1. Keep it simple. The simpler it is for visitors to complete a purchase the more purchases (and fewer shopping cart abandonments) you’ll see. Make it simple to find the product and go through the checkout process.
2. Provide complete contact information including a telephone number. Buyers want to know you’re real and they want to know how to reach you in case of a problem.
3. Provide encouragement throughout the checkout process. The best way to do this is to let buyers know what stage of checkout they’ve reached, and to provide them with highlighted signage to let them know what to do next.
4. Use product pictures in shopping carts. This reminds visitors what’s in their carts. It also reinforces, in the visitor’s mind, the reason(s) for the purchase.
5. Link back to the product page. After an item has been placed in the shopping cart, the visitor should be able to click on the item and be directed back to the product page in a new window for example. This makes buying comparisons easier and ensures the visitor has the right item for his/her needs without leaving the shopping cart.
6. Don’t keep shipping costs a secret. Nothing kills a conversion faster than a $19.95 shipping and handling charge on a $10 item. Provide shipping cost information on the first page of the checkout.
7. Is it backordered? The visitor finally reaches the end of the checkout only to discover that the item isn’t in stock. Do you think they’ll come back when the item comes in? They won’t.
8. Provide complete product information including sizes, colors, styles and other product descriptors. This will cut down on product returns because buyers will know what they’re actually purchasing. Avoid hyping products for the same reason.
9. Keep terms of service (TOS) simple and unambiguous. What’s your guarantee? What’s your return policy? Eliminate the boilerplate and give them the facts.
10. Provide a menu of payment gateways. Not all buyers want to pay by credit card. Some don’t even have a credit card. Buyers should be given the option to pay by debit card, personal check (snail mail), PayPal and other similar services, bank transfer and, if the want to stop by to pick it up, you’ll even take cash.
11. Never blame the buyer. When a potential buyer clicks on the wrong link, or forgets to enter all data fields, put up a message explaining the problem and how to fix it. The customer is always right and it’s always your fault. Period.
12. Offer gift cards. Some buyers just don’t know what to buy as a gift. A gift card solves the problem.
13. Use real testimonials. If you’re doing it right, you’ve gotten good feedback from some buyers. Ask permission to use their testimonials. Don’t use fake testimonials signed by Diane E., California. It’s an obvious fake testimonial.
14. Provide a customer service line. Outsource it if it isn’t part of the budget but buyers want to know there’s help in setting it up, whatever “it” is.
15. Avoid distracting links. If your home page is crammed with PPC ads and links to other sites, it’s distracting and you’ll see a lot more bounces (visitors who never get past the home page).
16. Offer incentives. Free shipping encourages buyers. So do upgrades, i.e. “Spend at least $50 and receive 10% off your entire purchase.” Some buyers will do the math and figure out they’re getting something for half price.
17. Welcome repeat visitors by name. Your customer data base is filled with solid gold information including names, purchase amounts, items purchased and so on. First, welcome a return buyer by name. Then, offer suggestions for purchase based on individual buying histories. (See Amazon.com for examples of using data base information to boost conversion ratios.)
18. Provide a currency converter. Not all buyers will be using your country’s currency. Make it easy to convert from euros to drachmas to dollars.
19. Offer a free newsletter. Your regular buyers will appreciate it when they’re notified ahead of time of upcoming specials, new product launches and other site related information.
20. Add a forum. This is a great way for buyers to share information, make recommendations and complain. It’s also a great way for you to handle complaints quickly, with the resolution posted right there on the complaint thread.
21. Provide informational content on your site. This establishes your credentials and credibility as an authority, whether you’re selling kayaks or bake ware.
22. Learn from your competitors. Visit the sites of more-established competitors to see what they’re doing to convert. How is the homepage designed? Navigation? Checkout? You can’t copyright an idea so you might as well “borrow” from the best.
23. Improve site stickiness. In other words, give buyers a reason to return. Some suggestions? The Sale of the Day, Tip of the Day, Your Horoscope, This Day in History, etc. This keeps your site green and visitors returning.
24. Let buyers post product reviews. Nothing sells better than a positive review from another buyer. Of course, the converse is true, too. Nothing will kill a sale faster than a bad review. And if a product receives lots of bad reviews, drop it from your product line.
25. Target your site’s skin to your demographic. If you’re selling collectible knives, your site should have a certain “look” and that look doesn’t include pastels and prissy type. Big, bold and manly — that’s the way to go. On the other hand, if you’re selling needlepoint patterns, a nice pastel background with little flowers works perfectly.

