Welcome to the Effective Ecommerce Podcast! and this podcast will be talking about how to design your online store this is a part two part one came out last week but specifically what makes this episode different is we’re gonna go down and we’re gonna talk about your about Us page your Contact Us page. the FAQ page category pages as well as some other tips on how to make your page in your website designed better and we’re gonna talk about product pages at the end here so number seven will be product pages you know what I’m gonna go with an eighth one which is home page I didn’t have it on my list of things to talk about but let’s talk about the home page as well so home page will be number nine so the design of your website is everything it’s so much it’s so important it’s your only connection to people online I mean unless you’re using social media which you probably should be in YouTube which you also probably should be your website is the face of your company let’s put it that way when people are ready to purchase they’re going to go to your website obviously that’s what ecommerce is all about so it’s important that all these different pages work together to help sell your product and it’s so easy to make a halfway-decent about Us page it’s so easy to make a halfway-decent Contact Us page I see so many people that are starting in e-commerce that just do not put in the effort to make a good about Us page and it really takes maybe an hour at most like it’s not that long and it can go a long way so let’s go down all these and let’s talk about some of the different pages on your website and how you can improve them so number one the about Us page I think the about Us page is very important especially for small businesses people aren’t just buying from you because they’re bored just because you’re the lowest price probably they’re buying from you because they want to feel something they’re buying from you because I want to feel good about where their money is going now that being said that’s not always the case obviously but no matter what when people purchase something what they’re hoping for is an emotion they’re hoping to feel better than before they had the product and you’re about us page is one more way to make them feel a little bit better we’ve all purchased stuff because it goes to a good cause or because we like a person that’s selling it we’ve all done this yet for a lot of people when they create their about Us page they just write a sentence or two so here’s some of my personal tips number one at a minimum you should have a picture of you the owner and a little description about why you created this website now if you as the owner don’t resonate with your niche demographic that’s fine go online and find a picture of someone that does I mean you know it’s probably not the most genuine thing to do but it’s better than not having a good about Us page the next step even better would be to have a YouTube video or just some any kind of video have a you a video on your about Us page talking about your brand talking about your company connecting with the audience so right now a lot of you guys are obviously listen to this podcast but some of the some of you guys are watching this as a YouTube video if you’re watching this as a YouTube video you probably feel more connected with me than if you were just reading these words and then you scroll down and saw that the author was Travis Marziani you probably feel a little bit more connection in a video and the truth the truth is that can be the same way in your e-commerce website so you want to try to connect with people and make it personal and explain why that you know what maybe you’re a dollar are too more expensive but you’re worth it because when they pay you they’re supporting a small business there’s this really amazing thing happening right now in especially the United States but I think it’s the world but let’s say the United States for sure where people want to support other small businesses they want to support entrepreneurs they want they love when someone’s trying to work hard and trying to make something out of their life they like supporting it and I know for myself if let’s say I was gonna buy a twenty five dollar item and one place was twenty five dollars but the other one was twenty seven dollars and I knew it was going to support a young entrepreneur or even an older entrepreneur I’m much more likely to give my money to that person so always consider that when you’re making your about Us page why is someone buying from you it’s because they want to buy from you it’s not because any other reason so try to convey a message on your about Us page one other thing I will add is you can create a feel for your company when people buy something they want to feel something and you want them to feel part of your tribe you want them to feel like they’re part of this group of people that are doing something amazing even if it’s you know even if your product isn’t something amazing so let me give some concrete examples so for B dance where my dance clothing company on our about Us page it’s all about how it’s handmade in the USA it’s higher quality it’s better so that when they buy that it’s not just some cheap junk that they bought in China it’s like yeah this is something you should be proud of the performance nut butter it’s a little bit more about you’re part of this community of people that want to make something better a lot out of their lives they want to perform better than mentally or physically when you’re buying this you’re taking a step into