1. The Contenders
2. Installation
3. Theming
4. Extensibility
5. Development
6. Support
7. Hosting and Performance
8. Management
9. CMS
10. Security
11. Consumers
12. Comparison Table
13. Winners and Losers
14. Honourable Mentions
15. TL;DR

The Contenders

The first name down was the big dog in this particular park - Magento. In a relatively short space of time, it has achieved remarkable success, and its recent acquisition by eBay indicates little intent to slow down.

Second, showing great promise, is the wonderful OpenCart. OpenCart is known for being a speedy way to get an e-Commerce site online and for having an easy-to-work-with codebase. Not as full-featured or "entreprisey" as Magento, it is nevertheless an excellent platform.

Usually mentioned in the same breath as OpenCart as a worthy alternative to Magento, PrestaShop is a capable platform using the Smarty templating engine. The most common complaint? It's developerd primarily by a company in Paris, so unless your French is up to speed you may find the documentation a touch tricky.

The only entry in the list which isn't a specialist e-Commerce platform, Drupal is still an extremely popular choice, largely because of its large community and vast array of extensions. It has strengths in areas where the other contenders are lacking, primarily due to its primary function being as a CMS rather than an e-Commerce system. The Commerce plugin (as one of several options) adds e-Commerce functionality to the system.

And finally, bringing up the rear, is the oldest of the lot - osCommerce. Despite a history of poor security, difficult maintenance and spaghetti code, it remains one of the most used platforms and has a huge community behind it. Development has slowed recently, prompting rumours that the project may be heading for the graveyard.

With the exception of Drupal, where an extension is required to add basic e-Commerce functionality, this comparison will not include functionality added through extensions - I am comparing the products out of the box.

Installation

Magento was simple to download, with older versions of the software available in tabs, although, system requirements were hidden away on the downloads page. Installation instructions were provided during the download process, and the installation guide was excellent. Installation was slow, though, largely because of the size of the software. It could have done with more explanatory text - osCommerce did this well - and any cleanup was handled automatically, which was excellent.

OpenCart has a reassuringly professional feel to its installation procedure. Downloads were easy to find, including earlier versions, although no installation guidance was provided when downloading. Requirements checking was simple and clear, and your stage in the process well indicated. It also lacked explanatory text and there was no option to clean up automatically after itself and set sensible permissions.

PrestaShop downloads were easy to find and grab, though system requirements were rather better hidden, with a link near the bottom of the download page. The download screen links to installation guides on the main PrestaShop site, which are excellent and include videos - but these are not linked to from the installation procedure, which is a real shame. System requirements checking was simple enough, with clear instruction on what to do to correct any issues. Cleanup is not automated, but is enforced (good idea) - you can't log in until you've renamed your administration folder and deleted the install folder. Finally, each of the two installations run during the writing of this article resulted in errors in either the admin area or the shop itself.

Drupal downloads were easy enough to find, and installation instructions and system requirements were both linked obviously from the downloads page. Indications of where you are in the installation process are simple, and requirements checking during the process was good, with clear instructions on how to address any issues. Unfortunately, it is the only of the systems to require you to manually create a configuration file, and this seemed rather unnecessary. As with most of the other platforms, there was little help text along the way. Drupal did clean up after itself though, with the installer being disabled after it has been run.

osCommerce was less smooth than the others to download - it's not obvious where to go to download the software from the homepage, although the downloads page is very simple. Requirements were specified on the download page, but no installation instructions. It was simple to install, with a guided process that confirmed requirements were met, gave good feedback and included plenty of help text. It might have been nice if it had given the option to run a cleanup script once complete, to wipe the install directory and set sensible permissions.

Theming

Magento has an excellent theming engine, with the ability to inherit elements from one theme to another, making theme variants easy and quick to produce. The sheer volume of folders and nesting can be daunting to someone new to the platform. There are some excellent themes to download as well, which can often provide a good starting point. Unfortunately, Magento is also extremely heavy, loading large amounts of CSS and JavaScript by default. Themes often end up being extremely large, making ongoing management sometimes more painful than with other systems.

OpenCart uses PHP files for its templates, which is something I am a fan of (why introduce a new variable and control syntax, processed by PHP, when it already has these things?) and as a result the templates are simple to write and maintain. Themes are held in folders, so many can be installed to a site at once. There are plenty of themes available as well, both free and paid.