Search engine optimization is designed to attract search engine spiders. It’s also intended to ensure that your site is accurately and completely optimized. But, once traffic arrives on site, conversion optimization takes over.

Keep it simple. Keep it easy. Keep it honest. Not only will you see a boost in conversion ratio, you’ll also see a nice pop in return buyers. And they’re the best buyers any web site owner could ask for.

• Easy Implementation
• Keyword and Campaign Comparison
• Create Custom Dashboards
• AdWords Integration
• Trend and Date Slider
• E-commerce Tracking / Funnel Visualization
• Email reports
• Improved Site Overlay / Heat Mapping
• Improved Traffic Segmentation e.g. GeoTargeting

All of these are extremely handy especially when you have the ability to track the results on your own to make sure everything is kept honest. I’m looking forward to a hands-on test drive. Check out the tour now.

First a definition:
“Foveal View” — The area of visible space where the user is best able to focus with maximum detail. The point here is that outside of the focal area the eye (and therefore the mind) is not perceiving color nor as much detail. Understanding this concept cascades into the takeaways that follow.

Now some highlights from Andy’s portion of the video + my two cents:

1. The traditional marriage to 800×600 optimized design is really on it’s way out (as many people have noticed looking at their site statistics). Instead wider screen layouts not only bring more content above the fold, reducing the amount of scrolling required to use a page, but they also compliment a user’s natural behavioral desires while using a site,
2. Page elements should be organized in such a way that relevant blocks of information are near each other so that the brain can make logical associations and accurately assess relevance while scanning a page,
3. “Information Blocks” should be wider than tall for easiest consumption — again this is in step with the wider layout point above,
4. Typography & whitespace use (contrast) are also as important as ever; when properly used they create a guide to lead the eye through blocks of content in the body of a page or in navigational areas.
5. Group navigation items to contain 7 +/- 2 options per group. This avoids forcing the user to stop and process the information. In other words, use this principle to create at-a-glance usability in your navigation, which is vital to conversion.

Heat mapping sites like the following are useful in understanding the result of the eye/brain interaction. Use the insight above to review your design and your heat map results to identify problem areas in your user interface design. Here are some popular tools:

• crazyegg
• clickdensity
• ClickTale

Let’s not forget Google Analytics (Urchin) is useful when using the "Site Overlay" view in also seeing which anchors are most clicked in your site.

However, what we’ve long called “EBO” or Eyeball Optimization is explained masterfully by Andy — Well done!

Since I’m not sure how long that video will be in place so here’s the “permalink.”

Whether you’re planning the launch of your first site, or wondering why your site counter is actually moving backward, stop. You need a strategy to promote your site to search engines and to visitors. A plan of action based on five key factors, all of which should be weighed carefully before you take another step. Here are the five, most important considerations in the development of any search engine promotion.

1. The Site’s Objectives
What are your expectations for the website? These will usually point you to the site’s objectives. In the case of commercial sites, the broad objective is straightforward — to sell enough goods and/or services to become profitable.

However, you might also want to educate, motivate, persuade and inform in addition to, or instead of, selling. A top-down analysis of your site’s objectives is the place to start the development of your action plan.

Once you’ve determined the site’s objectives, keep them front and center during the entire development of an SE promo strategy. It’s important that any search engine understand your site’s objectives on the very first spider visit.

2. Market Analytics
Essential. Who are you trying to reach — your sales demographic? What do the members of your demographic need? How do they make purchase decisions? Are they computer savvy? Critical to the design and implementation of a search engine promo strategy is to know your market.

And the best place to learn is from the competition. Pull a Google on the competition to see how the successful sites do it. Perfectly ethical and a measurable, absolute guide to what works and what doesn’t.

But you can’t stop there. Market metrics are also a part of a successful promo strategy. The development of multi-dimensional metrics will be useful in virtually every step of the design, development and SE optimization phases. There are plenty of metrics software packs on the market. Some are even free.

The problem with these number crunchers is simple: all they do is provide the raw data. Number of hits. Average number of pages viewed. Ratio of visitors to buyers. Just stats, not strategy.

Analytics gathered using a variety of apps and tools must be properly correlated and analyzed to develop an effective search engine promotion. It’s not enough to have the data. You must interpret the numbers in order to take actionable steps.

