If you want to start your own e-commerce web site or you’re a web designer looking to start an e-commerce service for clients, there’s a 2-part article over at the E-commerce Times that’s worth reading. “Shopping Cart Options for SMBs” (read part 1 and part 2) details many challenges and considerations when looking for an onine shopping cart.

In my experience, all small to medium-sized businesses should look for the following in a shopping cart:

• Ability to fully customize the front-end including the checkout process. In other words, you need to be able to make your site look unique and be effective by changing the user interface. I’ve learned that the ability to change a button to a text link or move the add-to-cart button from one place to another within the page template plays a critical role in a site’s success.
• Extreme stability, meaning that the shopping cart responds quickly when a customer requests a page or conducts a transaction. If your customers try to order and your site doesn’t respond, you won’t make many sales.
• User friendly order management and product maintenance. Let’s face it, you need to be able to quickly maintain content and products on your web site without a manual or support team.

These three criteria are not exclusive — there are other considerations. With the perspective that a successful e-commerce project takes thought and planning up-front — especially during software consideration — I can’t underscore enough the importance of initial project consulting between the client and the consultant.

To make a good shopping cart selection, we consultants need to know how you do business, how you process orders, how your fulfillment works, your accounting process, and what your customers expect from your business. Every e-commerce client is different, and there are dozens of shopping carts to choose from. What works for one won’t work for another, and that’s why shopping cart software selection is so important to an e-commerce site’s success.

Research shows that if your company is going to be successful selling goods or generating leads online, your web site needs to be credible.

So how does a web site become credible in the eyes of its customers? I recently found a document from the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab called the Stanford Guidelines for Web Credibility.

The document lists ten guidelines to boost your site’s credibility, based of course on years of research of over 4,500 people.

The document is a good starting point for evaluating your existing web site’s credibility or to plan for a web site redesign.

And non-profits — these guidelines apply to you as well. You need people to understand your mission and donate, and a credible web site is paramount to accomplishing these goals.

I’ve pointed out some flaws on Verizon Wireless’ web site before, and I recently found yet another example of a flaw on the Verizon Wireless web site that could have been prevented with proper browser testing.

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Smashing Magazine, which I find to be an excellent source of information for web designers, posted some updated information today about what operating systems and web browsers people use to view the web.

The Smashing Magazine post references the W3Counter Global Stats page that tracks browser usage, operating system usage, screen resolutions, and countries. A few points to note:

• Internet Explorer version 6 is still the most popular browser (Editor’s note: It’s also the most difficult browser to code standards-compliant sites for)
• 1024×768 is the most popular screen resolution
• Only about half of people browse with their web browsers maximized, so site designs should still accommodate the 800×600 resolution unless you have data for your site that contradicts this.

It’s painfully obvious that designers (and yes, web developers too) need to test sites on Windows and Mac platforms, and using multiple browsers.

Is your company planning to increase their search marketing spend in 2008? If you said yes, you’re in good company. MarketingSherpa’s latest Search Marketing Benchmark Survey reveals that search marketing will see double-digit growth next year, but not to increase reach. Rather, marketers are raising their budgets to account for rising keyword prices.

According to the survey of over 3,000 marketers and agencies, Google Adwords will be the most popular pay-per-click (PPC) spend.

Companies are also focusing on improving their landing pages to optimize the effectiveness of their PPC campaigns and site conversion rates.

Other interesting facts from the survey:

• Just over 1/3 of companies will increase their search engine optimization (SEO) budgets for 2008.
• Despite reporting relatively high value from SEO, some companies are still having difficulty measuring effectiveness.
• E-mail marketing remains the most effective marketing tactic, while online banner ads and print marketing have the lowest value.