PrestaShop makes use of the well-known Smarty templating engine, and can handle multiple templates being installed at one time. The themes don't have the ability, like Magento, to inherit elements from each other, but they are easy to build and simple to maintain. There are plenty of themes available as well, both free and paid.

Theming Drupal is not considered terribly good fun. Designers and front end coders working with it for the first time have a distinctive haunted look, largely because the parts of each page can come from so many different places. On the plus side, multiple templates can exist side by side, and templates can include extra functionality when needed. There are also some excellent templates available to download, although most will require some work to make them fit the specifics of your site, depending upon the modules you have installed.

The default osCommerce theme is terribly outdated and a major let down. As with the other platforms, though, there are some stunning templates available. Unfortunately, there is no integrated templating engine, and as a result many templates require changing of core files for installation.

Extensibility

All of the contenders score well on extensibility, with both the type, range and ease of building of extentions (a.k.a. addons) taken into account. Drupal and Magento are pretty even - Drupal has a much larger collection of extensions, largely because they are quicker and cheaper to build, but Magento's are generally of a higher quality.

The rest are all fairly evenly matched, with extensions numbering in the thousands providing similar added functionality to all of the platforms. OpenCart has a slight edge over PrestaShop and osCommerce when it comes to extensions development though, thanks to better documentation than PrestaShop and better architecture than osCommerce.

The most commonly required extensions - for payment and shipping configuration - are all present on all platforms for most of the large providers.

Development

Most stores require at least some ongoing development, integrating with new services and adding new features over time. So how do these platforms compare when it comes to having some custom work done?

It is difficult to know how to score Magento when it comes to development. The system's architecture, inheritance setup, XML config system and use of the MVC pattern all make it usually excellent to work with. It provides plenty of API interfaces, reusable objects, and has intelligent use of namespacing to reduce the risk of conflicts between modules. The code is also clean and well documented throughout. On the other hand, it can be slow to write for - it is a monster, with hundreds of files in a nested structure that really takes some getting used to. The observer pattern used frequently in Magento can make debugging some problems deeply painful, as you need to find which of dozens of observers are causing a headache. Overall, it is the most technically advanced, and by some way, but that carries with it something of an overhead, making development for Magento often more expensive than comparable systems.

OpenCart is, for the most part, pretty simple to develop for. It's generally faster than Magento, thanks to a simpler structure and faster page times. It uses an MVC pattern, and has great documentation. It does suffer from an unfortunate folder structure, where a single simple custom module can have files in lots of different parts of the directory tree, but once you are familiar with the layout this is less of an issue. There is a lot of repetition in creating OpenCart modules as well - Magento's easy Grid/Edit/Form setup is much simpler and faster. Overriding core functionality is also a painful experience, relying on third party modules that search and replace within code, rather than hooks or class overrides. Despite these shortcomings, generally OpenCart's simplicity makes developing modules more of a pleasure than with some of the competition.

PrestaShop has a better module folder structure than OpenCart, similar to Magento's way of doing things, with every module in its own distinct folder. The development documentation has not been great in the past, though does seem to be improving. PrestaShop also provides a robust system for overriding core functionality as well as a variety of hooks and an API.

Drupal uses a simple and straightforward module system for development, meaning modules can often be added extremely quickly, each within its own folder. If the recommended development practices are followed, it's easy enough to avoid conflicts between modules. Where Drupal can be trickier is in overriding core functionality. Often the only way to do so is to copy a core module, alter it, and make the same changes whenever updating in future (this is not dissimilar to other platforms, of course). Drupal does separate themes from modules well, but does not go quite as far as an MVC pattern. Drupal uses a system of hooks to enable you to tap into or override normal functionality in your own modules, however this becomes problematic when wanting to modify or interact with third party modules, as these may not implement hooks in the same way, if at all.

osCommerce is extremely poor when it comes to development. Almost all development work involves modifying core files, and those are largely procedural code. There is no universal URL handler to tap into, no module system, no hooks. This does mean it is often extremely quick to make small changes to the site. It also means those changes can have far-reaching effects, upgrades are extremely painful, and security issues are easy to introduce.

Support

Drupal is well in the lead here, with extensive and varied support communities. They have forums, their own Stack Exchange site (in addition to a healthy amount of activity on the main Stack Overflow), and each module has its own mini-support system complete with bug tracking. All of which is lucky, because with Drupal you can spend a lot of time looking for help.

Magento is just a little behind Drupal. There is an active community on the main Stack Overflow site, and Magento have their own forums - although a large number of posts there seem to go unanswered. Magento also offer paid support options.

