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Demystifying Ecommerce Website Design

posted by ZEMON // March 30, 2009 // Build Your Website

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Commerce is commerce, whether done online or in person – you have products, your customer has money, and the two of you swap. Selling online is just like selling in a bricks and mortar store, except you do not need to dust the shelves, wash the windows, dress professionally, or even shave. You may not deliver any sort of product which you can hold in your hand, and you may not even be awake when you make your largest sale.

Regardless of what you are selling, there are three essential functions which you must fulfill in order for your customer and you to walk away from the transaction with smiles on your faces:

1. A catalog or “store front” which displays your wares – your website.

2. A mechanism which helps the customer conveniently and securely tell you what he wants to buy, where he wants it delivered, and how he wants to pay for it – your e-commerce software.

3. A mechanism to move the money from the customer to you – your payment processing gateway.

That should look pretty familiar and straightforward; an in-person sale works the same way. E-commerce only seems harder because of the TLAs (three letter acronyms) and buzzwords.

Your Website/Your Storefront

Consider the Lead Balloon Aviation store (www.LeadBalloonAviation.com), which sells everything from the laciest fabric with which to construct your very own lead balloon, to the leather jackets that every jaunty pilot must wear, to special lead polish to keep your balloon looking its best, to pilot training services. The storefront – the website – has sections which display all of the products and services. Similar to a bricks and mortar store, the website lets the shopper examine the products by looking at pictures and reading descriptions. It may offer the customer the chance to compare two similar products side by side.

Just as the physical store enhances the shopping experience through its layout, so too does the website. Similar products are collected together, e.g., the leather jackets are next to the silk scarves and the aviator sunglasses, and there may even be signs that suggest – “If you buy a balloon, you might want to consider getting a gondola too.”

In addition to the public-facing parts of the store, there is a back room. Here the merchant can add products to his store, rearrange how the products are displayed, update prices, and perhaps manage inventory.

E-commerce Software

As the customer wanders the virtual aisles of Lead Balloon Aviation, he picks up the products that he wants and collects them in his “shopping cart,” the first of several functions of the e-commerce software. In addition to remembering how many of each product, the shopping cart keeps track of options (size, color, monogramming, etc.), gift wrapping choices, billing address, shipping address, and the customer's contact information.

The e-commerce software usually knows what is in stock and what cannot be ordered. If pink leather helmets are not available in size small, then the e-commerce software will either not let you order them or may inform you that your order will be held until further stock is received. The software will manage special pricing: woven high-altitude lead ballooning socks are 15% off if you buy 12 pair or more. To encourage pilot wannabes to shop 'til they drop, the shopping cart program may even offer special deals: Instead of the sea-level-to-5000-foot altimeter, go for the gold, and consider the 100,000-foot altimeter for just $300 more.

Payment Processing Gateway

Next to spending the money, getting paid is my favorite part of being in business. The payment processing gateway takes the buyer's information (his name, address, and credit card data) and figures out whether he has enough money to pay for all of the stuff he wants. If he does, then the gateway tells the ecommerce software that the sale is OK and tells the credit card company to pay the merchant.

This is all, of course, a gross simplification, but it illustrates the basic concepts: e-commerce is pretty much the same as real-world commerce.