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eCommerce Tips & Tricks: Top 100 Merchant Pointers

Read the top 100 eCommerce tips, tricks, merchant and customer pointers.

100 - 90

• 100. Never leave unanswered emails for more than 48 hours, or your customer is gone. Answer your mail within 10 to 30 minutes, they will always reply like Thanks For Your Quick Answer and will always remember and talk about your great service.
• 99. Let the customer see the shipping charge without registering! Preferably on the basket or a easy-to-find ’shipping charges’ page.
• 98. Make sure your forms use common names for fields so that they’re recognized by toolbars that have an autofill function.
• 97. Sites (mainly US!) that have address or phone fields that assume only a US citizen is going to purchase e.g. State fields that only allow a few characters entry.
• 96. If you’ve got a country drop-down box, please list it in alphabetical order, and don’t put United States at the top!
• 95. Don’t just accept payment through PayPal. Many people have had bad experiences with PayPal and prefer to use alternative, simpler payment methods. List the payment methods you accept somewhere noticeable.
• 94. Make your site incredibly easy to buy from - no registration if possible, live chat, 800 # - make it friendly and easy to buy from.
• 93. Take a picture of your office and add it to your contact us page with your company FAX number on it.
• 92. Don’t bury your products in several pages of clickthroughs, implement a working search mechanism so the user can get to what they seek in two clicks, three maximum. Insure there are redundant methods of getting around and no point on your site is more than two clicks away . . . from ANYWHERE.
• 91. Keep your initial products pages light and clean, with links to product details if they actually want to read.
• 90. Build your site for the end user, not the search engines. This means leave off all the serp-y text on the initial products pages.

89 - 80

• 89. Give the user a sense of who you are. The web is a cold, anonymous place. Anything you can do to bring a sense of personality and assurance to your website will help.
• 88. If you use a site search, make sure it works better than expected. It should search more than product names. Make sure it can find products by SKU, Model Number, and even misspellings if possible.
• 87. Be sure to include links to your privacy, shipping, returns & exchange policies right out where the customer can easily find them. Tell them the truth.
• 86. Keep the customer informed about the status of their order before they ask.
• 85. Re: Navigation - Use the same visual theme for every action required of the customer
• 84. Re: Product options - Make them clear and comprehensive. Answer every possible question on the product detail page
• 83. Make sure your site search can also search by size and color. If I’m considering a green skirt or blue towels, make it easy to find other items that would match.
• 82. Don’t use those standard drop down country forms containing places like North Korea or Bouvet Island (an inhabited speck in the South Atlantic. For heavens sake, don’t list known scam destinations as a ship-to.
• 81. Don’t start huge lists like this that require people to read every previous post thoroughly.
• 80. If you only ship to USA (or wherever) say that right off and several times.

79 - 70

• 79. Drives me crazy when the “About Us” section says nothing specific about the seller and just has some obviously canned verbiage.
• 78. Mission Statements: Yuck! Luckily they seem to be dying out. No one gives a ****, anyway.
• 77. Goes without saying that spelling must be perfect. On slow days, have employees proof read old pages.
• 76. Bragging about yourself is ok if you have something to brag about. But better to not mention things like “Since 2005″ or “here’s a picture of our new puppy.”
• 75. If you’re new to ecommerce NEVER mention that. Invitation to scammers to hit you.
• 74. Get a real 800# (or 888), not a 866 or such.
• 73. Get the most web un-savvy person you know to test your site.
• 72. Customize product descriptions. Eschew text provided by suppliers which everyone else uses.
• 71. Listen to customers, invite their comments and criticism and act on what you learn.
• 70. Answer emails in 8 hours max (certainly not 48)

69 - 60

• 69. Give street address but never “we’re in Puppyland Center, between Tony’s Pizza and the Shoe repair shop.”
• 68. Show good sharp graphics. Learn to use basic photo editing software.
• 67. Worth saying again, and again. Make everything fast and simple. Do you really need a wish list or tell-a-friend or even customer registration? Don’t just add to your site. Sometimes remove clutter.
• 66. (Follow on from 67) remove all non essential navigation elements from the checkout process. Have a single page checkout if possible.
• 65. Calling your customer to thank them and confirm their order instills immediate trust.
• 64. Make entering credit card numbers easy.
• 63. Install a really good stats system to track where your visitors bailed out of the purchasing process.
• 62. Pay good money for a proper interactive graphic designer (not a coder, web ‘developer’, or print designer doing a bit of moonlighting). If your web site looks professional, people will trust it and buy stuff.
• 61. Accessibility and usability - those 5% of ‘non-standard’ user groups all add up.
• 60. Add your 800# to every step of the checkout process with something to the tune of “questions or problems completing your order, call 800#)

59 - 50

• 59. Have a “best sellers” or “most popular” listing. The boost from this has been noticeable.
• 58. If your site ranks best in your niche, and If you sell something that is sold on many other websites (something drop shipped for you, for example), very slightly change the name — Tarenta to Tarento, Classica to Classico, for example. This helps deter people price shopping for the ‘product name’ elsewhere and in the shopping engines.
• 57. List your prices for every item clearly and upfront. There’s no space for a ‘price on application’ model online, none at all.
• 56. When using thumbnails to link to larger images give your customers larger images.
• 55. Pick the right product to sell. Something people actually want to buy. Preferably something lots of people want to buy.
• 54. If your target audience is concentrated in one country, host your website on a server and ip located in that country.
• 53. Promotional Offers: I believe offers are v imp. Now they need to be planned for first timers, repeat buyers and special offers for top customers.
• 52. Referral Program: Refer 2 friends and get x% additional/ discount always helps.
• 51. Actually have contact info - many sites hide their identity and location. Try to put the contact number somewhere on every page, it instills confidence.
• 50. Keep the 3 P’s above the fold on a product page. Product name, Price and Purchase link should all be visible without having to scroll.

