E-Commerce: Informing Your Customers
As well as helping search engines, providing quality information about your products is going to help your customers and, ultimately, your profits.
Standing in a real-world store, it's pretty obvious what you're buying. You pick things up, you look at them, if you need to, you ask the sale staff questions. Online is a different matter. Online, the customer is entirely dependent on you to provide the information that they need to make a decision.
What's on the Box?
A lot of manufacturers put a lot of effort into making their products instantly recognisable on the shelf. If you sell things that come in smart boxes, make sure to include the pictures of those boxes as well as their contents.
It's vital to remember that the online customer cannot turn the box or packet over and read the blurb on the back. Unless you take the time and effort to reproduce that information for them.
What's In the Box?
Pictures can tell you a lot, and many manufacturers will provide you with beautiful images that show their products in the best light. Sometimes product photographs are just impossible to find. The smart retailer will recognise these as opportunities; if you're the only shop on the web that can actually show people what a specific item looks like, how many more people are going to buy from you instead of your competition..? And how much are digital cameras these days..?
There are also many important things that pictures can't you. How much does an item weigh? What does it feel like? How big is it? How well packed is it? Will is make a pleasing rattling sound when it's covered in shiny gift wrap?
Give Me More...
A lot of sites provide the option for users to add their own reviews. This can be a good idea, but do bear in mind that people's feedback will be very honest. Occasionally a bit too honest.
A slightly more controlled, and often overlooked, way of providing additional information is to keep a 'Frequently Asked Questions' list for each of your products. It should be a fairly straightforward to include a form on each product page that allows customers to ask you questions. Publishing a list of previous questions and answers can save a lot of repetition.
If you sell products that come with manuals or instructions it's often a very good idea to publish that information on your site. Many manufacturers will already have down-loadable manuals available.
Next...
E-Commerce: Running Your Site