3. Techno-Factors
An over-achieving website doesn’t just happen. It must be crafted. It requires highly-specialized knowledge of everything from HTML, SEO and CSS to human nature and purchase motivators.

Search engines spider sites in a variety of ways. The simpler and clearer your site is to an SE spider, the greater the likelihood that your site will be assessed and ranked properly. Conversely, if the technical design of your site isn’t dead on for search engine spiders, a site may be mis-indexed or even banned from SEs altogether for what spiders perceive as black hat tactics, though it’s simply inept (and therefore costly) programming. You might as well hang out the ‘Going Out Of Business’ sign.

Techno-factors come into play during the design phase, the development and testing phases and after the site’s launch when refinement, optimization, content updates and routine site maintenance are undertaken.

Any well-considered strategy must provide the means to design (or redesign) the site, develop it, promote it to the SEs and optimize it over time. Search engine promotion and site optimization aren’t goals. They’re part of the process.

4. Plan Your Presentation Layer
Once the technical aspects of the site have been incorporated into your promo strategy, turn your attention to the presentation layer. The presentation layer can make or break a site, regardless of how well-designed the technical structure supporting the site’s skin.

Navigation should be simple. Buttons and links clearly labeled. The user should always be able to go ‘Home’ from any page. Check-out should be clear, uncluttered and instill buyer confidence. A site map is useful to visitors and SE spiders. Anything less will hurt the bottom line.

The site skin also presents the look, feel and tone of your on-line enterprise. Stately and dignified, WiLd & KraZy, helpful and concerned — all determined by the look of the site. Color combinations, type font and size, type placement and the tone of the content make up your public persona.

And the skin is spidered right along with the back office so it should appeal to eyeballs and make spiders happy, as well. Header placement, number of headers above the fold, keyword density and other SE search parameters must be fine-tuned for successful search engine promotion.

5. Promotion and Optimization
Once you’ve gone live with your site, you’ve only just begun. The world of ecommerce is fast-paced and cutthroat. And if you don’t promote your site to search engines and to potential buyers your chances for success diminish accordingly.

Today, site success depends on promotion — search engine promotion and eyeball promotion. You can promote on a shoestring or you can launch a pedal-to-the-metal campaign with banner ads, Google Adwords, links building and opt-in cultivation. If you aren’t SEO-experienced, you’ll be best served by professionals who can track site activity, develop useful metrics and devise and implement a strategy for improved site performance.

The same goes for the process of optimization. Sites must be search engine optimized and conversion optimized — two very different things. Much of SEO takes place behind the scenes. That’s why it’s essential that you use SEO pros to actually build your site. This is not where you can cut a few corners.

Then there’s conversion optimization — converting visitors to buyers. Most of this takes place at the presentation level. Does the site meet or exceed the visitor’s expectations? You have 6.4 seconds to convince a visitor to explore your site. That’s how much time web users devote to site evaluation.

DIY or Go With The Pros?
94% of all ecommerce ventures tank. Down in flames. Many of these failures are based on poor business models, but just as many are due to poor site design, lack of SE recognition, an off-putting presentation layer or a home page that looks like a carnival midway.

If you’re a start-up and you don’t know much about SEO and SE promotion, do not let your teen-aged nephew design your site. And if you’re the owner of an underperforming site and you can’t figure out why, don’t waste your time tweaking. You’re losing sales every day.

If you know ecommerce, develop a strategy that encompasses all five of these critical facets. If you don’t know ecommerce, hire somebody to do it for you.

It’s the best money you’ll ever spend.

Amazon has become a formidable force in the sales of books, CDs, DVDs and everything else from jewelry to hardware. And how about these stats: 41.2% of visitors to Amazon make a purchase. The average amount an Amazon customer spends is $128. During the holidays, Amazon averages close to 10 million visitors between the day after Thanksgiving and the first of the New Year. It maintains that customer base throughout the year, as well.

Starting as an on-line book seller in 1995, the company quickly expanded its marketing model into other product arenas — CDs and media, electronics, lawn and patio furniture, software, and even its own auction site.

The company is responsible for the development of numerous innovations that have made it the number one on-line retailer. There’s a reason for this and we can all learn from #1.

