Front and Center: Designing for Sales

There is a great thrill in selling online. Setting up a Web site and having a customer visit and then buy something from you is a thrill well worth experiencing. When commerce is no longer limited to local geography, something amazing happens.

It can also be a great headache. Shipping a product that was purchased with a stolen credit card number not only makes no profit for you, but also ends with lost product, assorted fees from the bank, and a great deal of your time spent on a process of nothing more than providing a paper trail for a thief who ripped you off.

This chapter should not serve as your complete training on the wonderful world of e-commerce. You will face many issues and problems that having nothing to do with FrontPage, and handling them quickly and efficiently can only come from experience.

In short, do you homework before you start on this adventure.

The treatment Hollywood and the evening news has given to the rise of e-commerce makes it sound like all you have to do is put something for sale online and the world will beat a path to your door.

Remember this simple fact: Just because you sell online, it does mean that people are going to buy from you.

It is your job and your duty to produce the type of site that people would want to buy from. This obviously includes an attractive and functional layout, but it also demands a site that "feels" trustworthy (buyers are going to give you their credit card numbers after all) and looks like it is being run by complete and total professionals, regardless of whether it is being run from a garage.

Designing a Web site for sales is just that, designing a Web site for sales. The e-commerce elements briefly touched on in this appendix will help you find your necessary functionality, but the design process is still up to you.

So, make it a good one.