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Critical Success Factors of E-Commerce

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Submitted By TARAM2012
Words 1210
Pages 5
Name: Shawntara McCaskill
Course: Fundamentals of E-Business
Instructor: Evangeline Jefferson
Date: August 21, 2011

In recent years as ecommerce sales have increased in comparison to traditional stores, many businesses and individuals have turned to online shops in their attempts to run a business online. There are other ways to make money online, such as affiliate programs and advertising sales, but selling products will give you more control and the opportunity to make more money.

Site-Wide Search Engine
Visitors can't buy products that they cannot find. Obviously, it's critical that your ecommerce site helps them to easily find what they want, and a good site search function is critical for this. Visitors should be able to enter descriptive words or item numbers and get accurate, helpful results. * Search engines work best with lots of content. So, if you have a large web site like Microsoft, eBay, or the New York Times, you definitely want a search engine. However, most of us do not have sites nearly that large. * Search engines work best when they have lots of content to sift through. A search engine is only as good as the results it brings back. When a search is used on a small site, often the results page says something like "No results matched your search terms." * If your site search keeps returning poor results for people, it may be an indication that your site does not yet have enough content for this tool. Consider some more appropriate alternatives for sites this size. * If your web site has links that clearly direct people to the information they are seeking, then you have little need for a search engine. Find out how your audience talks about your content and make sure the words you use in your navigation and other links resonate with your audience. Do this by testing the navigation with real, live site visitors – do not

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