It’s now easier than ever to start a service-based business. With accessible technology, you can do everything from setting up a website, to processing payments... Read more
UX
9 Ecommerce UX Best Practices in Action (Case Study)
Not sure how to follow UX best practices on your ecommerce site? See how an award-winning online business uses them to great effect - and how you can, too. Read more
4 Examples of Stellar About Us Pages
Your About Us page gives a human face to your business and evokes (or cements) prospect trust. The best About Us pages pull prospects' heartstrings through company stories and core values, all while clearly describing what the business actually does. Read more
Best Practices for Website Navigation Menus
Your navigation menu is like a series of doors embedded above-the-fold of your website, which open—hopefully intuitively—to the information each visitor is looking for. While menus... Read more
Ecommerce UX: 3 Examples to Learn From
What happens when it's time to think about all of your site elements together, and how can they work as a well-oiled UX machine for visitors? We look at three well-designed ecommerce sites and consider how they've implemented best UX practices. Read more
Best Homepages: Five Examples for Design Inspiration
Your homepage is the first thing many visitors will see, so it needs to set the stage for who your business is and how it can help them. Our examples will show you how to create a homepage that does exactly that. Read more
FAQ Examples: What a Great FAQ Page Looks Like
Your FAQ page needs to collect as many questions as possible and display them to would-be customers (or brand-new customers in need of support), while still being easy to use. We have a roundup of FAQs that pull this off and takeaways you can implement in your own business. Read more
Introducing Ecommerce UX
Before beginning your ecommerce UX journey, it's worth doing a few things: understanding the benefits of good UX, clarifying your target audience, recognizing that mobile UX is its own topic, and knowing how to conduct user research. Read more
Best Practices for a Great Online Shop Homepage
Your online shop homepage is your storefront window, and the cover of that proverbial book. Prospects will determine whether they're interested in your offering in a matter of milliseconds... so you've got to make that initial impression count. Read more
Best Design Practices for Your Product Pages
With individual product pages, you have the opportunity to display every product you offer—in all its glory. This is your chance to prove that each of your products is worthy of your business's name. Here are best practices for doing so. Read more
Best UX Practices for Your Ecommerce Shopping Cart
Average shopping cart abandonment rates have exceeded 68% every year since 2011—a surprising fact given the remarkable advancements made in ecommerce sophistication in that time. Learn best practices for better conversions in your online shop. Read more
Improving Conversions on Your Checkout Page through Great UX
Most of the reasons consumers give for checkout page abandonment—long processes, concerns about security, bad site navigation—can be rectified through better UX. Learn the traps, and how to avoid them. Read more
Best Practices for Live Chat
When your website visitors have a question, 73% of them want to answer it on their own... and they want to do so while they're still on your website. Live chat will give them the opportunity to do so. Learn best practices to give them a great chat experience. Read more
5 Top Tips for Your Business Website
Your business website is your storefront, your virtual salesperson, and the cover of the proverbial book by which your business will be judged. It’s also... Read more
Choosing the Best Payment Gateway for Your Ecommerce Business
A payment gateway supports the series of back-end communications that must occur for a consumer to make a purchase on your ecommerce site. You'll have a lot of options to choose from. Learn the difference between modern and classic, hosted and integrated gateways... and know what to look for in a gateway provider. Read more
Deciding What to Charge Your Customers for Shipping
Shipping is the biggest expense an ecommerce business has to contend with—and shipping costs are the #1 reason for cart abandonment—so it's crucial to get this right. You'll have some factors to consider to find the "sweet spot" of shipping—prices consumers are willing to pay AND that cover your costs. Read more
Writing a Returns & Refunds Policy that Gets You Conversions and Customer Loyalty
Your shipping policy and your returns policy will probably be the two most-read documents on your ecommerce website. It's worth remembering that around 30% of products ordered online are returned... but a good Returns & Refunds policy can offset that loss by generating more sales and bringing satisfied customers back. Read more
Writing Your Ecommerce Privacy Policy
As an ecommerce business, you can't escape collecting data about consumers—to complete transactions, to subscribe users to your email list, or to improve user experience and conversion rates on your site. But you've got to let consumers know you're collecting it—and what you're doing with it. Here's how. Read more
Creating the Terms & Conditions for Your Ecommerce Site
A Terms & Conditions is the set of rules that governs your relationship with your site visitors and customers from beginning to end. Think of it as a code of conduct that lays out the roles and responsibilities of all parties. Learn why you need one, what topics it should cover, and what best practices are for writing and disseminating it. Read more
Introducing the Business Website Homepage
A good homepage attracts visitors through SEO and keeps them there with remarkable UX. It describes your business with prospect-oriented copy. It generates leads before sending visitors on. See an example of a homepage that does these things successfully. Read more
Introduction to Web Forms
The data entered into your email signup, account creation, contact us, and scheduling forms will be dropped into different platforms, from your CMS to your subscription management software. But there are some general best practices that all these forms have in common. Read more
Cultivating a Diverse Set of Visitor Journeys
There's a full user spectrum to consider on your homepage, including your different buyer personas and the different journeys each of those personas will take through your sales pipeline. Make your homepage speak to all of them. Read more
Email Signup Forms
Email marketing remains the most powerful online means of converting prospects into customers... which means the bigger your email list, the stronger your business. An email signup form is your simplest tool for this form of lead generation. Make it compelling. Read more
Prioritizing User Experience (UX) on Your FAQ Page
Once you're on your way to writing the most useful FAQ content you can offer, it's time to consider design. To ensure great UX, you'll want to consider ease of navigation, enabling search, and a prominent page link on various pages on your site. Read more
Optimizing Your Homepage for Mobile Users
Mobile visitors will be viewing your site on smaller screens, navigating with their fingers, and searching under different circumstances than your desktop users. Optimize for these users through responsive design, adaptive design, or a dedicated mobile site. Read more
Account Creation Forms
Account creation forms are higher-commitment interactions than email signup forms: At this stage, prospects are on the threshold of conversion. It's the job of your account creation form to facilitate that conversion by making the UX as clean and smooth as possible. Read more