49 - 40

• 49. Drop the "Create account" language. People don't come to our sites to create accounts, they come there to buy things. I try to make the account creation process appear like the normal checkout process. If they enter an email that is already in the system, THEN I ask them to request their password to login.
• 48. Know your visitors - if significantly more people are first-time-buyers, don't hit them with a login screen with a small link to register to the site - reverse the process.
• 47. Keep your cart on your domain - if for nothing else, it keeps your reporting homogenous.
• 46. Don't use the "simple" methods of gateway processing where the visitor is redirected to the gateway site. It seems that on almost every implementation of these setups the webmaster fails to bring the most current site layout over to the gateway site and the visitor gets a whole new layout for cc errors.
• 45. Never tell the visitor to "Hit your 'back' button to correct". I haven't found a valid reason to do this yet - any issue should be able to be handled within the system.
• 44. Have a "Help" link very prominently displayed so they have somewhere to go if there is an issue.
• 43. For telephone purposes use a short and easy to spell domain name like … dot tld depending on locations or products use more than one, which redirect to a product or location page.
• 42. Get the credit card number first, ask questions later! It is better to deny a suspected fraudlent order in post processing, rather than have the computer automatically deny honest customers due to AVS or CVV issues.
• 41. If you show a picture of the product and next to it a link that says 'enlarge' actually ENLARGE the photo rather than have it open in a new window exactly the same size as on the main page!
• 40. Ship fast. Preferably the same day and you are sure to get mails for appreciation.

39 - 30

• 39. Have points of re-assurance near the buy/add to cart button (bbb, bizrate, other ratings)
• 38. Use a proper ssl certificate.
• 37. If using paid advertising, don't send them to your home page; send them to the relevant product page (or custom landing page) that is tied to the keyword you advertised!
• 36. If you sell software, allow immediate access to the full version and allow unlimited upgrades.
• 35. Have a list of "recommended products" and "other customers also bought" with each item. This can be simply done in your database where you just connect products together and base it on what customers have actually bought.
• 34. Have a newsletter sign up and send out newsletters.
• 33. Don't make the customer fill in the CC billing & shipping address fields when they're the same.
• 32. Vat number & Company Registration Number should be visible on the site in the UK to comply with UK Companies Act (updated Jan 2007).
• 31. If the product ships via a carrier, send an email to the customer with the tracking number with a link to the carrier to check status.
• 30. Use an XML Sitemap generator to create a sitemap to get a "big picture" of your site. Submit it to Google et al. and they'll help you find dead pages, etc.

29 - 20

• 29. On category pages don't just list product names, but include some unique content about the category for indexing.
• 28. Use a product rating feed or create your own system (if you have a sizable user base). A place for user-generated comments can be great, but it can also be a hassle (monitoring, lots of fake entries, etc).
• 27. If you sell the same object in different colours, offer them pictures of each colour. telling a customer that you "also do this in blue" isn't all that helpful because there are about fifty billion shades of blue.
• 26. Use a larger font (14+) for titles and product names to make them stand out and possibly increase conversions.
• 25. Stay away from dynamic URLs when possible.
• 24. Sign up for Hackersafe, verising and your related trade associations and display their logos to improve credibility. Add as many credibility seals as you can.
• 23. Have a person answer the phone, not a recording.
• 22. If you cannot exceed the expectations created by your site-rewrite your copy. Under promise and over-deliver.
• 21. Hang in there with the difficult customers-they become the most loyal.
• 20. Know when a customer needs to be given to your competition.

