Specifications

Are you a reputable business? If your business is registered with the relevant authority
in a particular place, has a physical address and a phone number, and has been in busi-
ness for a number of years, it is less likely to be a scam than a business that consists
solely of a Web site and perhaps a post office box. Make sure that you display these
details.
What happens if a purchaser is not satisfied with a purchase? Under what circum-
stances will you give a refund? Who pays for shipping? Mail order retailers have tradi-
tionally had more liberal refund and return policies than traditional shops. Many offer an
unconditional satisfaction guarantee. Consider the cost of returns against the increase in
sales that a liberal return policy will create. Whatever your policy is, make sure that it is
displayed on your site.
Should customers entrust their credit card information to you? The single greatest trust
issue for Internet shoppers is fear of transmitting their credit card details over the Internet.
For this reason, you need to both handle credit cards securely and be seen as security con-
scious. At the very least, this means using SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) to transmit the
details from the user’s browser to your Web server and ensuring that your Web server is
competently and securely administered. We will discuss this in more detail later.
Ease of Use
Consumers vary greatly in their computer experience, language, general literacy, memory, and
vision. Your site needs to be as easy as possible to use. User interface design fills many books
on its own, but here are a few guidelines:
Keep your site as simple as possible. The more options, advertisements, and distrac-
tions on each screen, the more likely a user is to get confused.
Keep text clear. Use clear, uncomplicated fonts. Do not make text too small and bear in
mind that it will be different sizes on different types of machines.
Make your ordering process as simple as possible. Intuition and available evidence
both support the idea that the more mouse clicks users have to make to place an order,
the less likely they are to complete the process. Keep the number of steps to a minimum,
but note that Amazon.com has a U.S. patent
3
on a process using only one click, which it
calls 1-Click. This patent is strongly challenged by many Web site owners.
Try not to let users get lost. Provide landmarks and navigational cues to tell users
where they are. For example, if a user is within a subsection of the site, highlight the
navigation for that subsection.
If you are using a shopping cart metaphor in which you provide a virtual container for cus-
tomers to accumulate purchases prior to finalizing the sale, keep a link to the cart visible on the
screen at all times.
E-commerce and Security
P
ART III
274
3
U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Patent Number 5,960,411. Method and system for placing a pur-
chase order via a communications network.
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