When it comes to doing business, one of the most important objectives is complete customer satisfaction. Applying that formula to a Web business is a whole new ball game. The parameters for an online shop should be defined keeping in mind, that unlike in a brick-and-mortar shop, there is no face-to-face interaction between the company and the customer. All you have are a few moments of a prospective customer’s time. During those moments, your site should be able to grab the customer’s attention and he should come back again.

Here are a few things you should keep in mind when building an online store.

Easy navigation and good site architecture
A clean and tidy interface is very important. The first page of the site should clearly be able to convey what you’re selling online. It should list all the product categories that you’re selling, so a customer doesn’t have to waste time hunting around.

Organization of the site is another important factor. Its architecture should be easily navigable. There shouldn’t be any broken links, nor should there be any inactive ones. If you’re planning to introduce a new product category, it should be explained clearly on the site, instead of listing it with the already-existing list of active ones. We saw some sites that listed the inactive links along with the active ones. A newbie may not be able to understand this and might consider it as a flaw on the site.

Appropriate metatags
Metatags are used to provide information about a particular Web page, like who created the page, how often it’s updated, which keywords represent the page’s content, etc. It’s the latter that’s very important for a page, because search engines pick up this information to build their indices. If a site doesn’t have proper metatags, then it won’t show up in a search generated by a search engine. Needless to say, your online shop will be at an advantage if a customer finds it after running a search in a search engine. For example, if your site sells toothpaste online, then the customer searching for a site that sells it should be able to find your site through a search engine.

Registration
At several sites that we checked out, we noticed that you had to register with them if you wanted to buy anything. A prospective customer may not be willing to submit personal information on your site. Or, he may not have the time to go through the various fields in your registration form. Therefore, registration with the site could be made optional. A customer should be able to place an order from your Website without registering. You could give added benefits to registered users, like special discounts or free gifts, which would entice users to come to your site.

Search
As bandwidth is still an issue on the Internet, Web surfers don’t want to go through multiple locations to reach the desired location. It’s very time-consuming too. So, imagine a customer having to go down several levels to reach a product you’re selling online. This is where a search engine is really needed. A search engine should make it convenient for a customer to find an item on your site at one shot. It should do the job of attendants in a supermarket, who help you find what you’re looking for. The implementation depends upon what you’re selling online. A customer should be able to search by product type, budget or product description. For example, if you’re selling gifts online, then your search engine should be able to give results to a customer based on category and price range. Similarly, on a music site, the search engine should let a customer find an album based on title, singer/band name, music company, etc. The idea is to have enough variables to search with.