To gain a favorable outcome with your e-commerce website, use common-sense business practices.

(1) Conduct your business with ethical intentions. Nothing beats building a base of customers who come back time and again, and who provide referrals. Establish a stellar reputation. Don’t be tempted to exaggerate your services, in order to make a sale. While that may get you a few sales, it will be detrimental to your reputation. a) Be sure you describe your products or services accurately. b) Promised shipping dates should be met without fail.

(2) Make the page intuitive (simple to navigate) and keep to a minimum number of clicks needed to perform a transaction.

(3) Payments should be able to be completed successfully online. Accepting a credit / debit card or possibly Paypal. Let your shopping cart system calculate shipping costs, so that the transaction can be finalized quickly in one sitting.

(4) Make sure (and let people know) that your payment functions are always secure.

(5) Give enough information on the products. Avoid, if possible, a typical user needing to “click for additional details” by providing sufficient information on the product landing page.

(6) Ensure top quality for your product images – grainy, distorted images can make people wonder in the back of their mind if your products/ services are any good. If download times of high quality images are prohibitive, provide thumbnails or split the products into smaller pages.

(7) Make your site easy to understand by search-engines. Hire an expert if help is needed to accomplish this.

(8) Do not share users’ email addresses if you promised that you would not. If you promise users not to put them on a mailing list, then do not start emailing them! (See rule no. 1)

(9) You do not want a reputation of spamming. Use only an opt-in opt-out (or double-opt-in opt-out…) email lists and immediately accommodate users who want out.