Ecommerce and web performance are vital elements in any modern business strategy within a competitive market.

Success in ecommerce requires the benefit of the experience of those who have got it right by getting it wrong.

Harvest Technology's ecommerce team honed their experience by evolving some of the UK's most successful travel sites, each of which now enjoy a monthly, multi-million pound turnover. They achieved this by finding out what worked and what didn't - in other words, by learning from their mistakes.

The outcome of this is that this expertise is now readily available to you. Add this to our sound business development knowledge and marketing skills and you have a recipe for outstanding success.

We believe that success in ecommerce is achieved through focussing on five key areas:

Driving relevant traffic to the web site - The most important word here is relevant. It's not that hard to drive volumes of visitors to a site but it's more difficult to get visitors who are actually interested in what you have to offer. If you're selling stationery, for example, do you really want lots of visits from people looking for a cheap holiday?

Harvest Technology believe that by evolving a multi-faceted marketing campaign, that involves promotion both on and off the internet, you can build ongoing streams of site traffic and sell your products and services online.

Optimising your conversion rate - So you drive lots of people to your site who are interested in what you have to offer. Then what? If you want them to buy from you then you must make the experience as quick and easy as possible. Is your site guilty of "sales prevention"?

Look at your competitors' prices and then your own. How do you compare? How well presented are your products? Are you promoting your company's unique selling points? These are all questions that Harvest Technology can help you answer.

The most important rule here is to put yourself in your customers' shoes - if you were one of your customers, would you buy from you?

Maximising your average sale value - This area is the most overlooked by businesses when developing their ecommerce operation. Provide a "shopping basket" facility so people can buy more than one thing at a time. Encourage your customers to consider the value for money benefits of the next product or service up in your range. Cross-sell by offering them other items they might not otherwise know you provide. If you go to a supermarket, for example, you might see magazines, sweets or batteries at the checkout while you queue. They are there for the very good reason that people see them and buy them from there but would not necessarily go looking for them along the aisles.

Solid roots - Get the right domain name(s) for your business. As well as choosing one that closely fits your company name, you might also consider others that include a key service or product you offer.

Select your web hosting company carefully by looking at their track record. Compare prices. Don't be afraid to ask for references from satisfied customers. Most importantly, though, make sure they offer a service level agreement that guarantees that your web pages will be available for at least 99 per cent of the year - down time costs you money!

Web performance monitoring - Once you have all the key ingredients in place and your ecommerce site is up and running, monitor its performance. How many visitors does it get a day and, of those, how many actually buy from the site? Are all of your pages available all of the time? Are some taking an unreasonable amount of time to load? Where are your visitors coming from? What type of computer are they using and what operating system? What times of day is that site busiest? All of this and more can (and should) be monitored on a regular basis.

Don't be afraid to change your site if something isn't working and, just as importantly, don't be tempted to meddle if it is!

Harvest Technology can help you get the best out of your ecommerce operation by working with you to get all of these areas right.