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How important is a website to an online store? The short answer: there are few things more important. For any online business, your website is the gateway to any transactions, much like a traditional storefront would be for a brick and mortar. So it’s baffling that so many online stores hoping to sell their services and products to savvy online customers don’t invest in a solid, professional looking website. First impressions are incredibly important in the online market, mainly because there are so many other websites that are competing with you.
Putting up an incomplete or unattractive website is a bad idea for several reasons. For one thing, it diminishes your credibility, and credibility is hard to come by online. The internet is like a shady neighborhood with a few high quality stores, and having a bad online store design is like putting up a crooked store sign. Your product might be the best thing on Earth, but if people decide not to buy your product because of how your website looks, then that doesn’t matter. Putting up a good website indicates to customers that enough people buy from you that you are able to afford a professional design.
Aesthetics are not the only factor that people look at when they visit a page. Even with a great online store design, people might still question whether they might be better off buying from a more well-known website. Some great ways to make sure they don’t? Encourage recommendations from existing customers! People who receive a recommendation from a friend or family member are far more likely to buy than one who doesn’t. Encourage recommendations by adding social share buttons to your site. Another method of increasing a customer’s chance of buying is by adding legitimate customer testimonials, as well as a certification from a trusted authority like the BBB (Better Business Bureau). Just like someone shopping offline, people will check labels and the back of the box, so to speak, to make sure what they are purchasing is exactly what they want.
Creating a well designed website with the ability to convert customers is crucial to any eCommerce business. Do you have high website conversion rates?