becoming a better human so a good job for buying this product as opposed to any of the other snacks that are out there any of the other nut butters that are out there sure the other nut butters out there might be almost as good but this one is amazing so that’s the about Us page I think I’ve talked enough about that let’s talk about the Contact Us page so the Contact Us page is pretty simple but this is a chance for you to add a little bit of flair to it first off give them a phone number if at all possible and an email address I think that’s really important even if the phone number just goes to a Google Voice and it just all the only option they have is to leave a voicemail it’s nice to be heard people like to be people like to have the option to call in fact I would even add that you should probably have a phone number and other places on your website like at the top in the header and all that kind of stuff once again even if it just goes to voicemail I think that’s better than nothing I know for me sometimes it’s just reassuring to see that a website has a phone number because I know if there’s an issue I can give them a call the contact us page chances are if someone’s looking at this they want to get ahold of you so this is your chance to say email us you know you can say to however you want you can say please email us if you have any questions that’s our preferred method but if you need to give us a call give us a call another thing on the contact us page you can do is link the FAQ page because if someone’s trying to contact you they probably have a question or a concern and your FAQ page is a chance to answer that for them so and you can even say that in your contact us page you can say hey we’re happy to answer any questions you have but chances are you have a question we’ve already answered on our FAQ page put a link and then you can add but if for any reason we did not answer it you can send us an email now try to make this as personalized as possible try to you know whatever use some lingo that your audience might know tell them that you really care about them whatever it is so the FAQ page this is your chance to not waste your time on emails FAQ page is important for a number of different reasons one in the last episode I talked about your goal is to make it so your customers don’t have to think well if they have a question they’ll probably go to your FAQ page and if you can answer it for them really quickly they might just say okay cool that was answered it’s time to buy but if they go to your FAQ page and they don’t have to answer they may not purchase from you they may go to a competitor’s website they may go somewhere else they may just decide it’s too much work or it’s too confusing so your FAQ page is a good chance to retain this customer to keep them so I would I would focus on personally your first few questions being the most common questions people have about purchasing save anything about returns anything like that until lower down you know at that point you want to make it easy for people to return items because that’s a good customer service that’s not your priority your priority is to make sales so think about this when someone goes to your FAQ page what is what is their most likely question before they purchase and answer those it’s fine to you know be cute and it’s fine to throw in some fun lingo in there in fact I encourage it but remember the point of the FAQ page is to make sales number for your category page so a category page I think in Shopify we’ll call it like collections pages whatever but to me a category page is very important it’s let me an example so on b dancer for instance a category might be dance shorts so we have three different types of dance short so we have a high waisted dance short of regular dance short in a booty short like a low-cut dance short now if people click on dance shorts from our menu they’re gonna be taken to this category page now the whole point of the category page is to get them to a product page and keep that in mind in fact the whole point of your entire website is to get people to a product page and then the point of the product page is to get people to check out the whole point of your website is to get people to check out category pages are an extreme example of this people that go for instance for me to a dance shorts category page they may not be sure do they want a high waist do they want a regular or do they want a low-cut your goal is to make it as easy as possible for them to make that decision so you might want to put the pictures of the item side-by-side you might want to organize it so that most the top-selling item is in the number one slot second top-selling is in the number two slot you really want to make it as easy and is user friendly for people to figure out what specific product they want so I’ll just leave it there category pages the entire point is to make it as easy as possible for people to get to the correct product point number five avoid product overload this is a huge huge mistake I see a lot of beginners make when it comes to building ecommerce websites is they want to have every single product in there they want to have products anything that they can think of because in their mind you might as well add in an extra product because people might want this or maybe they want this or maybe they want this other product the truth is you should be a specialist when people come to you people come to purchase from you you should have so for instance one store I looked at recently they sold artisan crafts which is a huge number of things I think it would be much more powerful if they were the number one web site for wicker baskets and like they knew everything about with wicker baskets they had artisan wicker baskets and it’s like if you want a wicker basket this is the place to go now eventually when the website grows and becomes super profitable yeah you can add in some little other items that people that buy wicker baskets might also want but if you just have every single different thing from all these different artisans that’s not very powerful that’s too many decisions people are gonna come in and look and that question is gonna be do I want a ceramic mug do I want to liqueur basket do I want this you know a picture frame and that’s too many decisions for them but if the decision is do I want wicker basket a or wicker basket B it makes it much easier this is why Apple does so well is they don’t have a ton of options the question is do you want the MacBook air or do you want the MacBook Pro and you think to yourself well I want Portability and I want lightweightness so I will go with the MacBook Air or I want a heavy computing power I go with the MacBook Pro now obviously Windows does very well but they do well for different reasons they’re actually hindered by the fact that there’s so many options out there it’s almost overload it’s like well what what PC do you want to buy uh I don’t know there’s so many options and your website’s probably like that so Apple is I believe the most profitable company of all time you might want to think about modeling them make the decision as easy as possible so number six tip for designing your website is ask people so many people want to do this all by themselves ask friends or even better yet ask your target audience so for B dancewear for instance when I was first starting I went to some dance studios I said hey here’s what my website looks like can you do a test can you try to buy a product okay thank you what do you think about it what’s the feel what do you like what do you not like all these different questions and you know what happened I got a lot of valuable insights I learned things I didn’t even think to ask I had learned for one of the things I learned is that a lot of dance studio owners don’t buy from websites they prefer to buy from catalogs so what did I do i created a catalog you’re gonna find out answers to questions you didn’t even know you have when you ask people you can you can ask family and friends at first ask your mom ask her grandma ask people to go through it and if they can’t figure it out it’s too complicated you need to figure out a way to make it easier you can also like I said go to your target audience and see what kind of insights they have it’s fine to pay people at first you can say hey I’ll give you five bucks do you mind looking around on my website I recommend maybe at first just having them poke around see and watch watch where they navigate watch how they navigate and then also give them an idea of what product to buy say hey what was the last dance clothing item you bought try to buy it on my website or you know or give them a specific item let’s say hypothetically you were interested in a pair of blue high-waisted Dan shorts how would you buy those and watch what they do because they might navigate in ways you didn’t think about and they might come across roadblocks you never thought about I know this is a lot we have two more left before we wrap up today number seven product pages so your product pages I could do a whole episode on product pages and maybe at some point in the future I will product pages are extremely important when in doubt look at Amazon look at how they do their product pages there’s are a little bit cluttered because they’re trying to upsell and do all this stuff but it’s good example look at your competitors product pages see what they do the Add to Cart button one of the most common mistakes I make add to cart’ button needs to be above the fold what I mean by this is people need to be able to see the Add to Cart button as soon as they come to your website if they have to scroll down especially on a desktop or a laptop if they have to scroll down to see the Add to Cart button that’s a problem there’s something psychologically that triggers very subliminally when we see Add to Cart when we see a website we see a product we see a description and we see that Add to Cart button all in the same place our mind just knows how to connect and finish that loop it knows click the Add to Cart button and so it’s in your head it’s blinking it’s saying AB Cart Add to Cart Add to Cart but when people have to scroll down not everybody Scrolls down on your website so it’s making it a little bit more complicated another thing is unique and good descriptions you need to have a something special I see so many people that list especially with drop shipping stores and this kills me the descriptions are just boring spend a little bit of time making a good description it’s gonna add SEO value it’s gonna make people laugh it’s gonna make people connect with you it’s gonna make people want to purchase from you if you just put the same description as everyone else does same boring old thing that’s no good you want people to know what it’s gonna feel like to own your product and you want them to feel good when they own it so for instance for the dance clothing company I go into detail and talk about this is this product would be right for this kind of a dance this product would be is gonna you know whatever it feels this way blah blah blah all that kind of