5 common e-commerce site mistakes
Monte Enbysk is a lead editor for the Microsoft.com network and writes
occasionally about technology for small businesses.
By Monte Enbysk
Your overall site design and infrastructure count, too.
How fast do your pages load? How navigable is your site? What about server capacity and browser compatibility?
Brent Melson is a senior technical designer for NTSL (National Software Testing Labs), a Philadelphia-area company, who makes his living testing Web site architectures and related Internet technologies. Here are his five most-common e-commerce site boo-boos.
1. Too many dynamic pages that take valuable seconds to
load."Dynamic" pages are those with changing content processed in real time
from application servers and other Web servers. Dynamic content often
encompasses links to databases that aren't part of the Web site — for updates in
news headlines, stock quotes and sports scores — or ad blocks in which
advertiser messages revolve through each time a new user hits the site. For the
most part, dynamic content is trendy, popular and valued by most Web users. But
too much of it on pages, or spread over too many pages, can slow your site down,
unless you have some of the more sophisticated Web software used by larger
Internet and e-commerce sites. Pages that take several seconds to load generally
send users to other sites. Melson argues that smaller e-commerce sites should
confine their dynamic content to a certain number of pages, and make many or
most of their Web pages "static," or without continuously changing content. And
they should limit dynamic content to windows or certain portions of mostly
static pages. It is particularly important, he says, to keep your home page and
many of your intro pages as static as possible. The deeper a user gets into your
site, the more likely he or she is to tolerate pages taking longer to load
(though some would even dispute this)."It is really a design issue," he says.
"It is easier for many businesses to make their Web pages dynamic. Most sites
need dynamic pages. But there are performance issues with them. That's what Web
operators need to keep in mind."
2. Overestimating concurrent traffic — and spending too much as a
result.Most tech writers like me tell you to plan your site for peak traffic
periods, especially those that occur in the last-minute buying frenzy before the
December holidays. Melson, however, says the term "concurrent" is frequently
misunderstood by Web operators. It doesn't mean number of customers overall, or
even site traffic in a day, but rather the number of users converging on a site
simultaneously. Too often, he says, Web operators pay thousands of dollars more
for server space and related software because they have been too generous in
their estimates on concurrent traffic."If you aim high and have an unlimited
hardware budget, it's not going to be a big deal. But if you don't have an
unlimited budget, my advice is to think realistically about the number of people
you will have using the site at any one time. "Alexis Gutzman, an e-business
author and consultant, cautions that spikes do occur for many e-tailers around
Dec. 12 or so (one of the last days you can ship packages long distances to
arrive before Dec. 25). "In my experience, many people don't overestimate. They
fail to plan for the peak," she says.
3. No consideration of resolving performance issues with software
rather than buying new hardware. When performance bottlenecks occur, many
Web operators quickly conclude it's a hardware problem — and rush to buy a new
server or two to add more capacity. That's often a mistake, Melson says. "In our
experience, about 70% of the time it's a software issue and 30% of the time it's
a hardware problem. But instead of thinking about how they can fix or redesign
their software, they throw more hardware at it."It may be a case of simply
rewriting the software or adding new application software, he says. Perhaps they
need to buy more memory for their database server, rather than buying a new
server. Often the software solution is cheaper and quicker to implement, he says
(although hardware currently is as cheap as it has been in some time).The
difficulty here, Melson acknowledges, is that small businesses don't have
information technology (IT) staffs or the time and money to diagnose
infrastructure problems and/or rewrite software. Most businesses should have an
IT consultant or trusted value-added reseller (VAR) to advise them,
however.
4. Not making the site compatible with more than one Web browser.
If you had to choose one browser to support, it would be Microsoft Internet
Explorer, the dominant browser with more than 80% of the market. "But what about
the Apple Macintosh customer — do you want to turn him away?" Melson asks. How
about the Firefox or Chrome user ? If not, you need to test your site and system
with the other browsers. Some tweaking of the user interface is likely to ensure
tables, charts, graphics, and functionality work well on the different
browsers."Often these are very simple or minor fixes. You might need to only
change some colors, or add new elements. If you don't ever look at your site on
other Web browsers, you won't ever know that you need to fix it," he
says.Supporting more than a single browser is more important for an online
retailer than a B2B company, Melson says, because a retailer's customers are
more random. But if you don't feel it is important, he says, you should put a
disclaimer on your site noting that it supports — or works best with — only one
particular browser.
5. Failure to get outside feedback on usability. "Usability" is
now more than a buzzword. It has emerged as a significant metric for how Web
sites are viewed today. Usability surveys, usability tests, usability scores,
and usability focus groups are all part of the research and development of most
large Web sites. Melson's finding is that many smaller e-commerce operators
don't get usability feedback from anyone beyond those on their development team.
But those developers and others are too close to the process and biased toward
the chosen design and infrastructure. "You get used to your site and used to any
foibles."For small businesses, organizing a focus group to evaluate your Web
site is beyond your time and resources. But getting some sort of outside
perspective — be it employees not involved in the design, or your spouses or
friends — is crucial to the site's development and performance. "You need to
hear from people who aren't working on it."
This article was submitted by MCC Silver Partner Microsoft.
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