OpenCart, PrestaShop and osCommerce all score roughly evenly here. All have their own active forums (OpenCart, PrestaShop, osCommerce), and all have small communities on Stack Overflow (OpenCart, PrestaShop, osCommerce). PrestaShop offer a variety of paid support options as well.

Hosting and Performance

With Open Source systems a couple of the potential major costs usually associated with ecommece businesses are no longer an issue - building a system is unnecessary, and no need to pay for a license. However, there are still significant costs associated with hosting to be considered. Performance is a significant issue too, with slow sites converting customers at a lower rate than faster competitors.

Magento scores poorly here, requiring a beefier server than the other contenders to serve a comparable level of traffic, as well as needing PHP modules that are not always present on web servers by default. Performance can be very poor without tweaking of server configurations and addition of opcode caching modules. Even with plenty of server-side shenanigans, pages are heavy and difficult to trim to a healthy size. It redeems itself slightly with its ability to scale to multiple servers easily, but, for smaller online shops, this is an area where Magento has much room for improvement.

OpenCart and PrestaShop are evenly matched, with comparable load times out of the box and similar hosting requirements. They are not as demanding or as expensive to host as Magento, and both will work on the majority of PHP hosts.

Drupal will run on most PHP hosts, but will usually be pushing the limits of standard virtual hosts. It runs well on VPSes and up, but also suffers from slow load times. As with the other sites, speed can be vastly improved with opcode caching and some of the community modules.

osCommerce is not terribly fast when it comes to page loads out of the box, though there are plenty of optimisations you can perform to bring it up to spec. Where it does score well, however, it ubiquity of hosting. It has been around since early version of PHP and runs fine on a standard virtual server, so can be one of the cheapest and easiest system to host.

Management

Management of a store, including product pricing, inventory and data, categorisation, order statuses and so on is important to any e-Commerce venture. A management system should be intuitive and quick enough that customer service staff can use it without extensive training, and should allow restriction of access to different parts of the system for different users. Functionality like the ability to manage multiple stores from a single interface, handle multiple languages, or customise designs for specific pages or sections, while not universally required, is becoming more and more important.

Magento scores well in most ways, although their management area is not particularly intuitive (especially when it comes to order statuses, invoicing and shipping). Access control is excellent, and the system allows almost every aspect of products to be controlled through their EAV model. Products can be of various types (attribute sets and configurable products both work very well), special offers are powerful (although no 3 for 2 support is still a serious omission), and rule-based product relationships are very useful. Magento also offers multi-website and multi-store functionality, although this can have a significant negative effect on performance.

OpenCart is more intuitive than Magento, handles multiple stores well, and has a basic but functional permissions management system. Editing of products, categories and orders is simple and quick. Especially nice is its support of multiple languages. However, special offer support is weak, automated relating of products is missing, and stock control for configurable products is limited to one criteria (so if you sell tshirts, you can't specify stock for each combination of colour and size you have available).

PrestaShop supports configurable products well and has good granular permissions management. Unfortunately, it is not particularly intuitive, and does not support multiple stores from a single installation (although this feature is currently in testing, so should be available soon). Unfortunately, like OpenCart, it also has weak special offer management facilities and no support for automated relating of products. I do like that management of an item, that on other systems is spread over several pages, is often on one page in PrestaShop - a small point, but much appreciated.

Drupal scores badly here, largely as a result of e-Commerce being an addon, rather than native functionality. As a result, categories, products and related products are traumatic to set up. Access control and multiple store support are both good, but the kinds of refinements expected of a modern e-Commerce platform are lacking - most things are possible, but slow and usually in a way that makes introduction of errors almost inevitable. Finally, and possibly most seriously, it is badly let down by its counter-intuitive administration area.

osCommerce is simple to use, though not intuitive. Unfortunately, that is largely where the positives end - it cannot support multiple stores, configurable products, related products or users with different levels of permissions. Many of these features are available by way of community modules, however. It does have basic support for special offers, and a simple to manage system for categories.

CMS

This is an area where Drupal shines, and where Magento, OpenCart, PrestaShop and osCommerce are well behind the curve. A modern CMS allows granular control of access to edit content, versioning of documents, publishing dates, commenting on posts and so on. At the minimum, an e-Commerce platform should be able to offer basic blog functionality. Only Drupal is up to the task here, being first and foremost a CMS.

Security

Only osCommerce presents a serious concern out of the box, with a terrible reputation for, and history of, insecurity. Efforts to improve it are ongoing, but once a product has a reputation for poor security it is tough to change it.

Drupal fares a bit better, although the reliance on modules means that sometimes, even though the main platform itself might be secure, exploitable weaknesses are introduced (this is true of all of the platforms to some extent, but Drupal has greater reliance on extensions if run as an e-Commerce platform). Generally security of the Drupal platform has been good, and it's been well tested, running high profile sites like Whitehouse.gov without incident.

Magento, OpenCart and PrestaShop are all fairly even here. Exploits of the core platforms are comparable in number and severity. Magento offers an Enterprise version of their software (for a fee) and this claims to be fully PCI compliant - if this were to be brought to the Community edition as well, it would have an advantage in future.

Consumers

Finally, how easy is each for a consumer to use, and how good is each platform at bringing in customers and marketing specific products? This is almost entirely dependant upon the theme chosen, the quality of development and hosting, and a thousand other factors. However, out of the box, ...

Magento is excellent for consumers, despite a few recurring issues. Filterable categories are excellent, and Magento handles complex products extremely well, making the shopping process very straightforward. Integrations with third parties for payments are also mature and well tested, meaning few surprises for shoppers. Sometimes let down by bizarre behaviour (categories showing as empty and the search returning no results being common issues), it is still comfortably ahead of the competition. Search engine optimisation is excellent, and the ability to run promotions from the CMS at various points in the site is also very welcome.

OpenCart, PrestaShop and osCommerce are very evenly matched here. All provide a friendly browsing experience, and both suffer from the serious ommision of category filters; however all also have an excellent shopping and checkout processes. OpenCart and PrestaShop both include product comparison, while of the three only OpenCart includes wishlist functionality. OpenCart and PrestaShop have excellent SEO capabilities, and both provide support for promotions on the site.

With a little patience, Drupal is capable of providing a simple and easy to use shopping experience. It lacks some of the options and more advanced refinements of the dedicated e-Commerce offerings, but with Drupal anything is possible - given enough time. It also has good SEO support and the ability to run promotions through the site.

Comparison Table

Winners and Losers

Magento, despite extremely rapid growth, easy installation and excellent extensions, is let down by a lacklustre CMS, expensive running and development costs, and a comparatively poor (unless you are prepared to pay) support setup. Third party extensions and community sites exist to cover most of these shortfalls though, and the quality of code and the power available to extensions make this a great choice for serious e-Commerce businesses.

If you're looking to keep your development costs down, both OpenCart and PrestaShop are fine choices, though for me OpenCart seems to have the edge at the moment. Both have a bit of a way to go to catch Magento, though, especially when it comes to addons and sales features.

If you're after content bells and whistles, you're going to find it tough to talk yourself out of Drupal. It isn't the easiest system to develop with, but there's not much out there that can compete with it on power.

osCommerce is, at the moment, just not competitive, and has not kept pace with the comparable alternatives. Best avoided, for now.

Honourable Mentions

Other Languages

You'll have noticed by now that the above are all PHP/MySQL-based platforms. There are plenty of languages out there and there are open source e-Commerce platforms available on almost all of them. If you're more comfortable with another language than PHP ... then very sorry, but you've been reading the wrong list.

MODX

Personally, my favourite CMS for content sites is MODX - it's easy to use, simple to develop for, and has a great community. Unfortunately, e-commerce support is weak, with most solutions available being third party integrations (e.g., FoxyCart) rather than native e-commerce. However, talk of new e-commerce options is rife, and I'm hopeful something will come along to fill this gap soon.

Wordpress

Much like MODX, Wordpress does not have native e-commerce functionality. However, again as with MODX, Wordpress has plenty of plugins that can add a store to a blog, such as WP e-Commerce. There's still a long way to go until either Wordpress or MODX is competitive when it comes to e-commerce, but the signs for both are encouraging.

Zen Cart

It was a tough choice whether to pick Zen Cart or osCommerce for the fifth contender in this rundown. When I revisit this later on, most likely it will be Zen Cart that makes the cut. osCommerce I chose for this first comparison because of its age and because of its prevalence - it is still widely used, even if well behind more modern options.

TL;DR

Drupal if you need a decent CMS. Otherwise, in order: Magento, OpenCart, PrestaShop, osCommerce.

Conversion Rates

Once you've built your website, the temptation is to think of it as finished. Maybe build another one. Certainly aim to drag more visitors, kicking and screaming if necessary, to your shop. After all, if you're making 10 sales for every 1000 people to visit, then getting 2000 people to visit will mean 20 sales! Right?