Amazon and Tab Navigation
The company was the first to use tabs at the top of each page to help visitors navigate the site quickly. Over the years, the number of tabs at the top of Amazon’s interior pages expanded, looking more like a recipe file than a site navigation menu. In fact, at one time (2000) Amazon’s home page had 15 different tabs stacked up. In addition, they also had a navigation bar and text links. Too much information.

To clean up the clutter, Amazon’s design team developed dynamic tabs — tabs that change depending on the page where they appear. This simplified the appearance of the home page and made navigation easier for its visitors throughout the site.

The point? Amazon has led the way in site design and customer convenience. In fact, the entire site is designed around a simple premise: The easier it is to make a sale, the more sales will be made.

Lesson: Amazon consistently innovates and updates its site to benefit the customer. Simplicity of navigation is a key customer benefit. How ‘easy’ is it for your visitors to find the products they want?

Personalized Product Recommendations
So simple, yet so effective. When an Amazon customer makes a purchase, the data is stored and then re-used to benefit the customer and to generate sales of products similar to past purchases.

Say, for example, a customer buys a book on gardening. The next time he logs on to Amazon, there will be a personal recommendations tab that will take him to a list of other gardening books. If the same customer purchases an audio book mystery, similar products (by the same author and others) will show up in that customer’s personal recommendations file. Over time, the file will be loaded with recommendations for other products in which that customer has already shown an interest.

Lesson: How ‘personal’ is your site? Do you welcome repeat visitors by name? Offer special discounts to regular buyers? Suggest products of interest? You have the data. Put it to good use by making repeat visitors feel right at home.

People Who Bought This Also Bought These
Brilliant!

When an Amazon customer visits a product page, s/he is provided with a list of links to similar products based on Amazon’s total past sales experience. Customers who bought book A also bought books B, C and D.

Present that information to a visitor considering the purchase of book A and you accomplish two important marketing objectives. First, you provide visitors with the most relevant purchase options based on their queries (areas of interest) with one-click ease to keep them browsing when book A isn’t what they’re looking for. Second, you promote the sale of relevant products in addition to book A — related audio books, DVDs, electronics accessories and so on.

Lesson: Can customers view alternative and/or related products when considering a purchase? If not, chances are they’ll look elsewhere. Your business collects data on sales. Use this data to your advantage on the presentation layer of your site.

Easy Checkout
Nobody likes standing in line at the supermarket checkout. It’s boring, frustrating, annoying and a waste of valuable time.

Amazon’s checkout is user friendly from start to finish, allowing the buyer to change and modify the order at every stage.

To streamline the process even further, Amazon offers a one-click checkout option. Buyers enter the required information one time and each time they buy, one password-protected click and the sale is done.

Lesson: It’s important to equip your visitors with the information they need to find the products they want. It’s just as important to simplify the payment process. Stress security on every page. Allow buyers to change their minds throughout the process. Once again: The easier it is to make the sale, the more sales will be made.

A word of caution, here. Many sites employ a ‘checkout in a box’ — software that bolts on to the site’s skin and serves as its checkout. Many of these programs lack the adaptability demonstrated in the Amazon model. A customized checkout will more than pay for itself in repeat sales.

Customer-Generated Content
Amazon was way ahead of the curve on this one. Blogs and forums are just going mainstream on many sites, enabling visitors to post comments. Amazon has been encouraging its customers to write product reviews. Imagine. Product reviews.

Amazon’s reviews are customer-generated content, just like a site blog. Reviews are screened for the usual — obscenity, rants and screeds — but there are plenty of one star reviews for the products Amazon sells. Now that’s credibility.

It gets even better. Some reviewers have developed their own followings. These are specially designated reviewers who provide links to their other reports on products. This kind of activity builds customer loyalty. Plus, you’ll learn what customers like and don’t like about your site and the products sold there.

Lesson: How do you communicate with customers? Do you offer the opportunity to post an opinion or start a new thread? Customer content is useful content. It applies to the interests of your customers, enabling you to refine your product line and web site to better meet customers’ needs.

It’s useful to your customer base and to you in determining how to improve your site, your conversion rate and build repeat traffic.

Learn From #1
Here’s a suggestion. Print out this article, log on to Amazon and take a first-hand look at how this company maintains a conversion rate in excess of 40%!

Everything is geared toward ease of purchase. It’s easy for a buyer to find the right product, the right media, the right price using Amazon’s customer friendly design and features.

Provide alternatives for customers based on keywords used to search your site.

Get them in; get them out with a streamlined, fully customizable checkout.

