When designing an ecommerce website it is vital that you have a strategy in place. You need to think carefully about the process and about how people are going to get from your home page to product pages, through to completing the checkout process. You also need to consider that people may go directly to a product page from the search engine results page on Google, Bing or Yahoo for example.
The checkout process should be easy to complete and secure. You need to ensure that you ask for enough details as possibly to fulfil the order without making the process too lengthy. Some websites offer two ways to check out; one being where you can register on the site, it stores your details so you can easily place repeat orders and possibly track your orders, and two where you can check out as a guest. Guest checkout is often a quicker simpler process but sometimes means the customer cannot log back in to see order history etc. Giving your customers these two options can improve sales conversion rates.
When there are charges for delivery, it is important that you make it clear how much it is going to cost. Recent research shows that sites that do not tell you the delivery charge until right at the end of the checkout process often puts people off using them.