E-commerce has, for the most part, evolved far beyond the late 1990’s cliches of hair-wrenching, sanity-shattering slogs through yet another “clever” designer’s take on how shopping on the web should be. Standards prevailed, usability won out, and we’re now free to spend our collective $107 billion (Census.gov e-commerce stats) per annum. _ _ #1 - Tell Me Where I Am Whenever a user is navigating inside a store with more than 1 sub-level of navigation, it’s critical to show them where in the site structure they are. This should be accomplished with headlines, sub-headers (when necessary) and breadcrumbs (e.g. Home > Category > Sub-cat > Product). #2 - Let Me Remove Narrowing Options When a user starts to “narrow” their navigation inside a particular category (in this case by selecting the designer “Ted Baker”), it’s only right to allow them to remove those navigation selections rather than forcing the use of repetitive “back button” clicks. #3 - Allow Me to Sort Every Which Way The standards are “Price - low to high,” “Price - high to low,” “Popularity,” aka “Best Selling,” “Featured,” “User Rating” (or “Editor Rating” if you don’t have users rate products), and “New” or “Latest.” You can eliminate “Featured” if you’ve got nothing to push, but all the other sorting options must exist (assuming it’s possible to do so). #4 - Show Me the Products Unless you’ve got more than 200 products total in a sub-category, it’s only right to offer the user the option of seeing every product on one page. Broadband has rendered the load time argument nearly irrelevant and I personally (along with Mystery Guest) can’t stand sites lacking the feature. #5 - Refining Options Bring Joy If you can provide the user with a useful refinement option, you’ve made their experience better. In the instance of sizing, this is particularly important, as users loathe finding that “perfect” piece of apparel, only to discover you don’t carry it in their size. #6 - The More Specifics, the Better Rule #6 is so worthwhile, I’m repeating it. Actually, #7 serves to illustrate a substantive difference between refining your browsing in a section (as #6 shows) vs. Follow

It’s unfortunate that there are so many corporations, entrepreneurs, minipreneurs and internet marketers who are investing heavily to market and grow their businesses yet they don’t stand a chance no matter what they do. Wouldn’t you want to know why you put so much effort into marketing your products, services or websites and continually seem to get far less return than you would expect is possible? Certainly anyone going through this frustration would, and that’s why it’s so important to understand what a Unique Value Proposition (UVP) is and how it applies to your business. UNIQUE VALUE PROPOSITIONIf you’ve ever chased venture capital financing for a business idea you or your team have had, you will understand what we mean by “your 30-second elevator pitch”. I recently attended a business ventures fair in our city. This is a twice yearly event where aspiring entrepreneurs get 30-seconds to pitch a roomful of venture capitals and angel investors on the merit of their idea. It’s tougher than most people could ever imagine, to organize all of these elements into a few sentences – 1. Your target market 2. The #1 benefit your product or service provides to your target market 3. A description of your product or service 4. What makes you unique in your marketplace Of course, you cannot deal with each of these criteria alone, your Unique Value Proposition must be based on an idea that includes all of the criteria above before you can develop your UVP. In other words, as you invent or re-invent (in the case of an existing business) your business, you must base that business on your UVP rather that trying to cobble it together after you have already launched. You can have the brightest minds in the world, the most savvy marketers and sales team, kick-butt products and services and even the hardest work ethic in your market, that all means NOTHING without a strong UVP. Even more deceptive is the fact that internet marketers or entrepreneurs can achieve some early success without a strong UVP fooling them into a false sense of business success all the while teetering on the edge of ruin as the competition closes in around them. WHAT IS A UNIQUE VALUE PROPOSITIONIn all of the economics, business and marketing training I’ve been exposed to over the last twenty or so years, there is frighteningly little emphasis placed on the Follow