Check List for New E-Com Website

Hi Guys-

I am new to posting on this forum, but I have been lurking and digesting as much of the great information as you guys present here. I am building an e-com website from scratch and right now I'm in the stage of making a check list for the website.

If you would take a look at what I have so far and give me some tips on other things that I need to focus on as well as any other tips you have that would be great. Here's my list:

Check List for Website Launch

1. Site Map for Website
2. Server w/ Secured Shopping & Shopping Cart
3. CMS
4. CRM
5. Register Domain
6. Design/Programming for Website
7. List of Items
8. Overview of Each Item
9. Pricing for Each Item
10. Images for all items
11. Articles for product category 1 (3)
12. Articles for product category 2 (3)
13. Articles for product category 3 (3)
14. Policies Written up
15. Blogs (5)
16. SEO
a. List of Forums to Participate
b. List of Article Submission Sites
c. List of Blogs
d. Create Back links
e. Analytics
f. Social Book Marking List
g. Create Accounts on Social Bookmarking
h. List of long tailed keywords
17. On Page Optimization
a. Keywords to Use for Each Landing Page
b. Keywords for Main Page
c. Keywords for Product Overviews
d. H1 Tags
e. Title Page Keyword
f. Anchor Text for Links
g. Anchor Text for Images
h. File Name Urls with keywords
18. Google Adwords
a. Research Ad
b. Create Ad Budgets
19. List of Engines to optimize for

Chodedone18 you have quite the list there. Keep in mind that many of those things can wait until after you have a working site up and running.
I would proceed as follows:
1. Determine what you want to sell (I hope you did this already)
2. Do some preliminary research on keywords and branding and get a domain name.
3. Set up your site. Including putting the products up etc.
4. Launch
5. THEN worry about PPC, forums, articles, etc.

The step 5 things can all be done after you are already actively selling products. You don't need them to get your site live and you will miss out on revenue if you try to do them all first.
Furthermore several things aren't worth doing until you have a place to drive traffic to and some of your best keyword research etc. will come along with actual traffic so you will be tweaking continuously.

Good luck with your site.

Reality summed it up pretty much. Something you should focus on though is layout and design. Navigation is one of the higher priorities when building an e-commerce site (IMO)

Something else we focus on a bit is how much and what type of information do you want displayed above the fold? You have a short period of time to engage a visitor so you need to make sure what is visible to them captures their attention and keeps them digging deeper. Focus on categories and the # of clicks it will take a visitor to find what they are looking for. The shorter the better. Good internal links to inner category/product pages will allow your actual category/product pages to show up in the search engines for related searches.

One last bit of advice, your checkout process. This is where were losing the sale. We go for the shortest process possible and letting buyers know where they are in the process (Step 1 of 3, etc). We are working on providing our shipping information earlier in the process and have actually placed links to our shipping info as we saw from our Google Analytics that we were losing buyers at this stage of the process. There are many theories to this process but you have to run A/B tests (which we are still trying to work on as well) to see which provides the most conversions.

Its about accessibility when it comes to e-commerce. K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid- not meant to be offensive haha) Instill trust in your visitors and assure them that their information is safe and their transactions are secure. Good luck.

Lb1878
You should start a thread on CR or checkout issues.

I though I did a loooong time ago. I'll have to check. I remember being curious to see how others set up their checkout process and thought I asked about it (could be in any number of places though). Perhaps you can share some of your views on this for chode and others and myself of course :-D

One of the big things we learned was people wanted to know where they were in the process. The Step 1, Step 2, etc. worked fairly well for us. Our process was fairly drawn out in our eyes and thats how the cart came out of the box. It took several attempts and quite a bit of money to shorten it and modify it to make it work better for us. Believe it or not, the silly images regarding "This is a Trusted Site" seemed to also help. We have by no means mastered the checkout process but as the site evolves, you start seeing what works and what doesnt. The thing is, every industry is different and what works for me, may not work for you and so on.

There is nothing easy about e-comm. Visitors and searchers all have different motives, methods and hot buttons. It's up to you to figure out what converts the best. Calls to action are also important. Make them stand out and try to engage your visitors in one way or another (i.e. purchase, contact you, sign up for a newsletter).

Chode, you have a nice checklist there but make sure the site flows and you channel your visitors where you want them to go before you start marketing. # 16 should be # 1 as its the umbrella of your list and all of your endeavors. Sorry for the random thoughts just trying to point out a few things.

General checkout guidelines I have found:

List where you are at the top of the page. ie.
Step 1 - Step 2 - Step 3 - Step 4
(obviously use more meaningful names like 'shipping' and 'review'

Don't lock people into the checkout process. Even though Amazon does this I think it just pisses people off. Let them leave the checkout and browse for more products.

