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E-commerce sites
Users come to online ecommerce with some key experiential understandings of the characteristics of traditional commerce.

"Buy From Us"
The basic goal of an ecommerce site is to sell something, a product or a service; even if the company launching an ecommerce site has other goals, such as establishing an online presence, an ecommerce web site is a place for selling. Ecommerce sites use some powerful tools and techniques -- including merchandising, advertising, and reviews -- to focus the "buy from us" message, make it stronger, and make it more attractive to the user.
Ecommerce sites that are hard to reach because of access delays aren't crying "buy from us" effectively. A site that limits accessibility, either through the requirement of specific browsers, or the use of non-standard code, or even through an over-reliance on graphics, is diluting the audience of the "buy from us" message.
The user refers to three rough categories of information when making up his or her mind about your ecommerce site as a place worth buying from:
  • judgment of your site
  • judgment of the company behind the site
  • feelings and impressions that may be operating on a subconscious level
The user relies on information gleaned not just from your obvious message but from their impression of your site, and by extension from their impression of the company behind the site. Users will look at a site and wonder about the decisions that led to the features they see, and a bad impression derived from a user judgment is very difficult to undo.

"Trust Us"
If the basic message of any ecommerce site is "buy from us", the higher-level message is "trust us". Users are unlikely to purchase from a site unless they are satisfied that the site is trustworthy.

Using Design to Communicate With the User
The obvious method to convince users to buy from your commerce site is to provide the customer with a pleasant experience. Reduce the chances of negative events, or the misapprehension of events as negative. Keep in mind that the user will move around your site and read your text, and ultimately decide on whether to buy from you based on judgments of their experience with your site.
Top 7 of musts in ecommerce:
  • Your site must look professional. You have to let it up to the pros to choose your fonts, color schemes and graphics. You don’t want to look amateurish. You want to sell.
  • You must have an information architecture. Your information has to be organized in order to make sense to customers who may not live and breath your product. You should not be required to be an expert in your product in order to navigate your catalog, and you should have multiple logical tracks to accessing any product.
  • Your website must be easy to navigate. Don't force your customers to dig to find what they want to buy, and then dig to find out how to buy it.
  • You must answer questions pro-actively. Research the potential problems customers may have using your site and document them. Design your FAQs carefully. Include help text in your commerce flow. Every time a customer must communicate with your customer service or webmaster teams, you risk annoying the customer. The "correct" approach to customer communications is that every email is an "opportunity", but most online ecommerce sites don't have the staff to convert complaints into happy solutions.
  • You must refine your ecommerce track. Anticipate the needs and behaviors of your typical customer -- if necessary creating user profiles -- and design your ecommerce track to accommodate those users. Most users have an expectation of what makes up the process of purchasing, so if your site throws up what seem to be arbitrary, intrusive or threatening barriers to purchasing you will lose customers and sales.
  • You must address privacy concerns explicitly. Privacy and the ownership of personal information is a big issue. Don't be vague or wishy-washy where the customer's personal information is concerned. If you require the user to give address or email information, explain how you will use it. If you will use email info to send the user non-order related notices, provide an opt-out mechanism.
  • You must set expectations carefully. Explain the steps to completing a purchase, and explain the factors that will affect shipment, timing, returns, crediting, etc. Set expectations of service that your site can meet. Aim to under-promise and over-deliver.
The eCommerce Trust Study
The eCommerce Trust Study from Studio Archetype/Sapient and Cheskin Research presents some interesting analysis on "the nature of those elements that communicate 'trust' in e-commerce sites, be they transactional or graphical" According to this study:
The factors that produce a sense of trustworthiness need to be identified, in their entirety. Their interactions need to be understood, and their relative importance determined. Understanding the roles of these different factors would allow you to ease consumers' concerns, and could hasten the maturation of Web retailing.
The report describes 6 main components of an e-commerce site that suggest trustworthiness:
  1. Seals of Approval -- Symbols, like VeriSign and Visa, designed to re-assure the visitor that security has been established. The companies that provide these seals of approval are referred to in this report as "security brands”.
  2. Brand -- The corporation's promise to deliver specific attributes and its credibility based on reputation and the visitor's possible previous experience.
  3. Navigation -- The ease of finding what the visitor seeks.
  4. Fulfillment -- Clearly indicates how orders will be processed, and provides information on how to seek recourse if there are problems.
  5. Presentation -- Design attributes that connote quality and professionalism.
  6. Technology -- State of the art connotes professionalism, even if it's difficult to use.
This study has some valuable insights into user attitudes towards trust and ecommerce sites, and these 6 components are clearly required for any e-commerce website.

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