This form of merchandise has proven over the years to work not only for many customers, but also for shopkeepers who can cut back on the costs of an actual shop and instead invest in the layout and software behind their online store. Companies like Ashop in turn devote their time not only to perfect their e-commerce software, but also to make sure that their services follow the hottest trends and are designed in line with the most recent findings about the consumer behavior in online shopping.

One thing every online store owner should think about is the layout of his website. A recent study sheds a light on that matter in the so-called 3 seconds test. If after 3 seconds on your website, the consumer is still unable to say what is it exactly that you're selling, he's very likely to abandon the site and never return again. A striking 92.6% of consumers admitted that the visual aspects of a store is a top factor that affects their purchase decision. The thing to do here is to make sure our store looks appealing to a potential clients – it has a clear, professional-looking layout and features large images of high quality. There are some software products that can help in achieving a proper product presentation, such as the rotating image container called the carousel. Videos play a part in the purchase decision too – one third of customers admitted that they bought products online after being influenced by a video, and as many as 57% of the US customers claimed to be more confident about buying a product after seeing it on a video. In case of an online store, layout simply speaks for itself.

Another important factor is the checkout abandonment statistics that reveal the importance of the shopping cart software used to power our e-store. 22 separate studies have shown a striking average of 67.4 % of abandonment rate at checkout, with 41% of customers abandoning their order due to hidden checkout charges and nearly a third because of the necessity of registration. There are a few ways we can make the checkout process simpler and more effective by, for instance, adding clear 'Proceed' and 'Back' buttons that facilitate the purchase, showing the checkout progress bar so the customer knows how far he's into it and keeping the checkout design simple and clear so as not to provide unnecessary distraction to consumers.

A different thing to add to your checkout payment page are the clear logos of trustworthy companies, which make more than 80% of customers feel safer about their purchase. It's important to provide more than one payment method, unless we want as many as 59% of our consumers to leave our shop and abandon their purchase. If it's impossible and we can only grant one method, we better make sure it's PayPal – it processes 60% of total transactions online and so it's bound to make your customers feel confident and secure about their purchase.

Those and much more are factors that Ashop always takes into account when designing their e-commerce software in order to provide solutions that are not only efficient and trustworthy, but also boost the consumer confidence and facilitate the store's performance on the online market.