Presenting your osCommerce store

The first and most important advice we can give when setting up an e-commerce site is to get the presentation right.

Presentation is everything after all. Unlike running a physical business, you're unable to put on your salesman hat and go to work. What your customers see first may ultimately be the deciding factor in whether they buy from you or not.

osCommerce has a very powerful engine under the bonnet, but all that may be wasted if the customer has no confidence in your business.

A well designed and presented site will give the customer the impression they are dealing with a large, professional company. Get the presentation right and you are half way there.

The Checking out Stage

The checkout stage on your store is the most important part of any e-commerce store. Customers can be very unforgiving, and if something doesn't work or isn't correct at the checkout they will almost certainly go elsewhere.

Ensure the checkout stage is kept to a minimum amount of pages and make sure everything is clear and correct.

SSL certificates

When your customers have found the products they require and are ready to pay you must make sure that taking their payment is easy and secure. With all the bad press the internet receives regarding online fraud, customers are very cautious when it comes to entering their credit card details.

Your site should have a valid dedicated SSL certificate with the golden padlock being displayed on all stages of the checkout. Avoid using shared SSL certificates as these will generally cause your domain name to change to something completely unrelated to yours. You must also make sure that you have no links to insecure files. If you have a secure page and in its contents, somewhere, there is an insecure link (http) to an image, an error will be displayed.

Hosting your oscommerce store

It is a known fact that if your site takes longer than 4 seconds to load then chances are any potential customers will immediately look elsewhere. How fast your site loads is largely dependent on the server your site is hosted on. If the server has hundreds of accounts and is always heavily loaded then your site will appear sluggish and may even appear unavailable intermittently.

Hosting your site with a company based in the US is often a very tempting proposition as the prices can be considerably cheaper. The problem with this move is that it is a false economy. US based servers will take considerably longer to display pages and your sites search engine ranking will also suffer. If a search engine crawls your site, and it is hosted in the US,  your site won't rank very well on Googles UK results.

Ensure your hosted on a Linux server and not Windows. osCommerce is written in PHP and uses the MYSQL database, both of these were created exclusively to run on a Linux machine. Although Windows servers can run PHP and MYSQL, this is not the standard, and any help you require may differ from what everyone else is using. Also PHP and MYSQL are more stable on Linux servers.

Giving Customers information

All new customers to your store are going to need some reassurance that they are dealing with a reputable, reliable ecommerce business. Your oscommerce store should have clearly visible links to your terms & conditions, privacy policy, delivery charges and returns procedures.

These types of pages can easily be added to your store using either our Content Manager Module, or using the standard Information box which displays links to these pages.

Displaying your products 

osCommerce features a user friendly administration system for adding your products. Take time and effort when adding your products, make sure the description is informative and well written. They say a picture says a thousand words, and this statement is truer than ever when it comes to your ecommerce business. Try to add an image of the exact product you are offering, don't be tempted to add "Actual product may vary from image shown", as this just tells the customer that you may not actually be sending them the product they want.

Unless your the only person offering a particular product the chances are your potential customers would have seen the product they are looking for many times before. If the product you're offering gives more information, better pictures and is a competitive price then your chances of making a sale are greatly increased.

If your representation of the product is outstanding then people will link to it for others to reference. The more descriptive your products are the better chances you have when it comes to good search engine rankings as well.

General Site Content

An ecommerce website should be informative as well as a place to purchase from. Customers are more likely to link to good quality informative content on your site rather than actual products.

You should avoid adding any content that requires third party software installation unless it is absolutely necessary. Content that includes Flash or Java should generally be avoided.

Contact Information

When a customer visits your store, one of the most important things they like to see is easily accessible contact information. A contact phone number should be displayed on every page and your business address needs to be clearly visible on your contact us page.

Site Statistics

Statistics are a valuable resource that you can use to improve your site. But your site stats are just that; they're yours. Remove any counters or references to how many times a page or your site has been visited.

Search Engine Optimisation

Search engine optimisation is a bit of a black art, many companies offer first page rankings on the major search engines, but you can probably achieve this yourself. Think of a search engine as a website critic, if your site is boring, offers very little information and has no external links then the chances of you being listing on the first few result pages are pretty slim.

Content is king when it comes to search engines. Although you are setting up an ecommerce business, it's not just about displaying a product and taking the customers money. You need to offer information that relates to the products you sell. For instance, it you sell digital cameras then you must know a bit about these products, so take time and write an article about how they work and what the different attributes mean. Most of your potential customers will not know the difference between optical and digital zoom. If your site offers this information then you have kept them there a little bit longer, but if they have to go looking for this information then they may just stumble across one of your competitors sites.

When thinking about search engine optimisation, the word "keywords" always comes up. Keywords refers to certain words that relate to a product or your site in general. Again using a digital camera store as an example, this sites keywords may be: Digital camera, Digital cameras,for less, buy, sell, compare, best price. Notice how there are only a small amount of keywords, there is no point in trying to add every keyword related to your business, you only need a few words that are key to your business.

Here are 10 top tips for better search engine results:

1. Concentrate on grabbing more and more qualified traffic to your website. Qualified traffic implies a higher percentage of visitors to your site are interested in any product or service that you are offering. This will give you a higher number of repeat visitors and more subscribers for the service that you offer.

2. Get into the mindset of your clients. What do they search for? What are they interested in? How are they going to act on a particular search result? Sketch out a detailed plan as to how you will use your clients throughout the processes to your benefit. This takes a lot of time and effort, which I am sure you are ready to contribute.

3. Make it very clear what your website is all about. State clearly the intent of your website, and the services that you offer. Visitors should not be confused when they reach your site, or they will leave as quickly as they came.

4. Research proves that the majority of searchers use phrases rather than single words. Using phrases for search implies that users are looking for more focused results. Optimise your pages for commonly used phrases to get more quality traffic.

5. Learn to trade off between various parameters. In the calculations above, we traded off between two important parameters, namely a number of searches and competition.

6. Don’t try to finish off the big hamburger in a single bite. Distribute your keywords on various pages throughout your website. Focus on only a few keywords on a single page.

7. Don’t sit numb and let things happen. Make things happen.

8. On any issue, do only what you think is right. Remember the point I emphasized above, about choosing keywords that are highly relevant, not just ones that have high traffic and little competition. This will both increase the number of qualified visitors to your site and help prevent visitors from feeling deceived. Also be considerate enough to take any suggestions that others may give you- - evaluate them and apply them as necessary. 

9. Take the experience of your predecessors as a lesson. Don’t just start off in haste because you want to do something. Get to know the experiences of various people, read articles and various forums. Learn your lessons thoroughly; remember, this is an ongoing process.

10. Have patience and don’t worry about needing to do the same things over and over again. You'll do things better each time.