fun stuff another thing is your product photos are so important don’t skimp on good product photos I think if you’re gonna have to spend money on one place on your website good product photos are where it’s at I can tell right away if a website is relatively new or if it’s owned by someone that’s experienced based on the product photos so get professional product photos done or spend a few hours and really try to figure out how to get good product photos done you also want a big Add to Cart button and a color that makes them pop so if the general color of your website is green you’re gonna want a red Add to Cart button if the general website of your general color of your website is blue and orange Add to Cart button so that’s contrasting you can look at a color wheel and look at one side of it let’s say whatever size let’s say on one side there’s green which is the main color your website look across from it like straight down and you’ll see red so that would be the color of your Add to Cart button so that’s just something to think about there’s probably a lot more definitely include reviews you’re gonna want to clewd as many reviews as you can to be honest if you have to fake them at first that’s okay it’s better to have some fake reviews than no reviews especially in the beginning and it’s not the you know the most moral of things to do but the truth is you’re reviewing the product and if you really believe in it leave five stars for your own product your family and friends probably would do the same thing so feel free to do that so last thing I’m gonna talk about here and this was last minute add-on because it is really important I don’t know I didn’t think about this before is your homepage your homepage is probably gonna be the most popular page on your website and just like your category page the whole point of the homepage is to get people to your product page where they can actually purchase sure you can advertise any kind of discounts you can advertise anything else you want but at the end of the day this is the most valuable real estate on your website because it’s the most popular place on your website probably for most people so what you’re gonna do is try to push people it’s a sales page it’s another tool another sales page to get people to the product page so that was a lot so I have a checklist you go to effect be commerce calm slash success pact or just go to effectiveecommerce.com you’ll find the success pack there I have a checklist on all this stuff and everything you need to note on how to start an online store % recommend getting on getting that checklist it also comes with  ideas on how to market your website a guidebook on how to hire a virtual assistant every time I come out with something cool a cool checklist something interesting I put it in the e-commerce success pack what you can get for free by going to effective e-commerce calm on top of that go to iTunes if you leave a five-star review on iTunes I will enter you into a chance to win a free one-on-one consulting session a new winner is picked every month so if you are interested go to iTunes leave that -star review and I will thank you in advance because it’s huge when I get a -star review it means so much to me it makes me feel good it makes me feel like what I’m doing is actually helping people out so if this has helped you at all please go leave that five star review because you’ll be entered in a chance to win a free consulting session plus you’re gonna help me out in the podcast out and the more -star reviews I have the higher quality of guests I can get on and if you want me to get some good guests on gotta go leave that review I’m gonna go ahead and end it there I have new episodes every Monday and Thursday so I look forward to seeing you hearing you I guess you would be hearing me in the next episode next week so thank you so much for listening to this episode and I can’t wait to talk to you again soon

• In this video I am going to show you how to design your online store

• Hi I am Travis with Effective ecommerce and designing your online ecommerce store is an important and often overlooked part of the starting your online store.  I am going to give you 7 steps to help you design your store.  Step number 5 is scientifically speaking the most important element to success, so stay tuned for that.

1. Don’t Make Me Think
   1. Book also general principle
   2. Describe
2. Go to your competitor’s site and see what colors and feel they use
   1. Bigger Budget
3. Go to websites your demographic is likely to go to
   1. Bigger Budget
   2. Victoria secret
   3. Macys
4. Make it personal Not big Box
   1. People want to buy from other people
   2. Make it strike a cord
5. Just Get something up and iterate
   1. Even if you just blatantly copy a design from a competitor or similar website
   2. Success factor
6. Outource it – 99 Designs/Upwork
   1. If you still Have issues outsource it
7. Increase conversions don’t look pretty
   1. Make sure you have you prioritize your goals

Designing your first eCommerce store website can be a daunting challenge, but with these 7 steps you will be creating a profitable website in no time.

1. About Us Page
   1. Make sure its personal
   2. Add an image or even better a video
2. Contact Us
3. FAQ Page
4. Category Pages
5. Avoid product overload
6. Ask People
   1. Ask friends or even better your target audience
   2. Tell my story
7. Product Pages
   1. Add to cart button above the fold
   2. Unique and good descriptions
   3. Big add to cart buttons in a color that makes them pop
   4. home