Some good points to take into consideration:

Does it meet the 8 second rule?

The general website rule is that a prospective customer  will take 8 seconds to evaluate your Home Page in terms of:

• Does it look professional?
• Does it sell what I want?
• Does it look like a trustworthy site?

Does your Webshop Design look professional?

Customers need to feel confident before they will buy from your site. Having the tools to design your own Webshop may appear to save you money, but if it doesn’t bring in the sales then it could be a false economy. Once your design is done, realistically, how many times will it change in the future? Having a content managed Webshop means you can change the Homepage content and Product related information yourself, as the Webshop Design template will allow you to ‘pour’ the content into the Webshop Design ‘mould’.

 Is the Webshop content relevant and interesting?

It is essential to keep your content, pricing and proposition up to date and competitive in order to gain sales. In order to reduce costs and keep your Webshop content fresh, your Webshop must have the facilities for you to maintain the information yourself. This ensures the Webshop is dynamic and will save you money by putting you in control.

Does the Webpage take too long to load?

A poor Webshop Design can be responsible for slow page load times, but also the hosting package used can have a significant impact. Minimising the use of large graphics and/or flash will help reduce the physical size of the webpage.
Choosing the right hosting package can make all the difference to the customer’s impression of your Webshop, remember the 8 second rule?

Does the Webshop have the functionality to maximise your sales?

A Webshop is geared to selling your goods and/or services, but does it have the functionality to help you sell more, control and monitor what you have sold, collect the payments and maximise your growing customer base?
It is important you have the facilities to manage all aspects of the retailing cycle in order to ensure your business can meet the rising demand.

How well is your Webshop performing?

Knowing who is accessing your Webshop, from where and for how long, will enable you to change your webshop content in order to keep competitive. Tracking your advertising successes and monitoring your goal conversions are essential if you want to maximise your sales.

Is your Webshop search engine friendly?

Would you build a shop in the middle of a field in Scotland? Maybe you would if you knew there was enough local custom. Putting your Webshop on the Internet is just like this example, therefore you need to ensure your Webshop is Search Engine Friendly so that they can ‘read and index’ your Webshop in their directories. Gaining traffic to your site should be considered to be an essential part of your new Webshop, after all who wants a shiny new shop with no customers?

What options are there available to get traffic to your site, in a cost effective manner?

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) covers the technical and content parts of your Webshop to ensure your Webshop is included into the major search engines that will drive traffic to your Webshop. Using Google Adwords, to bid for keywords can be an effective way to obtain good quality traffic, but used incorrectly it could waste a lot of money. Make sure your SEO expenditure covers both the technical and content aspects of your Webshop.