Not necessarily. Were that true, however, how much will it cost to double your visitor count? For more sites, plenty. What if you, instead of doubling your visitor count, worked to double your sales from your existing customers? How about bumping it to 5%? 10%? Higher?

Think a 5% conversion rate is aiming high? The top online converter in December 2008 was turning 31.1% of visits to sales. Amazon was at 23.7% for the same period. Yes, it was Christmas, but looking at the same report for July 2008 you can see top sellers with conversion rates of 15% to 25%.

9. Know your audience.

You are not Amazon. I repeat, for those of you in the cheap seats: You Are Not Amazon. Amazon is a global household brand with different stock to you. And a different market to you. Something that works for Amazon might work for you. But just because something works for Amazon does not guarantee that it will work for you.

Be aware of what your audience wants. The odds are they are telling you what they want. Do you have a customer support line? Listen to it. If all your calls start with "I tried to order online, but ..." then you have a problem with your site that your customers are actually taking the time to tell you about. How many potential customers who had the same problem simply went to a competitor instead of phoning?

Even if you don't have website problems (and if your conversion rate is 1% to 2%, I'd be shocked if you didn't), that phone line is a window into the requirements of your customers. If they are phoning to find out what it costs to have your blue widget delivered, or to tell you that your site is too slow, or to ask whether the green trousers come with a belt, they are telling you what they want your site to do for them.

8. Don't be afraid to make, and admit to, mistakes.

Most people are terrified of failure, or more specifically of being seen to have failed. Often, even when there is a great potential reward, people will turn down a reasonable idea - just because they are afraid of how people's perceptions of them will change if they are wrong.

I have known website owners who have refused to experiment with ideas because they didn't want to risk reducing their conversion rate (of 1%). I've known others who've refused to experiment with one part of a site because last time it was changed the conversion rate improved (therefore, presumably, changing that same bit in any way could only result in a decrease in conversions).

In the same vein, the sunk cost fallacy is a common cause of low conversion rates. Once someone has made the decision to do something with a site, you will find that person resistive to change. This is especially true where they have paid for the implementation of the change. It is even true when it can be demonstrated that the change in question is directly responsible for a drop in the site conversion rate.

Most people are remarkably blinkered to these sorts of issues - you may even be suffering from one of these blind spots yourself.

Learn to experiment, and learn to let things go - you learn from your mistakes, not your successes. And don't be afraid to try the same reasonable ideas that once failed again at a later date. You will rarely know precisely why an idea failed to improve a conversion rate, but an idea that doesn't work one year may be spectacularly successful the next.

7. Don't jump to conclusions.

It is extremely difficult to predict accurately what changes will have a significant positive effect. So many factors work together, and there are so many differences between users of one site compared to another, that experience can often work against you when you're trying to improve a conversion rate.

Let me take you on a journey through Site A (an online shop I had the pleasure of advising). The owner of Site A had changed his product listing. He used to have ten items per page, and he increased it to 20. The extra products listed on each page gave the users more choice, but his conversion rate didn't change. Next, he added larger product imagery to the listing - unfortunately this slowed the site down considerably, and his conversion rate went down 10%. Finally, he split his categories up, as they were getting a bit crowded and unwieldy. After this last change, his conversion rate increased back to its original level.

After three rounds of changes, the owner of Site A had the same conversion rate for his site, and viewed the only positive change as the last one, change 3. He attributed it to better organisation of products. And here we have the problem - he was wrong. The positive change was actually change 2.

I'm going to run through this slowly, as this is counter-intuitive - after all, how can the change with the measured negative effect actually be positive? The reason the change was actually positive is that these things work together - they are not independent.

The first change to Site A was neutral. When the second change was made, 20 extra images per page were being loaded. These images slowed the site to a crawl. When the third change was made, several categories contained fewer products than before - around half of his categories had 10 products or less - and these new, smaller category pages loaded faster. Much faster. These smaller category pages were much faster to load, and the extra imagery did a good job of helping to sell to the users. The increase in sales came from these pages, after the third change, came from these smaller categories.

After change 3, Site A still has the same conversion rate as it did before starting. But once the changes were correctly identified as positive (change 2), negative (change 1) and neutral (change 3), it is a simple matter of reversing the negative. So, the new categories were kept, the images were kept, and the number of items per page was reduced back down to 10. The final result of all of this was a positive change to the conversion rate.

