Im new to this forum so hi there everyone. I currently have a site that sells health products. We built it around 3-4 years ago and it has served us well. It currenty has revenues of in the region of $750,000 per annum so its not too bad. We now want to take it to the next level - broadening out our product range, designing the site in a way that converts the most vistors, increase our SEO efforts ( which have been virtually nil to date - want to pay google adwords a lot lesss if we can!) and streamline the back end so that our accounting and order fufillment runs more smoothly. So a bit of an upgrade so to speak. Because the revenue now is ok we thought the site deserves a bit of investment so we have allocated a budget of arouund $20,000 usd for development. My question is as follows:

If you could build the perfect ecommerce site:

  • what front end features would be on your must have list?upselling,cross selling,homepage banners,scrolling product view or grid product view,large images or small images, make the customer register or let them shop without?
  • What software is best? We have been recommended BV Commerce - but what do you guys think?
  • What payment methods are a must? we have the normal payment gateway however should we have paypal, google checkout too like drugstore.com?
  • How would you deal with customers who abandon your cart ?
  • what marketing functions would you integrate into the cms?
  • What else? what would be your wish list if you had a budget similar to ours? what sites do it right?



Looking forward to hearing your replies cos some of you guys sound like you really know what your talking about.....