The basic purpose of an ecommerce website is to make an online visitor buy products and services from the site. A professional web designer needs to integrate a host of online selling strategies while planning an ecommerce website design. This article will explore the main design elements that a successful ecommerce website must have.

Design an easy navigable path: As a designer, you must design a website that lures your visitors to make online purchases. In your ecommerce website, place your products and services in a manner so that they are best visible to your visitors. You should remember that placing your products on the web is easier but how you place them is all that matters to initiate the sales. The apt placement of your products and services calls for professional and technical knowledge in designing an ecommerce website.

Leading the visitor to the right page: You must be able to guide the visitor to the order page in a single click or two. A smart web designer must be able to incorporate all details of the products in a few lines so the user has the choice to click on the order form at the earliest. It is possible that a visitor is not convinced just by reading those few lines. In such a scenario, it’s the designer’s creative skills that make an ecommerce website saleable.

Layout: An ecommerce website becomes successful if it has a proper layout. Professional designers do a lot of research and development on the topic. It has been found that that the middle left section has the maximum visitors which is followed by the centre of the webpage. An intelligent web designer employs these tactics of ‘navigable path’ to lure the visitor to make him purchase online.

Application of personalization technologies: It is true that more number of products makes a website more complicated. Use of personalization technologies helps offer the best of products to the online visitors. It must be noted that personalization technologies has greater impact on the design. Modern ecommerce websites predicts what products to offer the visitor on his first visit.

Before launching an ecommerce website, be very sure of the features of web designing for online sales. It is advised that you have a word with an experienced web designer who has designed ecommerce websites before.

Anyone who has ever done SEO, or is still involved, will agree on the importance of content writing in search engine optimization. Good, home-grown content is the key to getting the search engine biggies to notice your website. A website without content isn’t just a mish-mash of colors and images; it is useless, without a purpose and has zero chances of being ranked, let alone going anywhere near the top of a search engine results page (SERP).

Where is the Challenge?

Content has the power to make or break your website. Naturally, online businesses attach tremendous importance to quality and compelling text to pull in potential customers.

The persistent problem with content writing is not the writing itself, but people’s attitude towards writers. An alarming number of people think of content writing as putting pages of plain English sentences together with a generous sprinkling of keywords to attract search engines. In retrospect, it appears content writing has a recipe – correct grammar, complex industry jargon and keyword usage for an interesting and effective result.

“So, where is the problem in stringing words together?” “It’s just writing!”

Well, here is the problem and the challenge…

Content writing is not rocket-science! Content writers don’t have rule books to follow, except what little Google tells us about keyword density. Writing is for the people and web users are indecisive, evasive and over-critical most of the times, knowledge of English language and personal preference notwithstanding. Therefore, there are no set methods that content writers can follow to appease worldwide readers, nor proven strategies they can apply to roll out 100% effective content.

Yes, quality matters and good, informative writing will show results. But, there are other things that influence the overall success of your website, such as color-scheme and design, user-friendly navigation, load time, link-exchange, directory submissions, social networking, blogging, etc.

Content is King, yes, but even a king needs a cabinet to run the kingdom!

Case in Point

Neither the success, nor the failure of your website depends on content alone. Content is the most important ingredient in search engine success but a sumptuous buffet of top-ranking web pages is possible only when peripheral SEO practices are carried out with sincerity.

In conclusion…content may not be the foundation for a superior website rank, but it cements the building blocks of website optimization firmly and in a manner that ultimately makes a website what it is and will be in the future.

Therefore, content writing deserves more respect than it gets!

Information is what users search for and informative content is what they want. Content Writing is king because without it, search engines will not rank you. Content must be optimized to make it search-friendly. However, over-optimization of content can make it less searchable and consequently, less user-friendly.

How then, can you blur the line between usability of content and SEO? There are 5 easy ways to do it. Read on to find out…

• Your On-page Content Length – 250 words is the ideal minimum length of SEO page content. If the choice of subject permits, you should ideally have 250 or more than 250 words of actual inline content, i.e., without sidebar or header content. The more the number of words, the better. Long copies convert better and have better chances of ranking for SEO targeted keywords.

Of course, some sites like ecommerce and blogs, do not need a lot of content. For these sites, a chunk of content at the top, not more than 300 characters or about twice the length of meta-description of your page, is enough. You should have just enough text length to throw in some descriptive keywords without pushing the category listings below the page fold.

• Your Paragraph Length – Ideally, paragraphs should not exceed 3 or 4 lines, or 2 sentences. Keeping your paragraphs short ensures they are less strain for readers and are easily scanable.

However, some paragraphs warrant more than 4 lines or 2 sentences to get across an idea comprehensively. Still, a maximum of 5 lines is as big as it should get to keep your content user-friendly.

• Page Headers – Some pages have 1000+ words content on them but still manage to keep readers engaged. How do they do it? The answer is simple: by structuring their content.

Your content should be sectioned with header tags, either h2 or h3. Headers create breaks in content and make it appear ‘not so long’ to read, hence, less tiring. Headers also help grab user attention by providing visual cues throughout the content.

