What to look for

7. Product Searches

Providing a flexible and easy to use product/service search box on your ecommerce site is crucial, especially for retail websites that feature a large or more complex range of products.

Look for providers who enable:

• Free text search
• Search by multiple categories
• Users to add or remove filters during their search
• Users to sort their search results by relevant critieria
• Users to view all search results on one page

8. Web 2.0 Features

Successful ecommerce sites use Web 2.0 and in particular user generated content (UGC), to maximize their visitor and customer engagement and loyalty.

Look for ecommerce solutions that build UGC features into their offerings, including:

• Blogs
• Forums
• User reviews
• Ratings
• Polls
• Subscribe to this page
• User generated image galleries
• Video integration, including YouTube
• Editorial approval/moderation over all UGC submitted

9. Social Networking and Viral Marketing

The power of social network referrals and recommendations via social networks (e.g. Facebook, Delicious and Digg and Twitter) is enormous for online sellers, and is sure to continue to grow in  influence.

Ask prospective providers if their ecommerce solutions enable you to add:

• Social media links and feeds to pages
• ‘Forward this page to a friend’ buttons/links
• ‘Tweet this’ buttons which include the page URL and text



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