Must haves for an E-commerce system?

[creospace]

I'm interested to know what retailers would consider the essentials of an e-commerce website and administration system.

So what do you consider to be the 'must haves' and what are the 'nice to haves'?

For instance:
Must be able to offer sale/discount prices
Must be able to show 3 different pictures per product

etc etc

many thanks in advance of your input.

[green mum]

I think postage options are important i.e able to give discounted postage for weights/values of products. Being able to offer discount vouchers and also gift certificates. Ability to sign up for newsletter, order confirmation emails... probably loads more but they're the ones that spring to mind

[SillyJokes]

You need to be able to show live stock data online and this needs to be linked into your back office sytems so that handling large numbers of orders is easy.

V. easy checkout system.

Strong customer enquiry handling software.

[dotwhack]

you need to be able to change everything yourself without having to hire external companies to change things i.e. postage, images, new text, new navigational buttons, new news stories, blog entires etc

Complete control :)

[creospace]

"new navigational buttons"

Is that an essential or a nice to have?

[dotwhack]

anything I need I class as essential!

I'm currently waiting for my developer to revamp my site - part of what I want is new navigational buttons - if I'd have had the functionality built in for 'total control' from the start it would have been good.

Problem is that my developer is really good so he's always really busy...

[creospace]

I would of said 'total control' was impossible as an average user (and dangerous almost) - a nice dream maybe but at least now I know here you're coming from

[Joanne_UK]

I was looking at different off the shelves e -commerce a few weeks ago and the most complete one that I found was 3D cart (http://www.3dcart.com/features.htm) , I almost registered with them (did the free trial , it is also really user friendly and nice looking admin section). On top of the features they have I would like:

- possibility to setup different currencies and languages
- more choice of integrated payment
- possibility to have more than one website all linked (or not) to the same database (for the products)

I did not choose them, I went with zencart because as a software developer, I wanted more control and I can with zencart.

[Phil_@_MPP]

I have always found the eWallet capabilities of particular interest to our clients. This means customers only have to input CC details once and from then on they can do one-click purchasing. We are FSA-certified to provide this service.

Always a handy time-saver!

P.

[Tin]

From an SEO perspective full ability to uniquely customise core areas and elements on the page such as...

1. URLs
2. Page Titles
3. Meta Descriptions
4. Keyword tag
5. Header1 (down to Header6 if required)
6. Alt text on Logo and landing page (not solely homepage but flexible to any internal page as preferred)
7. Control on Alt tags on all images (other than Logo)
8. Control over all content text

This means no automatic population across things like the Navigation items being used as the wording for the Header1 and the wording in the URLs.

In short, no auto-injection.

Ray

[creospace]

In short, no auto-injection.

Probably what is required is the choice, for many this level of usability is all a bit too much and so they can have the choice of letting it do done automatically or by themselves.

That would keep everyone happy :)

Thanks for everyone's input, keep it coming if you have any more thoughts.

[Tin]

Probably what is required is the choice, for many this level of usability is all a bit too much

Yes, that sounds reasonable.

I guess the folk who would benefit the most from auto-injection would be those that don't have any knowledge about where or how to be creative and effective with such usability and it's clearly vital for this to happen to help generate decent rankings. But this in itself generates it's own problem as the sites' rankings are likely to be dictated largely by the knowledge and seo expertise the designer has, so not the best solution.

I think the perfect solution would be to educate each end user on how best to use such features to their maximum yet at a level commensurate with that users skill set.

But this isn't a perfect world.:)

Ray

[Uncle Buck]

you need to be able to change everything yourself without having to hire external companies to change things i.e. postage, images, new text, new navigational buttons, new news stories, blog entires etc

Complete control :)

Very true, a good content management system can make or break a site.

Good navigation is the next one. Content and making sure your back-end processes are up to scratch as a website can also highlight any problems in your supply chain.