Also, keywords used in headers tell the search engines what your page is about and makes it more search-friendly, thus helping optimize the page.

• Keyword Use and Density – The ideal keyword density, or the measure of how often a keyword should appear on a page, is between 2% to 5%. Problem is, even at 2% usage, keywords can make content sound unnatural and appear forced. In fact, repetitive use of keywords makes content look robotic and spammy, and offers a non-compelling read.

Headers tags can be used to fit any extra keywords. In fact, by using keywords in your headers, you will actually be making your page’s copy search engine friendly, and your content remain naturally informative.

• Bulleted Lists – These certainly make content more scanable and easy on the eye. Bullet lists are guaranteed to catch user attention and by breaking your ideas into bullet points, you are clearly conveying an idea to your readers. However, the problem with SEO is, search engines consider bullet lists as broken content and in the realm of keyword density, don’t add up to much.

Of course, you can still get around this by including a bullet list at the top of the page to outline content. Just make sure you have at least 3 lines or 2 sentences preceding and following the bullet list and the rest of the page has at least 250 words of unbroken content for search engines to index.

Alternatively, the bullet list can be pushed down in the content to be a part of a section. With sufficient content preceding the bullet list, it will count less in how the page is indexed.

Always remember, you should develop content for users and not search engine bots. Make content search-friendly by optimizing it and keep it user-friendly by making it clear, comprehendible and engaging. Your content isn’t the only way to optimize your site, so avoid over-optimizing; it is sure to affect its usability.

What makes a compelling web copy: correct grammar, short sentences, and simplistic approach, or big words, professional style, highly industrial jargon? In a world where user attention is limited to seconds, how do you manage to keep readers glued to your web copy for several minutes? Do site visitors at all care for what’s there to be said?

Content writers are often caught between what pleases their creative style and what is comprehendible to the readers. One of the obvious challenges of content writing is to come up with a web copy that is self-gratifying yet satisfying to the readers. Following are 10 easy steps that will help you attain a balance between the two:

1.  Personal Style – A web copy written in third person is passé. You would want to give your visitors a relaxed environment to read. Readers are looking for informative content, more importantly, information they can easily grasp. Nobody has the patience to sit around with a dictionary under his/her arm, going back and forth to understand what you have written. Why should they anyway, when similar websites are just clicks away?

Your web copy should be conversational. Use of ‘you’ and ‘your’ to address readers helps retain their interest. Occasional use of ‘I’, ‘me’, ‘my’, ‘we’ keeps the conversation going.

I would also suggest an About Me page, preferably with your picture on it, especially if yours is a personal website like a portfolio site or blog. The idea is to reveal a bit of yourself to your readers to help them connect to your website. A Facebook or Twitter page helps, but you don’t know if your readers will at all track you down to social networks.

2. Simple Language – What use is an authority website if the first-time visitor does not understand terminology you have used? Your web copy must accommodate all visitors, niche or otherwise. Of course, your writing style will primarily depend on the type of audience you target. An insurance site would hardly write like a holiday site.

Keep it simple, yet professional. Note: professionalism must not border on use of confounding words and style only a handful of people will understand. You can still be highly professional with simple sentence construction.

3. Personal Stories – Your web copy should bond with its readers. Use personal style highlighted in point #1 to make a connection with your users. Cement connection by sharing personal experiences, opinions, realization; anything that makes your web copy a dialogue, not a lecture.

4. Pictures Help – Images are necessary breaks in your content that help reduce strain. Also, images convey the tone of your words; add an emotional component to ideas. Pages of content is boring, no matter how compelling or useful.

5. Read Aloud – Reading content aloud helps you understand if it’s personal and conversational. If your content doesn’t sound like natural speech, it is stodgy and lacks rhythm. In other words…boring.

6. Edit to End – Always edit your web copy at the end. Make additions, changes, modifications once you have got the entire copy in place. Editing as you go along severs your creative style.

7. Wit/Sarcasm – These are hard to read in writing. Infuse humor where it’s unmistakable; humor that everyone can understand.

8. Don’t Get Carried Away – You can take liberties with personal web copies, but there is some modicum of decency you should maintain. Foul language and too colloquial terminology hurts your brand image. The fine line between funny and distasteful should be maintained.

9. Optimize – Keyword rich content is critical to your site. They help draw in targeted web users. Do a bit of research on what type of keywords the web audience uses to find your niche. Also, because you wouldn’t use a particular keyword to find your niche, does not mean your users wouldn’t either.

10. Scan-Friendly – Yes, users scan content before they read sentences word by word. Don’t forget to add bold headings, bold points in your article, and use bullet lists and italics when you write. Hopefully, users will find pieces of text that will make them stop and read your article.

In Conclusion

There will always be a naysayer demeaning content for graphics. Don’t listen! The reason visitors come to a website is because they believe it has information that is useful to them. Without legible scribbles between images, a website doesn’t account for much. Plus, there are search engines to reckon with; without content, a website is just a jumble of colors and pictures without purpose, hardly index-worthy, let alone capable of finding a foothold in organic search.