Websites with many pages tend to be regarded more highly by search engines than websites with just a few pages. It is therefore better to have a site that is 50 pages or more rather than a website with 5 webpages with very long pages. Each page should however contain approximately 300 words of text containing keywords in order to be taken into account properly by google.
Short pages tend to download faster and get indexed faster. Since visitors will likely avoid websites that take a long time to download, then it will be advantageous in this regard.
Avoid nesting your webpages too deeply and keep important pages near to the root folder. Code should be minimised and this can be achived by exporting javascript and CSS to external files. It is important to stress that you need pages with genuine, original content. Your webpage should be W3C standards complient. do not create pages that are too similar. The following lists the basic pages that most ecommerce websites usually contain…
Homepage: The first page a user sees when they type your site’s domain name.
Products Pages: Categorised and Listed Display of your products. Typically contains pictures and information.
Shopping Cart Page: Where the user goes to add, pay, or register for use of your site’s online ordering system. This needs to be secure and is typically not indexed and should be placed on your htaccess exclusion list.
Frequently Asked Questions: Help to answer any potential questions a customer might have.
About: A page describing your company.
Contact Information: Address, email, phone number and directions of your brick and morter front end.
Resources / Website Directory: References to external sites that might be useful. Should ideally not be bought or exchanged but instead be genuine and naturally formed.
Customer Feedback: This could be a blog, testimonials page, or even a message board.
Legal Stuff: Any other legal stuff that customers might need to know such as terms and conditions, disclaimers, copyright information, privacy policy, returns policy.