Regularly update the site to improve customer accessibility to information and products.

And solicit customer-generated content. It’s absolutely the best way to build site loyalty and maintain repeat customer interest.

Go ahead. Visit the #1 retailer on the world wide web. Compare features. Then, learn from the best.

Not to get all philosophical on you, but ethics are our concepts of right and wrong. Ethics are the glue that holds our society together. They’re the foundation of our laws, regulations, rules, traditions, manners, conventions and customs. Without ethics, and people’s willingness to live by those ethics, there’s chaos and anarchy.

Welcome to the world of on-line commerce, where rules are vague, enforcement is virtually non-existent and “the skies are not cloudy all day.” In the three-dimensional world we call home, we have all kinds of signposts to point us in the “right” direction, but not so in Cyberburg. Scams, schemes, crackers and hackers abound — and guess what? You, the ethical, honest e-tailer are victimized by the stigma of on-line lawlessness. And, every time another scam is reported in the news, be it a massive ID theft, or some guy who runs up $250,000 in credit card fraud, on-line commerce suffers.

Rule Number One: There Are No Rules
The FTC, the FCC and even the FBI all have programs to monitor on-line commerce. The programs are as effective as an umbrella in a cat 5 hurricane. Even government officials admit that they can’t keep up with the number of complaints they receive from consumers. Obviously, this undermines consumer confidence in e-commerce.

Sure, the number of on-line buyers is growing and fast. In 1999, fewer than 10% of computer users made an on-line purchase. The most recent figures indicate close to 50% of computer users now do some shopping on line, so indeed, the digital marketplace has grown in the past few years. But you have to wonder where we’d be if the black hats weren’t free to rip off an unsuspecting grandmother or hijack your keyboard (key loggers) when you log on to an unsecured site.

Further, can we expect the growth of on-line sales to increase in light of the numerous ID frauds that have been in the news over the past 24 months: Choice Point, Lexus Nexus, AOL, General Motors and the U.S. Army are just some of the big names that have suffered hacker attacks — everything from social engineering attacks to Trojans to brute force dictionary attacks. The bad guys keep coming up with ways to undermine our on-line community of retailers.

You can’t stop them, but that doesn’t mean you’re helpless. If you, and every other honest, ethical individual with a cyber shop, conduct business ethically, consumer confidence will naturally increase. What we need are e-ethics for e-commerce.

e-Ethics for e-Commerce
There’s nothing like buying something from the local merchants in town. You know them, you trust them, they know you and you swap cards during the holidays. These are relationships built on trust.

Not so in the on-line world of commerce. You’re a home page. Your buyers are numbers and e-mail addresses. You don’t know them; they don’t know you. However, you can and should still conduct business like a local merchant.

• Customers will come back, generating repeat sales.
• Satisfied buyers will tell their friends. (How do you think Amazon became so big?)
• You’ll demonstrate your commitment to being a good, on-line citizen.
• You’ll be able to look at yourself in the mirror each morning.

So, let’s look at the areas where e-tailers have ethical responsibilities to their customers, to their businesses and to the growing society of on-line businesses and the buying public.

Post Your Business Policies
Do you accept returns? Under what conditions? Do you give cash returns or store credit? Are shipments insured? Where are you physically located? Do you offer customer support and service? 24/7?

Your business policies should be carefully laid out for all to see. There should be a large link off your home page to a page or two of your company’s policies. If you guarantee customer satisfaction, tell each customer. If there are conditions on returns, lay them out clearly. Skip the 6-point text on the back page (the fine print). Be straight with your customers right from the start.

Honor Your Policies
The most overused words on the Internet are “ABSOLUTELY FREE”. Now, unless you’re a complete rube, you know nothing is ever absolutely free. There’s always a hook, a catch.

So, unless it really is absolutely free, don’t hype what isn’t right. If you offer a full, money-back guarantee, then give the customer her money back! There are e-tailers who say one thing in their site text, but practice a different set of rules when it comes to delivering on promises made.

You (and the rest of the world) are better off if you do what you say you’re going to do. It’s the right thing to do. It’s the ethical thing to do.

Come On With the ‘Come-Ons’ Already

Laptops: Only $9.99!!! While they last!!!

