Editorial Articles

An eCommerce site with poor aesthetics is not compelling. Sales will be lost if the site isn’t easy to use and attractive to engage with, and if its not integrated with the retailer’s core systems, will become inefficient. Therefore, getting the balance right between aesthetics, usability and business integration is crucial in delivering sustainability, flexibility and in maintaining a competitive edge.

In my personal experience of delivering eCommerce sites, customers seem to make judgments on whether a site design is “good” or “bad” using certain measurable points. For example:

• Can I navigate and find what I want easily and quickly?
• Are the graphics used, inspirational and engaging, and even sexy?
• Does the site make a point of reassuring me that I can trust it and the brand(s) it represents?
• Does the site contain features and functions which are fun while making it easy to use?
• Is the total price I’m going to pay for goods transparent, with no hidden extras?
• Is information presented in a concise, easy to understand way?
• Is the site secure with quick checkout features?
• Does the site offer a wide range of payment options?
• Are the products I want to buy readily available?
• When I contact Customer Services do they have an idea of who I am and what I’ve done through the website, or do I have to start explaining from scratch?

Of course it’s very easy for a web designer to get caught up in the aesthetics of the site, and their own skills and creativity when delivering treatments of graphics, all the while forgetting about the experience of the end user. On the flipside usability experts can come in and water down any visual or aesthetic appeal, in an effort to improve the base line customer experience. 

Exceptional eCommerce design is about covering off the concerns of your customer base while simultaneously achieving a balance between all the elements on a page, and throughout the site, in a cohesive manner. In doing so the retailer or brand can engage customers, retain their interest, and nurture their loyalty, through a combination of good aesthetics and usability.

The other important piece of the eCommerce puzzle is effective business integration. While not an easy task to integrate disparate systems, business integration of eCommerce is an almost inevitable requirement for most organisations. Especially in today’s challenging market there are many reasons why companies want to or have to integrate their eCommerce site with back-end systems. These may be to:

• Leverage existing investments. An example of this is could be to integrate an eCommerce front end, which interacts with business partners and customers, with an existing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) transaction program that is functionally adequate, but does not support Web-based access.
• Respond to a corporate merger and bring together new business relations.
• Increase efficiency by reducing time delays in propagating information.
• Reduce errors due to duplication, for example name and address data stored in multiple databases.
• Implement Supply Chain Management (SCM) and integrate with suppliers and customers.
• Integrate specialised applications with ERP packages.
• Achieve extraction and consolidation of data for decision-support systems such as data mining and data warehouse applications.
• Underpin a more agile business for evolving business models.
• Integrate customers via multiple channels

Above all business integration helps to deliver the customer a much more rounded experience, again engendering loyalty and satisfaction. Business integration combined with strong aesthetics and usability enables the brand to differentiate its business from the competition, through the provision of greater customer choice, consistency, context and business continuity.

Author: Terry Hunter, Managing Director, CyberDMG