Best Practices for home page design for ecommerce website

[amitramani]

I know this question is not directly related to SEO, but I figured I have been getting some good help from this forum, so why not?

The website is www.vrtack.com. I am looking to redesign the home page. It is an ecommerce website selling equestrian clothing and leather goods.

My goals are:

1. Reduce the very high bounce rate and drop-off rate.

2. Fine tune the relevancy of the website towards a handful of keyword phrases.

3. Engage the visitor to create better click-through and to increase the average time spent on the page/site.

4. Page Loading time is of importance. It has to load quickly.

I would love to hear some specific suggestions, examples, best practices.

[ReferralCandy]

Hi amitramani,

We have been looking at a couple of high traffic ecommerce websites and picking out common characteristics that make them work. Here's some tips we have compiled that should be relevant to you:

http://blog.referralcandy.com/2013/01/14/ecommerce-website-updates/

Hope the article will help and let me know if you need any further help with optimising your site design!