And the moral of the story - it is very easy, in hindsight, to attribute positive and negative effects to changes, but it is extremely difficult to do so accurately and correctly. Examine the effects of changes and, if you can, isolate and test individual effects.

6. Track everything.

Many people make the mistake of only tracking small pieces of information. Or tracking everything but only looking at a small part of the data. Data is your friend, and you need to understand what the different metrics available to you are actually measures of if you want to have any clue what effect your work is actually having.

Most important, of course, when looking at the conversion rate, is the volume of sales. Some people only look at that number. But other numbers can tell you about how useful your site is throughout the shopping process.

The percentage of repeat visitors tells you something, about whether you are engaging visitors early in the purchasing process and bringing them back for the sale. A high bounce rate indicates pages that are failing to deliver on their promises. Add to cart rates, cart abandonment rates, login vs registration vs abandonment rates, product removal (from cart) rates - all of these will identify areas of your checkout and purchase process that are underperforming, or improving.

5. Get On With It!

There's no better way to ensure an unchanging conversion rate than doing nothing. Don't wait - start today. The more you experiment, the more you will learn and the more opportunities you give yourself to improve your numbers. Get in the habit of testing and tracking constantly. There's always room for improvement.

4. Make the most of your space. But avoid clutter.

How many sites have a nice piece of prime real estate at the top of the page simply saying "your cart is empty"? Too many. The user usually knows their cart is empty. They've not added anything to it. Why occupy a prime sales spot with worthless information? You could hide the cart, or link to a "getting started" article - an introduction to your products, or recommendations.

A cart is designed to catch the eye - but before something is added to the cart, this is an unwelcome distraction from other, more relevant, calls to action. You want your users clicking through to products and then adding those products to their baskets - and you don't want to distract them in the meantime with an empty cart space or a useless "checkout" button.

3. Unobstructive convenience is key.

When I worked with Juno Records in London, one of my most startling discoveries was that far from being obsessed with speed, some of the users of the site would spend a day - or more - building a cart of products.

There was a good reason for this - the shopping page of the site at the time was several megabytes - but users would happily load the page, and browse the mammoth list of products. They could listen to snippets of tracks, and they would browse the entire list - top to bottom - listening to snippets and adding things to their basket.

One of the first versions of the new Juno site had a cart on a separate page to the products (as is common for many ecommerce sites). When you added a new item to your cart, it took you away from the page you were on. Given that users had spent time at this point browsing through the product list, and by moving them to a new page you lost their place on that product list, this was not a usability improvement.

Likewise, some users would leave their cart half-built and return to it the next day. Or several days later. The default session timeout on one early version "broke" the site for those users.

One trick to avoiding problems like this is first to know your users. Their habits may not be what you expect.

But more importantly than that, think "unobtrusive convenience". Make the user's life easier, but don't make them work unnecessarily for that convenience.

For example, save the user's cart for them, but don't force them to create an account to do so - cookies are your friend. The user should be able to leave, and then come back later and continue shopping. Check that moving users to a new page when they add an item to their cart doesn't disrupt their shopping. Don't force users to create accounts when they want to buy - offer them the option but don't let it get in their way if they're not interested.

2. Be smart with discount codes and coupons.

Discount codes and coupons can be a great way to drive sales. They can also backfire, making customers who would otherwise buy feel like they're not getting a good deal, or missing out on a saving. This isn't good for business.

There are several solutions to this, but ideally you should look to downplay discount code redemption in the checkout process. One good trick is to ensure everyone has a discount, even if it's not a great one. Another is to move code redemption into the account system instead of the checkout system. Yet another is to identify users with discounts (if you can) when they log in and then offer to apply the code if they have one available.

1. Be clear about your pricing strategy.

Pricing is tricky for almost every industry. Price yourself too high and you'll lose out to cheaper competitors. Price yourself too low and you'll end up appearing cheap. Price some products high and others low and you'll look like you're pushing some brands over others, or worse that you're expensive for some products (which tends to make people think you're expensive for all products, even if you're not).

It's important to be clear with your pricing - if you're aiming to be the cheapest then be the cheapest. Offer price comparisons or price matching. Tout your prices above all else. If you're going for higher prices and selling quality of service, don't shout about your expensive prices.

This also applies to shipping. Delivery costs are almost always an additional expense incurred during the checkout process. If you add delivery costs during the checkout process, then exactly when you don't want people reconsidering their purchase, you're giving them a reason to. Make delivery free or flat rate and add it from the start of the shopping process. There's no harm in reducing delivery cost - and telling the customer you've done so - during the checkout process.

