In Web Designing, have you ever wondered what makes Google a very successful web site? It’s not just its search engine, actually that came second. Wanna know the secret? It’s the design.

It’s simple, effective and direct to the point. Just look at how Google looks like and compare it with Yahoo or MSN. They have too much images, design and has a heavy background while Google only has its logo and the almighty search bar! Even now that Google has a very big company and a lot of other improvements… they DID NOT change the whole idea/theme of their site. What’s the only that’s new on Google?? Well, it’s just a minimal image, blue link texts at the top where it won’t bother your vision, good sized fonts and the same BIG WHITE SPACE AND THE ALMIGHTY GOOGLE SEARCH BAR!

Imagine that you’re a user visiting Google first time, what is your first impression? That’s right, it’s some kind search site… exposing the big search bar up front, it would make you want to try it and by then you would realize that it’s a very good search engine!

Now if you want your website to attract a lot of visitors, you have to work on your web design. It’s the first step of any profitable business or anything on the net. Make beautiful and most importantly a useful web design. Content comes second then SEO then back to web design if you want your visitors to stay. It’s a cycle and it’s pretty important to learn.

Here are some of the tips that would help you make a simple and useful web design.

Make it simple
I’m being redundant but its true, if you want people to stay on your website or make them “like” your web site then make your web design simple. Minimize the use of images, if you should, make it useful and have a purpose.

Use white space
One way to make a simple and comfortable to read web site is using white space. White space means spaces on your web elements. Don’t let them stick too close together, let your web design breathe. Don’t cram your contents in one look and don’t worry about making your web design too long way down… that’s what scroll bars are for!

Fast Loading Time
How? Make use of vector images and optimize your CSS. Use color codes and avoid making a big graphic background.

An ecommerce website can only be effective if the web designer has taken important elements into consideration. Usually, these elements are not all for making the website look pleasant. Rather, these elements make sure that the website can effectively deliver what a website should deliver, and that is to make sure that the website compliments the needs and wants of the users. These elements include, but not limited to content, usability, product display, upload and checkout time, item search. Here is a more detailed discussion of these web design tips.

Make sure that all the elements that you place in your website are aimed to achieve specific purposes. That is, all of the things you include in your website design is useful and not just add to the clutter in your website. And, in order for these things to be of effectively utilized, users should be able to easily navigate their way in your site. To help you achieve both, having a good shopping cart is a good start.

How you display your product in your website greatly affects people’s choice. That is why it is important for your products to become the center of people’s attention when they visit your site. Distribute them properly in the page and always put all the necessary information that customer would need, such as prices, detailed description and specification and, if applicable, promos that you offer for a certain product.

Do no make customers wait. Make sure that once they try to access your site, everything loads fast. That is why heavy images and media are not so advisable in making a site because it would make the loading slow. If your site loads slowly, this will surely irritate supposed-to-be customers because they would have to wait. Irritating them would mean that they would just abandon your site and look for other online stores that load much faster.

Always update whatever content you place in your website. This will give customers more reasons why they should visit your site. Stale or old content will just disappoint customers. That is why always make sure that you have something new to offer in your site.

When customers are already in your web site, make sure that your ecommerce web design makes it easy for customers to look for what they are searching. Also, you should give options to make the searching process become more refined.

Make the checkout process easy for customers. Do not make it complicated for them because it might be the reason why they will just abandon the purchasing process. According to research, about thirty percent of customers who abandon their shopping carts do so during the checkout time.

In choosing what kind of shopping cart you intend to use, you need to know first what kind of shopping cart is ideal for your business. Although there are many ways to categorize shopping cart solutions, especially if you do so using features, there are two important types of shopping carts that you should know before you actually start your selection process.

There two types of shopping cart solution. One group is called as distributed shopping carts and the other is hosted shopping carts.

Distributed shopping cart templates are a favorite among people who knows much about the technical aspect of shopping cart solutions. These are the web programmers, web designers and web developers. The reason behind this choice is because distributed templates come with their source codes. Thus, for people who have wide knowledge on coding, they can modify the shopping cart template with whatever features they want to add, change or remove. It is not surprising anymore if some people’s options when choosing distributed shopping cart software is also affected by the range of programming language they know and the kind of programming language is used in the shopping cart’s code. Aside from having the capacity to be modified, these kinds of templates are sold with a one-time free intended for a lifetime license. It can be installed in servers that are compatible with the software and can then be handled through the administration panel.

