Starting an Online Business All-in-One For Dummies®, 3rd Edition

Organizing a Buyer-Friendly Site

For a regular business, being friendly to buyers means saying “Hello” when they walk through the door, shaking their hands, and smiling at them. For an online business, friendly means creating a buyer-friendly site that makes sense to buyers and makes their lives easier. After all, they're coming to you partially because they don't want to get in their cars, fight traffic, battle for parking spots at the mall, and navigate their way through the sea of humanity just to get a new pair of jeans.

When buyers come to your Web site, provide them with a few basic pieces of information right off the bat, or else they will click their way to the next business. Go to your home page, and make sure that it answers these basic questions:

• What is your business?
• What's the primary focus of your business?
• What does your business offer consumers?
• What makes your business good enough to earn a customer's trust and, therefore, an order?
• How would a customer start shopping on your site?

If your opening page can't answer these questions, your Web site isn't buyer friendly. You want to be straightforward and direct with your buyers because, in essence, your business reason for existence is to help a customer with a specific need. In this section, we talk about what you can do to spiff up your Web site to offer customers a satisfying shopping experience.

Streamlining the shopping process

In department stores, the men's section is usually near the door so that guys can ...