You see this kind of ‘come-on’ all the time. So, you click to see what a $9.99 laptop gets you and discover the site sells abacuses. Or, they only had one 10-year old laptop for $9.99, which didn’t last long (while they last). It’s the old bait-and-switch, with a cheap laptop the bait. Once on the site, you’re rerouted to a page of much higher priced laptops. You’ve been suckered — again. No one likes to be suckered. It’s a waste of time and an insult to the individual’s intelligence.

Protect Your Buyer’s Privacy
You can buy a million e-mail addresses (verified, so they say) for as little as a penny an address. And, where did the purveyors of these mailing lists acquire their information? From people (on-line entrepreneurs) who sold them their own company mailing lists. Legal? Yes. Fair? Well, that’s an ethical question. Do you think it’s fair to sell your customer list to a marketing data company for sale to anyone willing to pay $100?

Your strict privacy policy is a selling point. It’s also the ethical thing to do, so proclaim your position right there in your terms of service.

“We will not give or sell your name or other personal information to another party.”

Then, do what you promise.

What About Security?
Another area in which ‘do the right thing’ comes into play.

You gather a lot of personal information on your customers or clients — names, addresses, credit card numbers — the whole shebang. And, as the keeper of this invaluable information, you have a moral responsibility to protect it from hackers and the kids who use your business computer to do their homework.

Is you site secure? Is your computer protected with multi-layers of protection against hackers? A fire wall? Anti-malware software? Encryption for on-line orders? If not, you’re putting your customers at risk. And believe this: they’ll be none too happy when they discover that some cracker has their personal information thanks to your lax security.

Ethics is about responsibility — accepting responsibility and doing the right thing. If you’re going to be a reputable, on-line dealer — one with ethical business practices — you have a responsibility to protect the personal information in your system.

Here’s the bottom line on your bottom line: we have to get rid of the “snake oil” aspect of on-line commerce. We have to start operating like the old store on Main Street. Build trust through clearly-stated business policies, straight-up information (no bait-and-switch), treat customers fairly (there’s always one) and protect the personal information entrusted to you.

When we all earn the confidence of more and more on-line buyers, we make the whole e-commerce ‘society’ a stronger, more vibrant place in which to conduct business — for everyone.

You’ve read that e-commerce is the fastest growing segment of the American economy and you want in. You made a few bucks day trading and now you want to leverage your windfall through the development of an e-commerce site. Only problem is, you don’t know a Meta tag from a dog tag so you’ve wisely started to shop around for a web development firm to do the heavy lifting.

But you’re a rookie at this. You don’t even know what you don’t know! And you’re not sure how to approach a developer. What questions do you ask — and why? Well, before you write the big check and hand it over to some guy with an eyebrow ring, here are some questions you should ask upfront, during your initial meeting.

1. Can you show me sites you’ve developed for others who have similar design needs?
It’s always good to look over previous work done by the firm under consideration. You may quickly discover that their tastes aren’t your tastes, or that all of their sites are for non-profits and you’ve got profits on your mind. Look for experience relevant to your proposed site so you can actually compare apples to apples.

2. What will you require from me (besides a check)?
You may be looking for a designer who can handle not only the programming and design of your site, but also the text, graphics and other site elements. Or, you may want to write your own text and supply your own pix. Before you sign that contract, determine your level of involvement. And, if you’re smart, choose a designer who encourages client involvement rather than the ‘expert who knows it all’. She may know it all when it comes to site development, but she doesn’t know bubkis about you and your vision. A good designer will be happy to work with you to bring your vision to fruition.

3. Do you guarantee your work?
Any reputable design agency will guarantee to deliver a fully-functional, bug-free site designed to your specifications. However, no design firm can guarantee to meet your expectations for income from the site. That’s another question entirely — and one to ask next.

4. Will my site be search engine optimized (SEO)?
The development, design and launch of a site is one thing. Getting your site noticed by search engines, like Google or LookSeek or Yahoo!, is another thing altogether, requiring a completely different set of skills. Some designers will build your site to spec, get it up and running, cash the check and leave you to your own devices, of which you have none. If you’re not up to speed on SEO, go with the designer who is willing to stick with you until your site is as optimized as it’s ever going to be.

5. How do I find a web host for my site?
The design firm uses software to create your site, writing lines of code, importing pix and graphics and making sure all the buttons are linked properly. The finished site is then placed with a web hosting service that will charge you a monthly fee for the hosting services they provide and for the amount of disk space your site takes up on their server. Again, some designers will do some hand-holding and help you hook up with a reputable, reliable web host. Or, better still, given your lack of experience in this arena, they may actually provide hosting services.

