Any ecommerce web site acts as the online storefront for the products and services you wish to sell online. Your website visitors are, for the most part, window shoppers and browsers. An ecommerce web site's aim is to convert these browsers into buyers.

Some of the important things to remember while developing the content for a website or while carrying out website design are:

• The website should have a format which maintains a smooth flow of text which leads the visitor to the appropriate page.
• There is also the need to take care that the site has an ample number of web pages, which keeps the visitor as well as the web spiders interested.
• The website content development should be done in such a way that the website content is keyword rich and key phrase rich.
• The web pages on the website should have a multi-browser capability i.e. they should open up in Internet explorer with the same ease as they are able to open in Netscape.
• It is important that all of the website pages in a website are thoroughly linked together. How we link them together can have an influence on ranking of our website. In general it is better to use text links over graphic button/image links. The reason being that we can include a keyword in the link text (aka anchor text). Adding a keyword in the link text provides a ranking boost for the linked page amongst many search engines
• It is also a good idea to use the Alt attribute on images which is believed to add a ranking boost for some search engines. We should not just use the Alt attribute to stuff in keywords but make the text within match the image and destination if it is a link.
• Images are an effective medium to assist in the online sale of your products/services, especially useful to those clients with poor literacy levels or who are in a rush, as we all seem to be these days.

Apart from the points mentioned above, it is imperative that an ecommerce website offers absolute security for the transactions that are carried out using credit cards. For the success of any ecommerce website it is necessary that a proper choice of payment gateway is made. A payment gateway is a separate service and acts as an intermediary between the website’s shopping cart and all the financial networks involved with the transaction, including the customers' credit card issuer and the ecommerce website. If the ecommerce website has already purchased a shopping cart software, it needs to ensure that the payment gateway service is compatible with that shopping cart.

Tips for creating a successful website