Analyzing Other Websites

Part of learning more about your own eCommerce website, what will work and what will not, includes analyzing other websites that provide a similar service.

Granted that the eco friendly intimate apparel business is a giant experiment - but there are a few websites that I can evaluate against my own. The funny thing is that the sites that I thought were designed well, are actually not. True, they are user friendly. You can purchase things in a few clicks (important to retain finicky customers), but the owners missed one important thing: Maintaining traffic.

If someone wanted to open a retail store, one of the first criteria to decide on is "Location." Location is important because you would want to establish yourself in a well trafficked area, probably around other retail businesses. This is in part due to the fact that it is hard to let people know that you are open for business, never mind to get people to actually come into your store when there is nobody walking or driving past it.

The same goes for websites. On the Internet, there is literally a world of opportunity available to a small business owner because you can actually drive people to your website by choosing a great URL and "optimizing" your website so that search engines can find you. People from anywhere in the world can find you, do business with you and you are never limited by the physically location of your business!

So to my surprise, the few websites that I will be competing with for business look wonderful, but missed that essential "Location" criteria of a successful business. There's barely any traffic going to their main website. They may be doing a few things here and there to increase traffic (common way is through paid advertisements), but it's not translating into the significant traffic needed to turn into a transaction.

Hopefully this translates into opportunity for me!