Known as ‘one stop shops’, these site design agencies, filled with chipheads and computer geeks, can handle the design and launch of a functioning site, optimize the site over a period of several months (based on how the site is doing) and provide hosting services as well. In addition, you’re likely to get a better price if you buy the full suite of services than if you cherry pick to find the lowest cost designer, the lowest cost SEO company and the cheapest web host. And, if you’re working with one designer, you can feel more comfortable knowing that, in the end, everything is going to work as it should.

6. Will I be assigned an account rep — a single contact for all interactions with the agency?
The last thing you want is Barney calling about color choices, Tiffany calling about your target demographic and Bob down in hosting asking how many gigabytes you’re going to need on the host server. You want one person, one telephone number, one problem solver. You should insist that all communications flow through your rep, both inbound and outbound.

And, if you’re not happy about something, call the rep and ask for changes. You should be as involved as you want to be (or don’t want to be). In either case, you want to keep it simple — one contact. The end.

7. Are your designs W3C standards compliant?
If the designer looks at you with a blank stare, head for the door and don’t look back. You want your site to be built to the open standards advocated by the World Wide Web Consortium, aka W3C. This organization has establish a set of uniform standards for site development designed to keep the site viable for longer, to make it SE-friendly and to save money when you move your site from one host to another (when you learn a little more about it). Open standards will ensure that your site will work anywhere and will be recognized by the major search engines. Anything less and you don’t know what you’ll run into six months or six years down the road. And if the designer isn’t aware of W3C compliance standards, thank him for his time and hit the bricks. You’re still looking.

8. Do you undertake usability testing as part of the project development cost?
Usability testing puts the site through its paces before its launch. Testers from various backgrounds and levels of experience navigate the site, clicking on buttons and links, looking for text typos and graphix that bleed over text. Usability testing (see related article under June releases) also develops useful input on questions of user-friendliness and questions of taste. Do the colors work? Is the landing page too busy — to much going on? Does the home page weight take 30 seconds to download, what with all of those Flash animations? If so, only 5% of visitors to your site will stick around waiting for the dreaded blue line to inch its way across. All of these problems will be revealed in usability tests and you want them fixed before the site is seen by the public.

9. What if I want to make changes once the site is up?
If you approved the site’s design after usability testing and the design agency successfully launched your site, they’ve fulfilled their end of the bargain. You got what you paid for and you approved it all every step of the way. Now that you’ve been open for business a while, you’d like to ‘change a few things’. Revisions to site’s design are expected and are built into the price of the project. However, once you’ve approved every element and the site’s working flawlessly, the design team has done their job. Expect to pay for refinements, upgrades and redo’s. But if you stick with the original designer, these improvements will take less time, meaning a lower cost to you.

10. How much?
Believe it or not, this is probably the first question you’ll ask, but it’s also the least important question for the serious entrepreneur eager to create a niche on the Net. Quality costs money. Maybe your nephew can get a site up for you, but will it have the look and feel of quality or will the typos diminish the credibility of the site? Low end, small, non-secure sites can be built for $2-3K. Larger sites, with lots of pix and graphics, a shopping cart, secure checkout, links page, free downloads and other features can cost as much as $15,000. And depending on your level of commitment and your confidence in your business model, that $15,000 may be the best money you ever spent. The point is, don’t let development costs be the deciding factor. As with all things in life and in cyberspace, you get what you pay for.

Finally, a word of advice: there are lots of e-tailers selling e-book downloads that’ll give you “everything you need to know about developing a successful web site”, selling from $19.95 to $199. Don’t throw your money away. Everything you need to know about site design, SEO, hosting, security and any other aspect of e-commerce, is available for free on sites like this one. Don’t fall for the ‘site in a box’, do-it-yourself site-building software. The user’s manual is the size of the Manhattan phonebook and, frankly, you should be focusing on the big picture while your designer handles the technical side of things.

So, ask questions and if you don’t get clear answers, free of geek-speak and in terms you, the novice, can understand keep looking. Soon enough, by asking the right questions, you’ll find the right developer for you.

In many respects, the world wide web is pretty much a wild place with spotty oversight and more scallywags and neer-do-wells doing shoddy work, trying to beat the system and increase their PageRank and presence — oh, and increase sales, too.

