What is good design?

It's got nothing to do with fancy graphics, flash animations or dedicated web servers. Good site design for ecommerce involves just 2 things:

1. Focus on the most wanted response for conversion (i.e., what you want customers to do when they arrive at your site. This could be subscribing to a newsletter or making a purchase).

2. Make your site easy to update so you can rapidly implement and test new conversion ideas.

The problem with ecommerce websites is that too many entrepreneurs think that fancy sites with flashy graphics and impressive presentations will work.

They rarely do. When it comes to creating sites that sell, designers are often your worst enemy. Here's what you need to know before designing your site. Ecommerce websites need to be focused on getting customers to respond in a specific way.

This is called the most wanted response or MWR. The MWR on a landing page may be to get the customer to subscribe or make a purchase.

The MWR on a signup confirmation page would be to have the customer download a free product or to forward your free gift to a friend. The most important thing to realize is that each page must focus on ONE most wanted response.

You must identify the optimal conversion path and lead your customer down this path. For example, your main page may not be designed to sell your product but to sell the customer on downloading a free 30 day trial. At the end of the 30 days, the customer then gets an email offer attempting to bring her back to the site to purchase the full version.

Once back on the site, the customer sees compelling copy explaining why she needs to upgrade from a demo to the full featured product. The conversion path of this site is as follows:

1.Customer provides email address and downloads free software.

2.Email sent to customer after 30 days to bring her back to site.

3.Customer reads site copy to sell her on making the full purchase. On a site like the one above, the conversion path is well defined. Each page is designed to get the customer to accomplish a specific action.

An example of a bad site is one which offers the customer multiple options and multiple paths. This almost always reduces conversion rates.

Keep every page on your site focused on generating a single action from the customer.