We know that there are many ecommerce websites in this world now and maybe you have no idea how to make your ecommerce site famous. In this tutorial, we will show you few tips to consider when you build your ecommerce website.
Coming up with a catchy, memorable store name for your web home address is a good place to begin, and creating a marketing strategy early on can give you a valuable head start. As for design and development, we’ve rounded up what makes a good eСommerce website, as well as a few key points to account for when planning a successful web store.
Must-have Features for eCommerce Websites
- User-friendly interface
This could mean clickable images so a user doesn’t have to aim for text or an autocomplete function on a search bar. The key to a user-friendly design is to help people get what they want in the least number of steps.
- High-resolution visual content
Product shots from different angles and video reviews help shoppers make a decision. However, visitor numbers might drop along with the page load speed if you don’t think through the technical part.
- User reviews
Having a feature that lets customers share their experience with a product, whether positive or negative, helps other users make shopping decisions and adds credibility to your website.
- Mobile-friendly adaptation
According to Hootsuite’s Digital Report, 48% of the time spent on the internet is from 5.112 billion unique mobile device users: that’s 2/3 of the world’s population. Another statistical report shows that 79% of smartphone users have purchased something from their device in the past six months. With statistics like this, adapting your website design to the mobile web is a necessity.
10 Important Things for Your Ecommerce Website
1. Website safety and security
No Internet user wants to catch a bug while browsing the web, but it’s not just the safety of their computer that’s at risk. As an eCommerce business, you store volumes of data about your products and the users that register to buy on your site, so safety is one of the most crucial eCommerce website requirements. Any breach of this data puts your business at risk; your leads’ contact information could be stolen and sold on, or you could permanently lose essential data.
An unsecured website gives you bad reputation on Google as well as on other search engines. Not so long ago, Google started flagging websites without an SSL certificate and HTTPS protocol. These are more than just warnings or recommendations; users won’t be able to visit sites without these two components, and you might be losing potential orders if your certificate has expired.
2. Optimization before and during eСommerce website development
Talking about bad reputations, Google’s new perk for users is flagging websites with slow loading speeds. If in the past people would click on a link, wait for it to load and go back if it doesn’t do so quick enough, now they might even forgo checking out a website with low load speed altogether.
According to Think with Google research, if a page takes up to five seconds to load, the probability of visitors bouncing increases by 90%. That’s all the more reason to think about optimization and make sure your site is in top performance condition.
The purpose of SEO is to enhance your sales by making it rank higher in a search engine with different strategies and techniques. Part of it is adding keywords to the content you add to the website, as well as meta information to pages — titles and descriptions — and images. Many specialists forget that customers can find you through an image search, but only if you add ‘alt’ descriptions to your visual content.
Another thing that a lot of companies forgo is involving an SEO specialist at the early stages of eCommerce website development. At the very least, the website should launch with all the required meta tags, but an SEO specialist can also help you with organizing page structure and internal linking, creating content strategy, building a mobile-friendly design, improving the loading speed, as well as other important aspects.
3. Website search and filtering functionality
People use the search bar even on websites that don’t sell anything and if yours does, it should definitely offer advanced search functionality. For example, an advanced feature can be a visual search where users can upload a photo of an item they like and your search engine will try to find a product that is similar, if not exactly the same.
Browsing categories is only necessary if users don’t know what they’re looking for and need some inspiration. In other cases, a simple search will find them the product they need in just a couple of clicks.
Some users won’t remember exactly what a product is called, so you might want to tag yours with keywords or synonyms.
4. Registration and related issues
There is a certain benefit to registering on an eCommerce website, like saving the shopping history or delivery address, but some users prefer a guest checkout form or a one-click-buy feature.
Consider how many different accounts you have on the web. Like the average user, you probably have numerous ones for different things, and some people want to avoid registering on yet another website to make a one-time order. If scoring a sale outweighs getting the personal data of a few shoppers onto your database, think about adding a guest checkout feature into your eCommerce site. There are other ways to remind shoppers of your site address, such as adding it on the order packaging or at the end of the message with the shipment number.
A registration form isn’t your only option; you can also ask users to sign in with social media or a minimal form with their name, email, and phone number. In both cases, you can auto-generate an account and email them the login details.
5. Payment options
Adding all possible payment options might be too much when you are just developing an eCommerce website, but only offering one limits you to shoppers who use this option. Although unexpected shipping costs (55%) and a lengthy checkout process (26%) are key reasons for buyers abandoning their shopping carts, according to the 2019 Payment Methods Report, 6% of them would bail on you because there weren’t enough payment options.
6. Shipping rates
As mentioned before, unexpected shipping costs are the reason for 55% of customers abandoning their shopping carts. It could be because they don’t know the rates or expected a lower sum, or there are extra charges.
Online shopping is a matter of convenience and if you don’t have free delivery, there should be detailed information about shipment options and rates in the menu with a link on every product page.
7. CMS integration
A content management system (CMS) helps store and manage all your visual and written content as well as your marketing documentation in one place. You can edit or add new information and the changes will automatically be reflected on the website once published. A CMS can also help your employees promptly react to tickets from customers.
You can use a ready-made solution such as PrestaShop, OpenCart or Magento. These options are open-source, so you can integrate them into your website code.
8. Mobile functionality
According to Criteo’s 2018 Global Commerce review, more than half of online transactions are carried out through a mobile device. Though people are more likely to buy from a mobile app, you’ll still have a better conversion rate if your eCommerce interface easily adapts to the mobile web.
9. Good shopping cart design
We don’t need statistics to tell us that web users like simple but functional shopping carts. A simple shopping cart involves as few steps as possible, but there are ways to enhance its functionality.
For example, you can have three types of users: registered, unregistered, and those who’d prefer to remain a guest. In the first step, when a user clicks on the shopping cart, it can ask them to log in, register, or buy as a guest. Users should be automatically redirected to their full baskets once they register or log in — having to look for the same items again can be discouraging. On the other hand, you can do a one-step checkout, where all steps will be in one dynamic window that updates automatically when a user inputs data.
10. Marketing strategy
Whether you are launching a website based on a physical store or you are new to the retail business, a good marketing strategy developed along with the website can give you a head start on the first orders. However, it also defines the structure of the website and determines the elements that help to create a good one.
Developing a marketing strategy early on can help you identify what features you’ll need. For example, you might want to add sharing options for social media or push notifications, both in desktop browsers and for mobile devices. It’s more efficient to do that while developing a website rather than after it has launched.
Final Thoughts
Saying that there’s a lot to consider when developing an eCommerce website is the understatement of the year. We know from experience all the features, nuances, and technology you need to come out with a convenient, functional, high-performance online store that will attract customers. Beside above tips, there are other important factors for your ecommerce site, it is hosting provider. Whether you are using nopCommerce, Woocommerce, Magento, Prestashop, and other CMS, you need to ensure that you have chosen right hosting provider for your ecommerce website.