Bonus!

One excellent (and practical) way to increase your website conversion rate is to add consumer reviews to your store. They are a proven way to increase sales, and they have an excellent positive effect on your search engine optimisation work. A service like FeedbackFair will give your reviews extra credibility.

Your conversion rate is a measure of the number of potential customers that go on to buy. In the context of a website, it is usually the percentage of visitors that make a purchase. Many websites concentrate solely on increasing the number of visitors they have, when often they have fairly simple problems with their site that, if solved, would have a huge effect on their conversion rate and improve their site's bottom line at minimal expense.

Improving a website conversion rate can be relatively simple. Here are 10 techniques for doing just that:

10. Make The User's Life Easy

Let's start with something that sounds simple, but apparently is too complex for many companies to get right. The more difficult you make your web site to use, the less people will buy from you.

A well designed website should aim to prevent nobody from buying - to allow 100% of the people who want to buy to do so. So where do they go wrong?

• Accessibility
  Making a site accessible is a legal obligation in many countries. Despite that, inaccessible websites are still being created. That can affect your sales, depending on how inaccessible you are, as visitors find the site impossible to use and go elsewhere (and end up recommending one of your competitors to their friends as well). A fairly typical inaccessible site could be losing 5% of potential sales because of this. (A really inaccessible website could even prevent search engines indexing it, giving a far higher amount of potential lost sales.)  
• Browsers
  Many designers only pay attention to Internet Explorer. The justification for this is usually that 99% of the site's users use IE. It never seems to occur to the designers that perhaps the reason they have so few visitors with other browsers is that their site is fundamentally broken - it doesn't work in anything else. Percentages of people not using IE varies from site to site - over 60% of visitors to this site use an alternative browser, for example. The number most often quoted though, is that 80-85% of web users are using IE on Windows, which means that an average site that doesn't work in anything else could easily be losing 15-20% of sales.  
• Be Bold!
  What happens when a user decides to buy a product? They add it to a shopping basket. How do they add it? They click a button or link (usually a button). What happens when they can't see the button? They go elsewhere. There are some users who are still uncomfortable scrolling. Having things above the fold is still important. And yet there are still plenty of sites out there with buttons that are too subtle, or don't say the right thing, or are hidden away at the bottom of the page. "Add" is rubbish button text. "Buy" is ok. "Add xxx To Your Basket" is great. "Add xxx to Your Basket" in big letters on a big, bright button, near the top of the page, is even better. Calls to action, like this, don't have to be gaudy or tasteless, but they do have to be obvious and clear. Sites I have worked on where just the call to action was changed have reported anything from a 1% to 30% increase in sales as a result.  
• Usability
  If your potential customers want to find out more before they buy, can they? Is it obvious to the user where to go to find the technical specs on your products? Are they online at all? Are they in PDF format? Can users even find your products in the first place? This is probably the most common mistake I see on any website - a complete failure to think of what the user wants and needs, and how they might use a site. Plenty of sites have product pages with a photo and some sales patter - and nothing else. Anything from 1% to 99% of potential sales can be lost through poor usability.

When you combine all of the problems above, it becomes fairly clear how easy it is to have a site perform poorly. Make your site accessible, make sure it is usable, make sure it works in common browsers, and make your calls to action clear and unambiguous, and you should be in a position to start converting the people who want to buy.

9. Be Clear, Open and Honest

If you have a product out of stock, say so. Few things annoy users as much as reading all about a product they are after, adding it to a cart, and starting the checkout process - only to find out the product isn't actually available.

The same applies to pricing - a user might spend $100 on a product, but when they find out the shipping is $100 on top of that, they are unlikely to continue the sale. Showing delivery pricing is tricky business, but not impossible. An Ip to Country database will allow you to work out where a user is from and show them a likely delivery cost, for example. If you can't do that, show delivery prices for the countries most appropriate to you - where your products are most often delivered, or for major world regions.

8. Don't Waste Time

One of the biggest mistakes sites make is asking for too much information. Your conversion process may be sale, or it may be a request for information. Either way, don't waste the user's time asking for things you don't need to know. This is, of course, doubly important when it comes to asking for information the user deems private, and that they don't want to give out without good reason.

You don't need to demand the user's email address before letting them download a PDF. You don't need their phone number when they fill out an email enquiry form. A user may not want to buy from you twice - so why make them create an account so they can buy again later before processing their first order? You can give the user the option to do all of these things by all means, but make sure it's not compulsory.

