Running an Ecommerce store or Online Store?

Lately I have been spending a lot of time looking at ecommerce stores and what makes a good one and what makes a bad one. Well my research has come to the conclusion that there are a lot of bad ecommerce stores out there.

So if you are running an ecommerce store, or you are looking to set up a online shop of some description here are a few tips to make sure you head in the right direction with it.

1. Remember the purpose of your online store.... not sure what that is? well the purpose of your store is to sell your products, simple as that. So make it easy for your visitors to buy from you.
2. Most of your visitors do not know who you are... so there is a little trust issue that you need to overcome. Think about what sort of reassurances you would need to to buy from someone you didn't know. Here are a few ideas - have a prominent telephone number on the page - if they have a query they can give you a call. Offer them a money back guarantee on your sales if you can - if the buyer is not taking a perceived risk then this will help them make a decision to buy. Make sure your web store looks professional.
3. Give as much information about your products as you can - some of your buyers will only want the highlights of the product information BUT some will want to know everything - cater for both.
4. Make sure your website is search engine friendly! that means that every page, every category and every product page can we indexed by the search engines - in short it will help you get every product you list into the google database - and if you are lucky, you will get high rankings on every one of these and so lots of free customers!!
5. Try out pay per click advertising. Google Adwords is a good place to start.
6. Use Google Base to list all of your products - Google base is like a shopping comparison tool and can generate a whole load of traffic for your website.
7. Ask friends and family to try and buy certain products from your website. watch them as they do it (but don't give them any help) - see where they struggle, you will be surprised. Try and improve on the areas where they struggle.

These seven tips are the bases for good ecommerce internet marketing. There are plenty more things you can do - so many ecommerce stores do nothing to promote themselves - make sure your's isn't one of them.