Make sure you 'remember' information that was already entered in the checkout if the back button is pressed or they leave and return to the checkout with the possible exception of credit card numbers.

Display shipping costs as early as possible. Preferably right on the page when people add to their card but definitely have the option to show them in the cart before checkout is started.

Trust marks work - File this under people are stupid or loads of scams exist. Whatever you like. But putting things like hackersafe, verisign secured, etc. on your product pages and in your checkout does work. Do A/B splits to see where on the page you should place them.

Don't force people to re-type information. For example if you require a billing address make sure you have a check box for 'same as shipping' etc.

Do NOT force people to register or provide an email address at all unless it is absolutely required for your product. Let them make a password AFTER you have gotten the sale not before.

If you require a phone number etc. make sure you show a privacy policy or provide a link to explain why you need it and how you will use it.

Make sure you test the crap out of your checkout for bugs and annoying things. etc. I have seen checkouts that require a credit card number in xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx format. There is no reason you can't program the system to drop non-numerical characters. It will just annoy people to format their input in some special way. Same for expiration dates.

Make sure errors display an intelligent message and help the user correct any typos etc. without loosing previously entered info.

If you have an order review page make it VERY clear that this is NOT a 'thank you' page. Otherwise people (being stupid) will print your review page and wonder why their order never arrived.

Great info reality. I think this will be very useful for e-comm inquiries. Nice job!

As for the steps, I was lazy and didn't type out the full headings. We do practice Step 1 - Login (which we are hoping to change in the near future for the exact reasons you stated. We don't want to lock people in and don't want to force people to remember a login and a cart generated password), Step 2 - Customer/Shipping Info, etc.

The other big thing like reality mentioned was TESTING. Very, very important.

You mean you don't let them enter their own (possibly subject to limitations like min. length)?
I definitely would not bother with an account if that were the case. I would rather re-type my info. Furthermore it means that I would have to record the password which actually *lowers* security.

Another thing I missed related to this. If you do allow people to make accounts and tie it to an email address or something similar. Make sure when your cart triggers the message that 'an account exists for this address' or whatever that one of the options is to proceed without logging in unless you have a very good reason not to allow that.
Waiting for a password reset is a PITA so try to allow people to speed through if they don't care about the purchase being in their history.

Actually, the cart generates the password for them (for security reasons) as we are told. We HATE that our users cannot enter their own password b/c in the log files, all we see is "cannot login, request password." We are waiting for the designers to get back to us so we can modify this process as well as some other things on the checkout.



I agree. I'll have to look into that, thanks.

Lb1878
Check with your designers/developers about that security issue. There is no security issue I know of that would require such a password unless the back end has some serious security problems of its own.
A user generated password with minimum length and maybe one or two other requirements using a one way algorithm should be plenty for any site (outside of possibly a bank. And for that you would want a combination of site and user generated pass codes, optimally with an RSA fob but that is overkill).
If INGdirect, paypal, capitalone, etc. etc. can let me choose my own password something is very wrong with your security on the back end if doing so on your site would be a security risk. The only thing I can think of is if they are storing credit card numbers in such a way that there is a master password to view them which is a huge no-no.

Just my 2 cents but if they can't get a user generated password working I would be concerned about their knowledge of how to write secure code at all.

Thanks for the great replies!

I have it in mind to focus on the most important aspects first and to refocus my energy after completing those steps. I should have put a timeline on when each step was going to be completed.

I will spend a lot of time on my shopping cart system to make it flow as smoothly as possible. What has started here would make a great thread imo.

Great. Your number one task is getting a store up an d running. You can always change product copy, page titles etc. as long as your CMS allows you to (which it should). Even stock manufacturer wording may bring in some sales while you gather data and optimize. Better not to miss those sales IMO even if it is only a few per week.


Are you writing your own or will you be purchasing an e-commerce platform? A few years back the offerings for prebuilt customizable systems stunk. But now you may be able to pick something up that is quite decent and avoid a lot of work.

I was hoping to get a prebuilt one. I have been looking into using ezosc.com as my hosting/credit merchant/shopping cart.. what do you of think of it?

And if not that, do you have any suggestions for me?

Thanks in advance

Unfortunately I am not familiar with it or really with any of the solutions around today as I am in the unusual position of having a completely custom built front and back end.

I would make a list of what you want and start from that. One thing to keep in mind is data portability in case you later decide to switch platforms.

What an excellent list. There's so much to consider when
choosing content for a website. That said, I didn't see usability on your list. Yes, SEO is critical to new traffic, but making sure that people can interact with your page is just as important as getting them there. Thanks for the list!

Cheers!

@jlbraaten