According to Ecommercetimes.com, more than 43% of e-commerce businesses fail due to their disregard for consumer experience and satisfaction – hence the need for Internet business consultants and their advice. Consumer satisfaction is the most important basic issue directing all e-commerce. A business can hire e-consultants to create websites, contact host providers and hire professionals to design suitable websites.

But Internet business consultants insist that the sustainability of these websites to attract customers continuously forms the crucial factor of e-commerce. Customers provide the revenues to businesses to stay in the market and attain profitability. Customers give the word-of-mouth marketing and publicity to drive traffic.
What is Consumer Experience?

It can be described as the combination of everything that the customer visits, views, reads and interacts with on a website. This includes the design, usability, word flow, merchandise, graphics, promotional features and messages seen on the website. These factors which play a visible role in the maintenance of e-commerce are important.
Important Factors:

Choice of E-commerce Hosting Service Provider: The multitude of web hosting services existent in the market has made it extremely difficult for a business to choose an appropriate host provider. When doing so, a business should always consider the following factors:

* Inner strengths and weaknesses
* What products and services is the business trying to sell and market
* Ensure that the web hosting service provider has a good and reliable reputation – the service is suited to your firm and provides the appropriate tools for marketing and sale
* Look for the web hosting service’s customer support – make sure that the customer service is for all 24 hours a day and seven days a week
* How much disk storage and bandwidth you are going to need for your online business – setting up an informative page about the business will not need much disk storage and bandwidth required from the service provider. In comparison, for a full-fledged website engaging in online transactions, the service provider will have to provide more bandwidth and disk storage. All this will have a direct effect on the cost. Will the cost incurred in securing needed bandwidth and disk storage meet and surpass the profit to be made via the online enterprise. If the answer is positive, there is no need to pursue this line of enquiry.
* Does the web hosting company provide enough bandwidth and disk storage for scope of expansion and growth? Imagine the negative publicity if your web hosting company shut down your website simply because you had too many site visitors and this exceeded the agreed amount of disk storage and bandwidth?
* Check host company’s data transfer rate and uptime. Ensure that the host service provider has a reliable and good data transfer system. Online business is not going to flourish if the website has a slow rate of data transfer coupled with frequent power cuts and crashes. This will create negative publicity and limit the number of customers to website.
* Ensure that the control panel provided by the host service provider enables you to manage web site and keep track all website activity. A business should only go to that provider whose control panel allows the business to check bandwidth and disk storage. The control panel should also monitor consumer access to the website and be easy to operate.

Usability Design: E-commerce can only be successful as long as your website is easy to use. In online business, it is safe to assume that the customer will have a lot of patience. But you must incite the customer to keep coming back to the site due to its simple and easy-to-use design. Thus, website design including use of messages, tool and information bars, word flow and graphics has to be colourful, attractive and persuasive in nature. Website design determines your revenue and enterprise growth. There is no point in having a convoluted website and cramming all information into a single page.

The site has to have flexible navigation features with follow-on consecutive instructions and tools. A good website design provides the customer the freedom to choose, search and compare. The use of graphics, messages and toolbars has to be appropriate. Information has to be precise and crisp in format. This calls for the importance of writing website copy. Usually e-commerce firms design websites keeping in mind the already established reputation of the firm. Thus, there are two ways to design websites:

* One is for the new firm
* The second is for the established firm with a brand image and niche market

Internet business consultants have the freedom to experiment with website design in the first instance. The firm and its business are new. The website, in such cases, has to be a venue for online transaction as well as advertisement for the company. In general, a good website should have the following features:

* Easy navigation
* Informative messages
* Optimal search engines
* Web pages in cut format enabling comparison of products with other companies while still working on original website
* Precise and concise copy
* Easy-to-use scroll buttons