7. Help The User Trust You

Most people are still cautious when buying online, and rightly so. There are plenty of people you really shouldn't give your credit card information to! It's important to give the potential customer every reason to trust you.

An address - bricks and mortar, not a P.O. Box - is a good start. A phone number, with people answering the phone, also helps. Showing a privacy policy and explaining shipping procedures clearly can also help the user to trust you. If you have a SSL certificate, show the "VeriSign Secured" logo to the user.

Design and content also play a part in trust. A poor design gives off an unprofessional feeling. If a company can't afford a decent website, or won't spend the money on it, how can a user be sure their order will be treated with the importance it deserves? If content is inaccurate or badly written, the same applies - show that you take pride in what you do.

6. Have a Clear Returns Policy

Returns on the web are, and are likely to remain, a major issue for consumers. With a bricks and mortar shop, the customer knows where the shop is and that to return the product they simply have to go back there and explain the problem. With the web, this is more of an issue. This is especially true for clothing (where people cannot try things on before buying).

Users are impressed with sites with a good returns policy and are more likely to buy from them. Have people phone for returns - they can then explain the problem to a real person, which is always a good first step. Free return shipping is usually a good option, if commercially viable. People don't like to pay to return things, especially if it is a mistake by the retailer. Finally, give the user plenty of time to return things. 28 days is fairly common, but if it takes you that long to deliver a product, what use is the return policy? 28 days from the date of delivery is better.

5. Keep the User Informed

When somebody buys something online, they want to know when it's going to arrive at their door. People are impatient, after all. Giving them an estimated delivery date during the checkout process is a good start. Emailing them when their product is dispatched is great. Giving them a tracking number if using a delivery service that supports online tracking is even better. Keep the user informed at every step of the process, before and after sale, about as much as you can.

How will this improve your conversion rate? Leaving the customer happy once they have made a sale means they are more likely to speak favourably about you later. They may even recommend you to their friends and within online communities. They are also far more likely to buy from you again.

Think about it like this - if a salesman is doing their absolute best to help you, and to make your life easy, and answering your questions, you might buy what they were selling. If they completely ignored you after you'd bought from them, how would you feel about them? They might well have undone all the good work they put in, because once you'd completed your purchase they see no immediate value in you. A company that shows it cares about their customers, even after they've finished shopping, will make a user far happier and far more likely to return.

4. Offer Different Payment Options

It might sound obvious, but you should offer the user a reasonable selection of methods of payment. Not everybody has a credit card, and those that do don't always want to use them. You don't have to accept cheques, but when deciding on payment methods, consider alternatives to the usual methods. Make the user's life easy and give them what they want.

3. Improve the Value of Visitors

People that buy from you are doing so because they like what it is they see. If a user adds a product to a basket, show them other things they might like as well. If they are viewing a product, the same applies - show them similar items. While they might not buy the product they first saw, other similar ones may not have issues that put them off the first. Upselling and cross-selling are tried and tested sales techniques, and there is no reason not to use them on the web.

2. Be Memorable

A good site will include information. A poor one is just an online catalogue. Information (articles, advice, reviews and so on) all help the user early in their buying process. Users start with research online, just as they do offline. If you can make contact with the user at that stage of their process, and give a favourable impression, there is a good chance that they will come back and buy from you when they finally decide to make a purchase.

Being memorable, and making sure you stick in the user's mind, is dependant on a lot of factors. You must have a USP (see the next point), and branding is important (no good if your visitors remember why you are great but don't remember your name), as well as the quality of your site and information.

1. Know Your USP

Finally, the most important point of all - your Unique Selling Point (USP). Your USP is what sets you apart from your competition. If a visitor goes to several sites looking for a product, why would they decide to buy from you instead of somewhere else?

Many companies do not know their USP. Almost all companies have one, but not all of them are aware of it. If you are a family run business, that's a potential USP. Great customer service, low prices, products that can't be bought elsewhere, free delivery, great support - all of these are USPs. Tell your users what yours is. Shout it from the proverbial rooftops.

Part 2

In March 2009, part 2 of this series was added: Nine More Tips for Improving Your Website Conversion Rate.

Bonus!

One excellent (and practical) way to increase your website conversion rate is to add consumer reviews to your store. They are a proven way to increase sales, and they have an excellent positive effect on your search engine optimisation work. A service like FeedbackFair will give your reviews extra credibility.