Website design is only part of the process of ecommerce and if the other parts of the commercial equation doesn’t work, then neither will your sales effort.

The website design is crucially important to ecommerce operations, but it is just one element of the equation which makes a successful formula.

The other elements have to be in place as well, coming together to create a successful platform that will generate interest and sales.

First and foremost is strong onsite SEO which works hand in hand with the website design. And this means getting the metadata right, working together with the content, plus an effective keyword strategy.

Then you can move onto thinking about the offsite SEO strategy and how the outside world sees the website.

But all too often it is the website design which gets blamed for a poor performance whereas in reality, it’s more often the other elements not working properly that should get the critical attention.

If you think of the website as the shop window, it can only be used to sell so much product, or services, so don’t rely on it to be the sole revenue prop.

A lot of people new to ecommerce make the mistake in thinking that once the pretty website design and structure is complete, then it’s just a question of sitting back and raking in the money. It’s almost as though they think that everyone out there, through some form of osmosis, will suddenly realise that a new website has been designed and is worthy of attention.

It couldn’t be further from the truth.