Designing an Online Retail Candle Store
October 3, 2011
If you are thinking about starting your own candle business online selling candles, there are a few things you need to consider with the design of your retail shop. Many business owners don’t think about the design itself. They think as long as they have pictures, a way to buy the product, and a live site, the people will come. This is not the case. Design matters. Things to consider with the design of your candle store include the number of pages and depth, the functionality, and the appearance. These are only a few parts of many very important factors of a successful business on the web.
The number of pages and the depth are very important with an online retail shop. Many online retail shops go tons and tons of pages deep. This can be okay for a user shopping as long as they can always find their way back to the home page and they know where they are on the site at all times. However, search engine robots will not pick up pages that are too deep; in most cases, deeper than six pages. Any web pages deeper than six are usually not a part of a search result because they haven’t been indexed. This means, if you have some of your favorite candles or best seller, or pages with useful information and SEO content deeper than six pages, the only traffic that will come to these pages will be from search results due to the content on the shallow pages of the site. For example, if an immigrant is looking for a USCIS Green Card on a search engine and a site offers the papers 8 pages deep, that site will most likely not generate the right traffic. The layout must be lateral of your candle business.
The next factor when designing a retail candle business is the functionality. It is very common for retail store owners to build a quick website and sit back and wait for the orders to begin rolling in. Many business owners don’t realize that many products are inaccessible to the shopper and that is why they don’t sell. An online retail store will be most successful when you practice total quality assurance and test your site. Ensure there are no broken links and the pages are easy for the users to click through without getting lost. If you ever perform maintenance and cleanup on the computer holding the files of the website, go back and verify the site is still performing well. Many people perform cleanup by moving or deleting files they think they don’t need anymore. Moving a file will cause a link to be broken.
The appearance of your online candle store is very important. Always think about the audience of shoppers and who will be purchasing your candles. Are you targeting a senior citizen crowd or everyone? Use colors on the site that represent a professional business look that are catchy to the eye and pleasing. Some colors when stared at too long can be irritating and even cause a headache. A pleasant site will keep your shoppers interested in your business and help you create a professional image the customers trust.
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