Web Design Principles part 3

4. Create confidence and trust
Check out our visual as to what you haveto cover then make sure your guarantees, your returns policy, price promise, multi-buy offers and delivery as well as privacy policy are easy to findand understand. Display your delivery charges and options clearly and concisely on your website before you get to the checkout. Give your customers a range of delivery options and the option to pay a little extra for a quicker delivery – it’s all part of ‘instant’ gratification.
Let browsers explore the site and discover your services without requiring subscriptions or registrations and forcingthem into sharing private data. It’s not reasonable.
5. Security and checkout
Assure browsers that their private details will not be shared with any third party. Security is a real issue so secure your online payment processing reassurance is essential. Failure to do this will result in lost customers and sales.
Make sure your basket is easy to see at all times and the checkout has a few steps as possible that are clearly marked. Make sure all data is not lost with an error and make it easy to changeand correct things.
6. Start a relationship
Aim to build a long term relationship with your customers and bring them back on your website.
Make it as easy to contact you and ask for help. Good customer service is appreciated so provide customer serviceonline that actually resolves customer queries and helps people to buy. Ask your customers when they check out if it's ok to put them on your mailing list.
7. SEO
Make sure you are found in the search engines with good page titles, headings and descriptions. Text is important for SEO but the Web is different from print, so it’s necessary to adjust the writing style to browsers’ preferences and browsing habits whilst keeping the search engines in mind.
8. Test
This is direct marketing so test and find out what works best. Test in a continuous cycle so that you get better.
None of this is rocket science, but it’s notalways acted on either by online retailers.

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