The most difficult part about choosing a free website templates for your online store is not knowing how it will fare with regards to conversion. After all, as an online merchant your end goal is to sell, sell, sell. There are some good usability rules you can look at when assessing website templates free off the internet. One, is the overall design. It should be appropriate for retail. Look at other sites out there similar to yours to find out how they’re rendering their online stores. If you know any good sites to benchmark against, you can compare your free website template against that. Amazon is a good benchmark site for retail. Navigation is one of the key elements to check when it comes to the design of the free website template. The more important pages should be easily accessible. That includes your main category pages, about us, some information on your store’s policies and of course, the page that allows users to contact you. Next, check also if the free website template matches your chosen niche. Don’t go with free website templates that look all too serious when you are selling baby products. In the same light, don’t go with cute templates if you’re planning to target a more mature audience in the business demographic. Remember, when it comes to design, beauty is not everything. Your free website template, should first and foremost, be functional. Make sure that all your links are working and that the way you move within the template is easy and flows with the purchase process. The real driver of sales is in how you customize your free website templates. Write compelling copy that talks about your products and how your buyers will benefit from it. Don’t say “I” or “we” so much, when it should really be about “you”. Spell out to your potential buyers what’s in it for them to buy from you and not your competitors. Offer fresh material for them to read on your products – whether it be reviews of items you sell or how-to instructions or even care articles if you sell clothing, furniture or anything that requires maintenance. These are great materials that your potential buyers will appreciate. You’ll never know, they might even look to you as an expert or an authority on the subject matter. Another advantage of offering fresh content is that it is easily crawlable by search engine bots and spiders, which will help you rank better for the keywords that you are targeting. Last but not the least, don’t leave all the selling to your free website template. Your choice of products contributes greatly to your online store’s performance. Select the products that you know your market will take to. Do your research beforehand, and find out if there is demand for it. Provide variety in brands, colors, sizes, materials and everything else in between. If your current supplier is lacking in this area, you could try free drop shipping companies for your supply chain management. They can give you hundreds, if not millions of products to choose from to offer to your potential buyers. Drop ship companies even help reduce your operational cost by taking out the hassles of shipping and inventory warehousing from you. Continue testing what works for your online store and improving on the factors that do affect conversions and your bottomline. This is the only way to get it right and continue growing your online store