Simple Steps to Improve Your Website UsabilityNo one can argue that website usability is a must have these days. Make your website as simple as possible and users will love it. Make the purchase process as short as possible and your sales will boost. How? Here are a few very simple steps you should take.

1. Checkout

This is the place where the most number of sales are lost. You can use analytics to check how many users are leaving the website before making a purchase. If you find there are many people leaving before completing this process, you have a problem. The best way is to ask someone (unfamiliar with your web-store) to go through the whole buying procedure and give you feedback.

The list of things to check out include:

• Cart accessibility
• Ease of use
• Helpful instructions
• Payment terms
2. Site Navigation

Is moving around your site intuitive? Is it easy or does it take a lot of effort? Do you have an internal search feature on your site, and does it work properly? If such usability mistakes are made, people can often feel lost and irritated; encouraging them to leave your site and shop somewhere else.

Conduct an experiment. Ask a few people who have not visited your website before to locate some items. Then ask them how easy it was to find what they were looking for. Use the results of the experiment to discover any usability problems.

3. Organization

It’s not infrequent when the only person who can understand the way the website is organized, is its creator, rather than users.

When you check your site, make sure that it presents concise and understandable information. Sometimes webmasters use jargon and industry argot words, not realising such words are not familiar to potential customers. You should also provide an easy method to add an item to the cart. Make sure users can seamlessly navigate categories to find what they are looking for. When making improvements, solve the worst problems first and concentrate on the items with the best profit potential.

4. Security Items

Quite often people are understandably wary about providing their credit card information online. That’s why security icons should be prominently displayed, and Privacy Policy should be summarized in an appropriate place of the site. Show people that your site is secure.

5. User Friendliness

It’s well known that many customers leave sites when asked to fill in a form page. Do not ask too much information from your users. Make the surveys as small as possible and omit sections people think are intrusive. Ask your customers for feedback, and make sure your forms are not too time consuming.

Newsletter functionality is on almost everyone’s list when choosing their shopping cart software.

They’re a great marketing tool for engaging customers, telling them about special promotions and offers, and generating repeat business.

There’s a great article about newsletters and shopping cart software over at Practical Ecommerce - Definately worth a read!

While the Ecommerce Times usually fill their homepage with product reviews, current ecommerce news and shopping cart tutorials, this week they have highlighted some popular disscussions often held by merchants in their forums.

You should find this interesting as it provides an insight into what your fellow merchants are thinking and struggling with.

It addresses using shopping PPC sites as means of advertising your ecommerce shopping carts and a popular thread where by merchants give fellow forum members the invitation to rate their site.  

When Internet shopping carts did not exist, an online customer would be able to to add just one product to their shopping cart at any one time, and checkout.  It was not possible to add multiple products to a shopping basket.  If ecommerce was to become the future, it was clear that merchants would have to provide a quicker and much more convenient service for customers.

Internet shopping carts has enabled ecommerce to become as big as it is today.  For a business to stay competative, it is no longer enough to have a website that merely displays what the highstreet shop sells, it seems that it must have a shopping basket where by customers can purchase directly from their computer.

Today shopping carts give customers a host of advantages:

1)  It allows customers to add as many products to their virtual shopping basket as they wish.

2)  View and delete individual products.

3)  Software today even allows shoppers to track their order all the way to their doorstep.

5)  Internet shopping carts with an integrated help desk support system provides shoppers with a form of customer support.  Shoppers can feel secure and happy that any potential problems will be resolved.

6)  Forums can become a widely used feature of a website so shopping cart software with integrated forums are especially handy features, this is more so the case if online retailers sell equipment users may need product support for.

Shopping cart software also gives merchants a host of advantages:

7)  Internet shopping carts with an integrated web content management system allows merchants to customise the content and design of their online ecommerce shopping cart and store.

8)  Web content management systems today often come with integrated search engine friendly features, providing merchants with the potential to rank well in the search engines for their desired key terms.

Above I have listed just 8 features available to merchants today.

Viart Shop has many more features, on top of those mentioned above, and continues to grow in functionality as the ecommerce industry develops.

About the Author

Viart (http://www.viart.com/) provide PHP shopping cart software worldwide.

The company are currently providing a fully hosted 30-day trial of their PHP Internet shopping carts

Viart.com (http://www.viart.com/), an online company supplying PHP shopping cart software and web content management software worldwide, offers people a fully hosted 30-day trial of their ViArt Shop and integrated CMS.

Viart has put in place a free 30-day trial of their products, giving people the opportunity to test out the shopping cart software and integrated web content management software without any commitment.  Since the shopping cart is fully hosted during the trial, it removes the issue of set up for users, giving users an opportunity to test out the shopping cart software without any hassle.

The shopping cart software with integrated web content management software has been designed with flexibility at its forefront.  First time shop owners can take advantage of the free-hosted trial and build websites that include shopping carts, forums, help desks and more, and the Viart technical support team will be on hand every step of the way.

For experienced users with PHP and HTML knowledge, the shopping cart software and integrated CMS offers all the functionality of an advanced scripting engine behind the scenes, with complete flexibility regarding design.

“Influenced by our ever-increasing customer base, the ViArt shopping cart and CMS continues to grow in functionality each and every month. Our most recent updates have included the integration of Google Checkout, the ability to integrate Google tracking into an online shop and a call centre module.  We have aimed to create a shopping cart system capable of performing all the functions required to run an online business.  We want people to sample our scalable range of shopping cart solutions that can come complete with an integrated help desk support system and an integrated forum” Explains Mr. Birzul, Technical Director at Viart.

The fully featured hosted trial of the shopping cart software offers people the chance to assess the viart shop without any installation or commitment.  Visit http://www.viart.com/hosting_trial.php for more information.

About the Company
ViArt was established in 1999 and operate from purpose built premises based in North Yorkshire.  The company’s in-house team of e-commerce software developers whom have over thirty years experience in this arena designed the ViArt suite of products.

ViArt.com, PHP shopping cart software provider, offers users the ability to integrate Google Checkout into their shopping carts.

12 March 2007 - ViArt (http://www.viart.com) has developed their PHP shopping cart software to provide users with the ability to integrate Google Checkout into their ecommerce website.

Google checkout allows online merchants to process transactions online.  The checkout enables customers to buy from Viart shopping cart merchants quickly and securely using one single username and password. A fast, secure checkout process helps to persuade shoppers to buy online and buy more often.

To find out more about this latest update to the Viart PHP shopping cart software take a look at the full press release: Viart PHP Shopping Cart Software Integrates Google Checkout.

Viart are currently offering a fully hosted 30-day trial of their shopping cart software and integrated web content management software from: http://www.viart.com/hosting_trial.php