Web design blog

Online retailers have many decisions to make when determining what their online shop website should look like, what functionality it should have, and how best to present their products and services for sales.

Whether you have had an online shop for a while, or you are in the process of setting up a new one, it is essential to create a great online shopping experience for your customer as well having an ecommerce site that can be easily found in search engines such as Google or Bing.

With over 46 million internet users in the UK, online shops and e-commerce sites provide a way to sell your products and services to a much wider audience than ever before.  Before starting your online shop, there are many things to consider before engaging an ecommerce web designer to make your ideas a reality:

Total UK online sales will have reached £69bn by the end of 2011 (Source: Marketingmagazine.co.uk), and online sales are growing at 6 times the rate of high street sales! These figures demonstrate that this is still an area of massive growth in the UK, so if your business does not already have a revenue stream from online sales, it is time to sell your products and services online with an ecommerce website. It’s not just business to consumer sellers who are seeing an increase in sales, ecommerce is as well suited to business to business sales.

82% of the UK Population now use the internet (Source Internetworldstats.com) so it stands to reason that each and every business should have an online presence, so that they can be found, as the first thing most people do now when looking for something is “Google it”.

In 2009, £408.3bn was spent on e-commerce sites in the UK. As we are moving towards a more digital world, where more and more activities are conducted online, and where more people “google it” when searching for what they need or want to buy, there has never been a better time to start an online shop to sell your products, services and documents/images.

The use of tracking cookies on websites will need to become much clearer due to a new European directive which will come into force on 25^th May 2011.

If you are already selling online, or are considering opening an online shop, you need to ensure that your e-commerce solution works as hard as you do to sell your products and services to maximise your online sales. We recommend considering the following points when planning or reviewing your e-commerce store: