1. Show products on your homepage. 
In real life, people rarely walk into a store with an empty shop window. The same is true on the Internet. Not showing any products on your homepage, like shoe store Brantano does, is not a good idea. You have to show visitors what you've got to offer if you want them to buy anything. Put real products on the homepage and include a nice small image, the price and a short description. Some sites put products on the homepage but instead of putting them in a highly visible spot, they hide them underneath the page fold so visitors have to scroll to see them. Because new visitors or people who've stumbled across a site by accident rarely scroll on a homepage, they are lost as potential customers. Make sure visitors see what you've got to offer the instant your homepage appears on the screen.

2. Make navigation easy to understand.
A minority of online shoppers know exactly what they want to buy on your site. Most visitors don't have a specific product in mind, they're just browsing and checking to see what you've got to offer them. Don't confuse these visitors with exotic product names or meaningless marketing in your navigation but use clearly defined words that tell people where to go to find what they're looking for. Mobile operator Mobistar doesn't follow this rule and offers people looking for a subscription the choice between products with names like Tempo, Optimum and Flexi. Obviously, most people don't have a clue what those names stand for, which doesn't make it very easy to find the type of subscription they're looking for.

3. Show the price tag. 
Always tell people how much something costs. People want to know what they have to pay before they go to the check-out. Every time you show a product, show the price as well. If there are any extra costs involved for the customer like shipping or taxes, clearly mention this beforehand. A lot of potential buyers opt out when they find out on the check-out pages that there are extra costs involved besides the actual product price.

4. Make it easy to find a dealer or shop. 
Although the number of online shoppers continues to grow, there are still a lot of people who like to choose online but prefer to buy offline. If you want to accommodate these customers, a good dealer or shop locator is of vital importance. Make sure it's easy to find and available on every page of the site. Always offer users at least one result, even if you don't have a point of sales in their exact location of choice.

5. Offer various methods of payment. 
Nobody thinks twice about handing over their credit card to pay a restaurant bill. Online though, most people are less eager to type in their credit card details. A lot of companies still prefer to send their order by fax or mail. If you don't want to loose these people as potential customers, offer them the possibility to pay by bank transfer, preferably after they've received their order. Providing that kind of service implies you are a trustworthy company and that image alone will generate a lot of new customers.

Our latest publication "200 usability tips for corporate and commercial sites" offers you lots more practical tips, illustrated by over 250 screenshots. For only 95 euro (that's less than 50 eurocent per tip!) you can order the tips on http://www.agconsult.be/en/publications/orderform.asp.

Els Aerts & Karl Gilis