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5 Common E-Commerce Site
Mistakes
So
you're planning to sell your products on the Web this year? That means your
e-commerce site could potentially make you or break you this holiday season.
It's not enough that your graphics are sharp, your content is fun and easy to
read and your online catalog is pretty darn spiffy. Your overall site design and
infrastructure count, too. How fast do your pages load? How navigable is your
site? What about server capacity and browser compatibility?
Brent Melson is a senior technical adviser for
National Software Testing Labs (NSTL), a
Philadelphia-area company, who makes his living testing Web sites and related
Internet technologies. Here are his five most-common e-commerce site boo-boos.
1.
Too many dynamic pages
that take valuable seconds to load. "Dynamic" pages are those with changing content
processed in real time from application servers and other Web servers. Dynamic
content often encompasses links to databases that aren't part of the Web site —
for updates in news headlines, stock quotes and sports scores — or ad blocks in
which advertiser messages revolve through each time a new user hits the site.
For the most part, dynamic
content is trendy, popular and valued by most Web users. But too much of it on
pages, or spread over too many pages, can slow your site down, unless you have
some of the more sophisticated Web software used by larger Internet and
e-commerce sites. Pages that take several seconds to load generally send users
to other sites.
Melson argues that smaller
e-commerce sites should confine their dynamic content to a certain number of
pages, and make many or most of their Web pages "static," or without
continuously changing content. And they should limit dynamic content to windows
or certain portions of mostly static pages.
It is particularly
important, he says, to keep your home page and many of your intro pages as
static as possible. The deeper a user gets into your site, the more likely he or
she is to tolerate pages taking longer to load (though some would even dispute
this).
"It is really a design
issue," he says. "It is easier for many businesses to make their Web pages
dynamic. Most sites need dynamic pages. But there are performance issues
with them. That's what Web operators need to keep in mind."
2.
Overestimating concurrent
traffic — and spending too much as a result.
Most tech writers like me tell you plan your site
for peak traffic periods, especially those that occur in the last-minute buying
frenzy before the holidays. (Let's hope there is one this year.)
Melson, however, says the
term "concurrent" is frequently misunderstood by Web operators. It doesn't mean
number of customers overall, or even site traffic in a day, but rather the
number of users converging on a site simultaneously. Too often, he says, Web
operators pay thousands of dollars more for server space and related software
because they have been too generous in their estimates on concurrent traffic.
"If you aim high and have
an unlimited hardware budget, it's not going to be a big deal. But if you don't
have an unlimited budget, my advice is to think realistically about the number
of people you will have using the site at any one time."
Alexis Gutzman, an e-business author and consultant,
cautions that spikes do occur for many e-tailers around Dec. 12 or so (one of
the last days you can ship packages long distances to arrive before Dec. 25).
"In my experience, many people don't overestimate. They fail to plan for the
peak," she says.
3.
No consideration of
resolving performance issues with software rather than buying new hardware.
When performance bottlenecks occur, many Web operators quickly conclude it's a
hardware problem — and rush to buy a new server or two to add more capacity.
That's often a mistake, Melson says.
"In our experience, about
70% of the time it's a software issue and 30% of the time it's a hardware
problem. But instead of thinking about how they can fix or redesign their
software, they throw more hardware at it."
It may be a case of simply
rewriting the software or adding new application software, he says. Perhaps they
need to buy more memory for their database server, rather than buying a new
server. Often the software solution is cheaper and quicker to fix, he says
(although hardware currently is as cheap as it has been in some time).
The difficulty here,
Melson acknowledges, is that small businesses don't have information technology
(IT) staffs or the time and money to diagnose infrastructure problems and/or
rewrite software. Most businesses should have an IT consultant or trusted
value-added reseller (VAR) to advise them, however.
4.
Not making the site
compatible with more than one Web browser.
If you had to choose one browser to support, it
would be Microsoft Internet Explorer, the dominant browser with more than 80% of
the market.
"But what about the Apple
Macintosh customer — do you want to turn him away?" Melson asks. "How about the
Netscape user?"
If not, you need to test
your site and system with the other browsers. Some tweaking of the user
interface is likely to ensure tables, charts, graphics and functionality work
well on the different browsers.
"Often these are very
simple or minor fixes. You might need to only change some colors, or add new
elements. If you don't ever look at your site on other Web browsers, you won't
ever know that you need to fix it," he says.
Supporting more than a
single browser is more important for an online retailer than a B2B company,
Melson says, because a retailer's customers are more random. But if you don't
feel it is important, he says, you should put a disclaimer on your site noting
that it supports — or works best with — only one particular browser.
5.
Failure to get outside
feedback on usability.
"Usability" is now more than a buzzword. It has
emerged as a significant metric for how Web sites are viewed today. Usability
surveys, usability tests, usability scores and usability focus groups are all
part of the research and development of most large Web sites.
Melson's finding is that
many smaller e-commerce operators don't get usability feedback from anyone
beyond those on their development team. But those developers and others are too
close to the process and biased toward the chosen design and infrastructure.
"You get used to your site and used to any foibles."
For small businesses,
organizing a focus group to evaluate your Web site is beyond your time and
resources. But getting some sort of outside perspective — be it employees not
involved in the design, or your spouses or friends — is crucial to the site's
development and performance. "You need to hear from people who aren't working on
it."
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