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Even in the planning stages of an e-commerce project, it is important to
understand how the website will be maintained on a day-to-day basis. There are
also various marketing and security issues that need to be taken into account.
Site maintenance
Changes in product details, product ranges, special offers, up-to-date
advertisements and sales information will all need to be maintained throughout
the life of the site. In addition, you should consider redesigning the site on a
periodic basis in order to improve the features offered to customers and keep the
site looking fresh.
Customer feedback
It is important that the site evolves to meet the needs of your customers. There
are a number of actions you can take to encourage customer feedback, including
carrying out surveys and putting feedback forms on the site.
Marketing
No matter how well designed your e-commerce site is and how competitive your
products and prices are, if the customers are unaware of its existence then you
will fail to exploit its potential.
Popular methods of promoting a website include:
Email advertising campaigns.
Web adverts - including sponsored links where you 'pay per click', banner
adverts and reciprocal links.
Digital coupons offering discounts.
Online directories.
Use the web tools provided by the search engines to help you optimise your
search engine performance and improve your website's ranking. Many of the
main search engines - such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN - provide tips, advice
and tools to help you improve your website's searchability. Access the Google
Webmaster tools on the Google website
Don't forget to take full advantage of search engines by ensuring that they pick
up all of the key terms that you think your customers will use to find your site.
Each product will have its own key words and descriptions. Your website designer
can help you include the key phrases and metadata (information that describes a
webpage, but isn't visible on the pages) when designing and building your
website.
The majority of search engines place little value on the 'meta' keywords - ensure
that the keyword phrases you chose appear in your webpage title and the page
body text. This will improve organic search engine listings.
Security considerations
Using the internet for business purposes is fraught with risks to security. Hackers
can attack systems at any time. Whatever your business, there's a real risk that
your system may become the target of an attack that could affect your
organisation.
You should recognise the need for effective security controls to prevent your site
from falling victim to hackers or fraudsters.
Contingency planning
The more successful your e-commerce service becomes, the more reliant you will
become upon it. You should consider what risks and threats your e-commerce
site might be open to and have contingency plans to ensure that you can
continue trading should anything go wrong.
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