove or add items in their cart without having to start all over again. And the biggest convenience factor: users can shop and purchase on any device with an internet connection.

A shopping cart builds trust with customers

Convenience aside, having a shopping cart for your online store signals that your website is secure. Shopping cart software is designed to make handling payments a breeze—letting users know how to pay (and then letting them do it) and making the transaction secure through the software’s built-in security features. In an age where identity theft is becoming more and more common, online shoppers are cautious about where and to whom they give their personal information and credit card number to.

Installing a shopping cart offers users payment assurance and establishes you as a credible online business.

Better product management

As e-commerce websites grow their catalogues inevitably change as well, which requires proactive product management. Many shopping carts and their software provide business owners product management tools to adapt to trends in growth (or the lack thereof). Any software that can make running your business less time consuming is one entrepreneurs shouldn’t miss out on.

Shopping cart software provides backend data for business growth

With the right software, you can use shopping carts to track what products or services people are coming to your business for (and which ones they might be neglecting). This data can be used to positively impact SEO or marketing strategies. Depending on your software, you may also be able to analyze sales trends and visitor patterns. Carts aren’t good for just collecting products for purchase—they also collect data,

Taking into account the various shopping carts— Magento, WooCommerce Marketing, Zencart, Prestashop, etc.—business owners have plenty of options for how their online cart will look and function. E-commerce software benefits webmasters because it takes the basic needs of a customer (and business owner) and provides a solution to meet those needs. In fact, there’s so much more to having an online cart than customer satisfaction.

The amount of data shopping cart software can collect on the backend is instrumental to running a good business. Carts build credibility by establishing trust between you and your clientele, but it also tells you about those same clients—their patterns and behavior while browsing or making a final purchase.

Adding a shopping cart to your online business turns into this magical gateway for customer data that can be used to grow your business, run ad campaigns, or even save yourself from the red. It’s part of being a proactive entrepreneur: you build, adapt, and grow. If you are interested in learning more, contact us today. We’re a website designer and SEO company in nearby Lancaster, PA.

Pop-Ups: The New and Right Way to Use Them

Pop-ups, formerly synonymous with spam and viruses, are making a comeback. Studies have poured in indicating significant boosts in lead conversion rates. The numbers are so good that businesses and marketers alike are examining the ghosts of pop-ups past—and considering whether the old tactic might be of some use today.

Whether you’re for or against the marketing device, we’re here to show you the right way to use them if you’re curious enough to try them out yourself. Plenty of marketers are already breaking from the stigma associated with pop-ups and the results they’re seeing is proof enough that vintage is making a comeback.

The Evolution of Websites

Website design has evolved a great deal over the last decade. Social media and SEO have changed the way online companies do business, and challenged web designers to keep up with new trends.

Buying A Domain For Your Business

You may be starting a new business or just want to branch out your business to test selling similar products under another website name. Another reason you would want a new domain is to create a microsite relevant to your industry to build traffic and authority. A microsite is typically a smaller site that is more focused on a specific topic, product or service that a brand has to offer.

3 Forgotten Things About Website Optimization

When you have a website design you tend to forget that just like your car, it needs maintenance over time. Website errors and slow page load times can all hurt your user experience. A bad user experience can also negatively effect your organic rankings as Google looks at visitors that go to your site and bounce right away as a ranking factor.

There are 3 main website design optimizations that a lot of people, businesses, and webmasters tend to forget. So set reminders on your schedule to regularly check these 3 things on your website to make sure it is running up to speed.

9 Reasons Your Website Needs Better Copy

When is the last time that you looked at your website’s copy? (Think about it for a minute.)

Unfortunately, so many businesses throw content on their websites without thinking about it strategically – and what ends up happening is, the content they publish doesn’t connect with their target audience, doesn’t ask their readers to make a decision, and doesn’t generate leads or sales.

As you develop your website design, you need to take extra care that the content you’re posting delivers the right message for your brands; not just because people will be reading it, but also because Google will use that content to evaluate whether your site is unique and worthwhile enough to rank higher, or whether it’s just another of ten million websites out there that just don’t provide readers much value.

What happens to those dime-a-dozen-sites? They don’t rank. They don’t generate traffic. They don’t gather leads or sales. They end up in the dustbin of the world wide web.

How To Tell If Your Website Was Hit By Mobilegeddon

If you haven’t already heard, Google released an algorithm update in April that gives preference in mobile search rankings to sites that are mobile-friendly. If you haven’t already checked to see if your site is mobile friendly you’ll want to go to Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test page.

The report will tell you what you need to fix. In most cases if your site is not responsive or a mobile m.website.com it will say it is not mobile friendly.

Deciding Between Mobile Or Responsive Design

You used to have an option as to whether your website should be mobile-friendly or not. The times have changed. Since “Mobilegeddon” came about on April 21, 2015, Google now gives preference to sites that are mobile-friendly in their mobile search results.

It only makes sense. Google wants to give their users the best experience possible. If your site doesn’t play well across mobile devices, then users will get frustrated and bounce back to the results looking for a new website. This could lose a lot of potential customers for your business.

Don’t let that happen to your website and business.

Why You Need A Website Audit

Every website design will need a health check from time to time. After years of adding new pages, links, content, images, and everything else, your site will tend to get a little unorganized. You can have broken images, links leading to nowhere, and content that is just outdated.

If you aren’t ready to do a complete website design overhaul yet and just want to fix it up, you can check out these tips to audit your website.

(And if you are considering a major website design project, check out our ultimate guide on how to design a website for your business).