Then there are the problems of compatibility — you’ve got such a large code set from which to choose — HTML, XHTML, XLC, et al, that compatibility issues will only continue to confuse the matter more.

Imagine the world of widgets, a niche market but one with potential. Any way, all the widget makes get together one day and agree that from henceforth all widgets will only be constructed using #3 hex bolts. What a break-through in the manufacturing of widgets. Unit costs drop because no special bolts are needed. Interchangeability becomes easier. Upgrades are a snap and, in one very obvious sense, the world of widgets has become-just a little bit closer.

Anyway, you get the point. There are business benefits — today — to jumping on the bandwagon and starting to use open standards in your site development work.

Look, here’s how it breaks down, strictly from the bottom line POV:

Increased Accessibility
Using open standards in the development or upgrade of your site increases user accessibility by eliminating incompatibilities in older browsers and by being compliant with the protocols of cellular e-mail and the integration of other communications systems — today and in the future.

In other words, by designing your site to be compliant, you’re making it easier to adapt to new technologies as they become available:

• access to your site from your cell
• e-mail from anywhere, any time
• easy access to the ever-more popular hand-held computers (which work with a full-bore Windows OS)
• on-line order-taking from cell phone customers

All of these integrated functions have any easier time finding your site when it’s been built to industry standards. It brings just a bit of law and order to the lawless www.

Up and Running Faster Simplified Maintenance
One aspect of open standards involves separating XHTML (the text) of your site from the graphic elements. This allows for just about anyone to develop the text using simple meta tags — <div>, <p>, etc. So what? Well, with tags pointing to a Cascading Style Sheet (CSS), you’ve begun to super-charged your site.

In addition, the client can easily develop all of the text and back end content while the designer is putting together the architecture. By divvying up the work, and with parallel site development you ensure that your site is up and running sooner — an especially critical consideration when you’re financing this out of your own pocket and it’s time to get some inflow to offset the outgo, or at least slow down your burn rate. In other words, open standards will make site design more efficient, easier, faster and less costly.

On the maintenance side, a uniform set of building modalities will ensure easy maintenance and revisions to any site. Modules that conform to the site standards can be plugged in quickly (read cheaply), changing the look and lowering the cost of routine site maintenance.

More Sites in Less Time
Web-compliant browsers have forced site designers to rethink everything from the bottom up. These browsers’ (now approximately 95% of all browsers sold today) use of open standards has forced us all to discard the old rule of ‘every site for itself’ and begin the process of standardization.

From the purely proactive perspective, many clients are setting up multiple sites for various test marketings, among other things. So, a standard code, used by the entire hard hat I-net population simplifies replication of sites within different SEs. In other words, open standards will allow you to do more work in less time because you won’t be confronted with compatibility hassles.

Reduced Hosting Costs
By segregating text from other site elements, and by eliminating extraneous under-performing site functions, you’ll take up less cyber space, lowering your monthly costs for hosting services. In effect, open standards are more efficient standards and as such, will lower bandwidth, saving you money every month — money that adds up over time.

Much Happier Visitors
A site that dogs loading the home page doesn’t bode well for visitor or site owner. Only 5% of visitors have the patience to sit out a 30-second download — 5%! Now, sure, broadband has made the problem less of a problem, but there are still a lot of users still running old, clunky, dial-up modems.

By simplifying code and optimizing your site for speed, each visitor will have a more positive experience. No one wants to wait for downloads any more. Simplify and give your site some impact — without losing anything in the way of appearance or user features. After all, even on the www, the customer is always right.

So Should You Or Shouldn’t You?
You’ve got a site. It’s up and running, no complaints about traffic, it looks good and you spent big bucks getting it that way. And changing over to open standards — HTML, XHTML and CSS is going to be a costly proposition — not millions, but more than putting on a new roof. So, the question becomes: should I spend the money to develop a compliant website, or hold on to what I’ve got?

Obviously, only you can answer that question depending on your site income, current PR, inbound links and other cyber considerations. But do bear in mind that the movement to establish open standards for site development isn’t losing steam. In fact, it’s gaining momentum.

Is it something you have to do today? No. Next week? Uh-uh. Ever? Yes. At some point it’s going to make quantifiable business sense (read more $$$) to develop a standards compliant site. Do it now and enjoy immediate benefits — faster load times, a more vigorous, active site, an improved visitor experience, lower bandwidth costs and adaptability in the future.