19 - 10

• 19. Consistency. Everyone has a different flavor, color, even brand. Key is to be consistant --- have 1 text size and color for descriptions, one for links, one for category headers, perhaps another for main category links. At least theres a tone or vibe that your site is a statement vs a hodgepodge of stuff made by someone in their basement Be serious about what you are doing, and people will be serious about considering buying from you.
• 18. If you use sessions, store them in a database, don't append them to the URL, as people like the look of clean URL's and often snip them to mail to friends to refer them to a particular product to purchase.
• 17. On checkout gather a name and phone number as the first 2 fields, store them before proceeding and ring all the customers that drop out before completing the checkout.
• 16. Make the font on your product copy readable. 12pt at least. NO funky fonts.
• 15. Make sure your buy button pops off the page and is big enough to be seen and clicked on.
• 14. Make sure the title tag on each product page is unique and reflects what is on the page. (It never ceases to amaze me how many companies in this day and age still have just the company name in the title tag of product pages). Oh, an product name first in the title tag. Not your company name.
• 13. Superstition does not work well with business. What you may feel unlucky may be lucky for customers ranging from keeping Price Tag, Products, Colors, Day / Time of Shipping etc.
• 12. Offer a strong guarantee. Don't just say this widget is guaranteed x number of days. Sure, you'll get a few returns, but it will be nothing compared to the increase in sales you will get from a strong guarantee. Only offer a really strong guarantee like that on really strong products. I have one company that it works excellent with (less than 1/10 of a percent returns) and another company that it did not work well with (5-10% returns). The difference was that the first company's products could not be misjudged or misused. The second company's product were much more subjective. A lot of user error - which we took the blame for.
• 11. Add "District of Columbia - DC" to the list of drop down states, you be surprised how many sites are missing it.
• 10. And don't forget PR, GU, VI and all the other US commonwealth and protectorates, that the Postal Service can ship to, at cheap postal rates.

9 - 1

• 9. Don't forget US Servicemen/women abroad. Include APO/FPO state codes.
• 8. Play with the wording of your add-to-cart buttons. "Add to cart" is a nice non-threatening way to encourage adding items as some feel "order" or "buy" is too much of a commitment.
• 7. Be careful making a coupon field too prominent in checkout, especially in markets that are based on commodity goods such as electronics. Seeing the field may convince a shopper that was ready to purchase to exit and spend more time hunting for coupons. Consider relabeling as promotion code or something less descriptive (unless you are linking to a promo page with coupon codes to encourage larger sales).
• 6. Mine referral data of orders for search engine keyword queries encoded in the urls and further optimize for these terms for organic search or consider adding to your PPC campaigns.
• 5. Encourage impulse buys says a tip I read somewhere on the net, people don't mind being asked "Do you want fries with that?"
• 4. If you're going to ask customers to sign up for your newsletter during checkout, do it AFTER the payment is processed. Before the payment is taken, the customer is far more interested in ordering your product - but once you've taken their payment and they're looking at your "Thank you for your order" screen it's the ideal moment to get them to sign up.


• 4. Group Related Items and Encourage Impluse Buys -


• 3. Allow Checkout without Registering - Be sure that shoppers can easily purchase items from your site before making them register for an account with you and before offering them any additional subscription or newsletter signups. This is one of the best ways to increase conversions and lower cart abandonment right away. Rather than offering an account off the bat, try to do it later in the process or give shoppers the option to get an account after the confirmation notice. This strategy will help you to retain more customers, increase conversions and lower abandonment rates, things that affect sales.


• 2. Streamline Checkout and Buying Process - Once a shopper makes the decision to buy, the process they go through to make their purchase should be acomplished in a few steps as quick, easy and painless as possible. Many merchants choose a "One-page" checkout process, but there are also other ways to streamline a checkout process. If you use a multiple page process, be sure to include step or page indicators so buyers know where they are in the process. If you have already captured certain information early on, use it anywhere else in the process you can to help the customer save time. Also, you can show shoppers any accessories or related items that may go along with what they are buying right before entering the checkout stages.


• 1. Test, Test and Retest All Processes - Analyze and test all of your eCommerce site processes including layouts, themes, headlines, titles, ad copy, checkout steps, cart abandonment and any other processes you can think of. Test what shoppers see, what returning customers see and what search crawlers see. You will find that often times even the smallest changes can make a dramatic difference in the way your site performs. For the best results, analyze, test and implement your findings as much as possible and as often as you can, being careful not to over do things. Thorough testing and strategic implementation will eventually bring your sales closer to the true potential.

Need Help Using This Guide & Implementing Tips?

Understanding and implementing all the tips mentioned in this guide can certainy be an exhaustive, time consuming task that may require previous planning or knowledge about selling Online. We have done our best to list as many of the most popular eCommerce tips from both merchants and shoppers who regularly purchase Online. If you find yourself getting stuck or have difficulty getting any of the aforementioned tips implemented we may be able to assist you in getting the help or answers you need. We recommend making a priority list starting out with the tips you can easily implement yourself with limited support. Once you get to the things on your list you cannot do yourself, let us know so we can advise you on how to get the help you need. Remember, not all these tips are neccessary within EVERY eCommerce storefront. Use the ones that will benefit your shoppers and your processes and leave the rest out. Clutter and needless features taking up space on your pages can kill sales in itself. It is best if you can try to find a few of the more simple tips to start with and go on implementing from there.

Here are some great help articles with more information:

• eCommerce & Shopping Cart Usability: 21 Best Practices

If you have any questions, we are eager to help, for FREE. Simply contact us for advice.

Top Tips Feedback, Errors & Updates

If you find any information on this page outdated or in need of an update, please get in touch so we can make the necessary changes to this guide. If you are an eCommerce professional, merchant seller or Online shopper and know of a tip that you have used in the past and it is not currently listed in this guide, simply drop us a message and tell us what you think should be added. We would be happy to consider you ideas for inclusion.

If you find misspellings or typos, try to ignore them, but let us know so we can fix those too!