The other kind of shopping cart is the hosted type. This one is preferred mostly by people who have little knowledge on the technical aspect of shopping cart solutions. This is because it is much easier to use. It makes use of interface in the administrator’s area in order to control the adding, removing and editing of product catalog properties, the bandwidth use every month, the features used, among others. Modifications are very limited since alteration of the source code is also limited. Thus, if you are looking for variation then you should not choose this type of solution. Unlike the previous type, payment is based on monthly or annual basis and renewable if there are no problems in the course of use. The manufacturer provides a hosting platform from which the cart can be activated without the client having to do anything.

Depending on your need and reach in terms of finances and technical knowledge, you have a choice. Whether you go for distributed or hosted, it depends on which proves to be more advantageous to the kind of ecommerce business you own.

Anybody who is doing online business or owns an online store knows the important role that one’s shopping cart solution plays. It is the key factor that makes one’s business especially in terms of making online purchasing easy for the customer’s end. With a lot f shopping cart templates to choose one, each with its one advantages and disadvantages, an online merchant needs to know what kind of shopping cart is ideal for his or her own ecommerce business.

Here are the top qualities of a shopping cart that you can use to check its compatibility with you as a merchant and your business.

The question of maintenance

Are you going to hire somebody to help you maintain your site or are you going to maintain it yourself? How good are your technical skills in terms of website maintenance? How easy is it to maintain the shopping cart software you intend to use? These are but some of the things that you need to ask yourself before you make your choice. Maintenance is a very critical issue in choosing a shopping cart especially if you are planning to expand. One thing about the solution that you choose is that it should allow you to work your way when the thought of expanding your internet marketing comes in.

The question of features

It should not be just any other features. Make sure that the features you check are the features that are of top priority for your business. This means that the shopping cart template you choose should have all the features you need. Be grateful for the extras the come with it but do not be misled. Make sure that your choice does lean on the shopping cart that has very impressive features, instead it should lean on the one that is complete with the features that your online store needs.

The question of support

What do you feel when during crucial times, when you need help the most, nobody is there for you? Well, you would be feeling the same when your shopping cart is going haywire and the technical support or the customer service of your template’s manufacturer or producer is not really responding fast enough or is not responding at all. Check among other users of the shopping cart solution how efficient their support system is in case something wrong happens. The more time you waste waiting for help, the more customer you lose.

Definitely, in ecommerce business, you have to know how to make use of all your tools to achieve one common goal, and that is to be successful. One way of doing this is to make sure that your shopping cart compliments the search engine optimization strategy that you have, or any SEO strategy for that matter. To know how you can use a shopping cart template that compliments your web page well, here are some tips that you could use.

1. Check your budget and see what top-of-the-line shopping cart software you can afford. Web site designs lure people to check your website out, however it would not be checked out unless people find it among the other websites there are in the net. That is why it is not so practical to invest too much on the web site design. Investing on your SEO shopping cart software is a much better and much sounder strategy to start with since it can improve your site’s visibility, and in doing so, can make a lot of people visit your site. To name a few of the thing that you should find in your shopping cart software, it should include an efficient technical back-up, easy to follow on step checkout, H1 Headings, backlinks and breadcrumbs.
2. Get the shopping cart template that gives the best offer. That is, you should make sure that the shopping cart software you choose is the one that gives you a lot of benefits in a cost that is reasonable and is within your range. One way to do so is to rent or buy shopping cart software that has a good track record in terms of newsletter creation, coupon and customer incentive generation and affiliate link building.
3. Get a hold of traffic static for sites that make use of the shopping cart solution you are choosing from. The trick is to find a shopping cart that is build for SEO and not a shopping cart template that is built to be compatible with SEO. The difference is very big. Compatible shopping cart only has add-on features that really do not do much on improving your site’s statistic. On the other hand, a shopping cart software built for search engine optiization is designed to for search engine optimization purposes, thus part of its main aim is to improve your site’s standing in the world of online business.
4. Know where your business is headed and know how the future of ecommerce solution would best compliment it. Also, make sure that the shopping cart solution you choose can also transform along with the future advancements that SEO and shopping cart solutions might pose in the future. Flexibility and being able to adapt are two things that are very crucial in business, particularly with ecommerce business where everything seems to be evolving at a very fast pace.