Hello,

I have a website where I sell building materials. I wondered what to do
so that my visitors trust my company and do not feel reluctant to buy
things.

There is no e-commerce interface on my website, just the option to send
me an email to order an item.

What do you think?

Thank you.

"Jean-Guy Mouton" <user@example.net> wrote in message
news:471f7125$0$11978$426a74cc@news.free.fr...
> Hello,
>
> I have a website where I sell building materials. I wondered what to do
> so that my visitors trust my company and do not feel reluctant to buy
> things.
>
> There is no e-commerce interface on my website, just the option to send me
> an email to order an item.
>
> What do you think?
>
> Thank you.

Some suggestions, in no particular order:
-- a professional-looking site.
-- testimonials from real customers, with real names.
-- useful tips on how to use your building materials (often available from
manufacturers, magazines, etc.)
-- links to useful non-competitive sites
-- information about prices, including shipping if relevant
-- objective comparison charts of "good," "better," "best" products
-- simple, clear statements of your warranty and return policies
-- your physical address, a phone number, hours of operation, etc.

Alex

Alex scribed:

>"Jean-Guy Mouton" <user@example.net> wrote in message
>news:471f7125$0$11978$426a74cc@news.free.fr...
>> Hello,
>>
>> I have a website where I sell building materials. I wondered what to do
>> so that my visitors trust my company and do not feel reluctant to buy
>> things.
>>
>> There is no e-commerce interface on my website, just the option to send me
>> an email to order an item.
>>
>> What do you think?
>>
>> Thank you.
>
>Some suggestions, in no particular order:
>-- a professional-looking site.
>-- testimonials from real customers, with real names.
>-- useful tips on how to use your building materials (often available from
>manufacturers, magazines, etc.)
>-- links to useful non-competitive sites
>-- information about prices, including shipping if relevant
>-- objective comparison charts of "good," "better," "best" products
>-- simple, clear statements of your warranty and return policies
>-- your physical address, a phone number, hours of operation, etc.
>
I would also set up an e-commerce system to make the site look like a real
business..
--
Ed Jay (remove 'M' to respond by email)

Ed Jay wrote:

> Alex scribed:
>
>
>>"Jean-Guy Mouton" <user@example.net> wrote in message
>>news:471f7125$0$11978$426a74cc@news.free.fr...
>>
>>>Hello,
>>>
>>>I have a website where I sell building materials. I wondered what to do
>>>so that my visitors trust my company and do not feel reluctant to buy
>>>things.
>>>
>>>There is no e-commerce interface on my website, just the option to send me
>>>an email to order an item.
>>>
>>>What do you think?
>>>
>>>Thank you.
>>
>>Some suggestions, in no particular order:
>>-- a professional-looking site.
>>-- testimonials from real customers, with real names.
>>-- useful tips on how to use your building materials (often available from
>>manufacturers, magazines, etc.)
>>-- links to useful non-competitive sites
>>-- information about prices, including shipping if relevant
>>-- objective comparison charts of "good," "better," "best" products
>>-- simple, clear statements of your warranty and return policies
>>-- your physical address, a phone number, hours of operation, etc.
>>
>
> I would also set up an e-commerce system to make the site look like a real
> business..

This is all very well put.

What Alex said is very good but not sufficient on it's own.

What Jay has added is absolutely essential. Every other buiness does
it this way.

Jeff

Jean-Guy Mouton <user@example.net> wrote in message:
471f7125$0$11978$426a74cc@news.free.fr,

> Hello,
>
> I have a website where I sell building materials. I wondered what to
> do so that my visitors trust my company and do not feel reluctant to
> buy things.
>
> There is no e-commerce interface on my website, just the option to
> send me an email to order an item.

I think this is your biggest problem. "Send me an email to place an
order" is a huge turn-off for several reasons.

--
Red

Red E. Kilowatt wrote:
> Jean-Guy Mouton <user@example.net> wrote in message:
> 471f7125$0$11978$426a74cc@news.free.fr,
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> I have a website where I sell building materials. I wondered what to
>> do so that my visitors trust my company and do not feel reluctant to
>> buy things.
>>
>> There is no e-commerce interface on my website, just the option to
>> send me an email to order an item.
>
> I think this is your biggest problem. "Send me an email to place an
> order" is a huge turn-off for several reasons.

1. Looks glaringly amateur.

2. No #2 needed.


--
Blinky RLU 297263
Killing all posts from Google Groups
The Usenet Improvement Project - http://improve-usenet.org

On 24 Oct, 17:21, Jean-Guy Mouton <u...@example.net> wrote:

> I have a website where I sell building materials. I wondered what to do
> so that my visitors trust my company and do not feel reluctant to buy
> things.

Make it useful to your customers. Don't (necessarily) do things that
make it useful to your CEO or your graphic designers. For most e-comm
sites, this means a good catalogue, with prices, with easy navigation,
with comparison or very easy nav between related items.

Item descriptions should have good pictures and all the necessary
description. The description data model will vary a lot between
products and your catalogue should cope with this - pipe diameters
matter, the length of the box a hand drill comes in doesn't. If your
catalogue data model can't cope with this explicitly

Items MUST have a clean, simple, short URL that refers to that item's
page and is stable long-tem. This should be as simple as
http://example.com/product?id=sku-1234
Doing this allows people to bookmark products and email links around.
That is some of the best marketing you can have - when other people
will plug deep-links into your site to their colleagues for you.

If it's useful as a catalogue, then people will use your site. They
might not buy from you - I know plenty of sites (esp. building
materials) where one particular site has become the de facto reference
site for on-line discussion of products. People than buy from other
sites, on the basis of price, service, trust etc. For most of your
sales though, you've got to get them reading your catalogue first.


You say "building materials", which is a very broad term. Are these
nuts and bolts (shippable), bags of sand (collected by the purchaser)
or truckloads of bricks (a rare high-ticket purchase, delivered on
your own truck) ? All three of these need quite different
requirements from a site.

The easiest (web wise) is the classic small-project-scale supplier by
customer collection. You need to have a catalogue, it needs to be
accurate and detailed, and it needs to show accurate prices. Customers
then comparison shop on-line, choose what they want, then turn up and
collect. You might need some customer input to place an order
(especially for pre-sawn plywood), but mostly you're about read-only
catalogue and price-browsing. This has its own problem - management
don't see any orders from the non-order-taking website, so they pull
the plug on spending money to keep it updated. Yet your "turn up"
customers had all been using it to check prices or availability before
driving over - now they're going to go to your competitor who can tell
them today's price, not last year's.

If you're into shipping items, then you need to buy an off-the-shelf
shopping cart system (which may be open source that's free to
purchase, but you still need to pay for setup consultancy time).
Orders by email just doesn't cut it these days. Basic competence in
this field, these days, will "just work". It's not 1999 any more. Your
web developer can tell you more. If they can't (and they can't
demonstrate a past portfolio), go to one that can.

Andy Dingley wrote:
> If you're into shipping items, then you need to buy an off-the-shelf
> shopping cart system (which may be open source that's free to
> purchase, but you still need to pay for setup consultancy time).

Thank you to all the contributors for these very useful ideas.

Would you recommend an open-source shopping cart system. Something not
too difficult to implement in an existing website to allow my customers
to buy online?

Cheers