All websites are unique in their own way.
We’ve seen trends in eCommerce website design like animation, 360-degree product previews, advanced filtering, and dynamic product search.
However, trends don’t guarantee conversion rates or robust user experiences. There are certain elements that every eCommerce site should have to stay relevant and competitive.
As an eCommerce website owner, you must consider a large number of factors to keep your visitors engaged, and woo them to buy the products and services you deal in.
Apart from the focus on features, functionalities, and overall look and feel, you need to look for ways such as credibility, strong search engine visibility, accessibility, security, and usability, in order to optimize the user experience.
To secure eCommerce, you need a strong wildcard like Comodo PositiveSSL wildcard that can secure the main domain and subdomains. Such a certificate allows strong encryption and 2048-bit RSA encryption.
User
While planning your eCommerce website, you must concentrate on your users and their preferences. As an eCommerce owner, you should bear in mind that your website is the only medium through which you operate your business, having no ability to make your customers feel, touch and smell your products physically. In such a scenario, a hassle-free, fast and enhanced user experience is the only way to impress them.
Mobile-Friendly Website
Mobile shopping accounts for 50% of online transactions. With a responsive website, content intuitively adapts to whatever device is accessing it to provide the most user-friendly experience. Walmart increased mobile sales by 98% after optimizing its mobile site. And Intelligentsia created a better purchase experience on mobile that led to a 16% increase in mobile transactions. It doesn’t matter if you have millions of product pages or five. Creating a mobile-friendly experience for your shoppers will improve sales and potentially your rankings.
High-Resolution Photos & Video
Gone are the days of posting one photo with a few bullet points and a price tag.
Shoppers want to see multiple angles and people using the product in different environments. They want to be able to zoom in and get a feel for the product.
Technical considerations for images are crucial. Images that don’t load or take too long to load will see a consumer drop-off rate of 39%, according to Adobe.
And, we’re not talking about just professional photos. Vanity Planet found that adding Instagram photos to their product pages increased checkouts by 24%.
Ecommerce websites should display multiple photos per product. The photos need to be high-resolution and optimized for page load.
Search Box
No online store can exhibit all its products on a single page. But, making a different move, you have to place branded products on the first page to impress your buyers. Provide them with a technically excellent search bar so that they can check products or services based on their specific criterions or categories. The more ease of searching you offer to your customers, the more encouraged they feel to buy the products.
Special Offers
Most ecommerce sites are using special offers in their standard marketing practices via email, social, text, etc.
When shoppers realize they’re getting a special deal, it motivates them to buy more and spend more time searching the site. If you provide free shipping or a free trial, let people know about it from the very beginning. Motivate users and make them want to explore more of your products and services.
Recommendations and Related Products
Showing personalized recommendations is a great way of remarketing — which in the traditional definition of marketing is called: cross-selling. AI-based eCommerce CRM applications can help you customize and remarket your products intelligently without forcing your customers and without implying that you are trying to sell anything.
Option to answer pre and post-sale queries and questions
While purchasing products for the first time from a new online store, customers often raise various queries and concerns. You must answer each and every pre and post-sale queries of customers on an immediate basis as it plays a great role in increasing your sales and revenue. Live chat boxes are considered to be the best arrangement to handle such queries.
Customer Reviews/Ratings
Today’s buyer is a smart buyer. He takes informed decisions researching the plus and minus sides of buying your brand. Given that, customer reviews are an important element for eCommerce businesses.
You can use one of the lower sections of your product page to display the reviews and ratings and the experience of your past customers to help your audience get a better understanding.
Additionally, it is not always about the rating your customers give your products. It is also about what your past customers think about you as a brand.
90% of consumers read online reviews before visiting a business. Make sure you answer and resolve customer issues on your social networks, business pages, and other popular reviews and ratings websites.
Payment
Now that your site visitors have picked the item they want to buy, it’s time to place the order and proceed to payment. And at this stage, you want to make sure that your website provides a trusted payment environment.
The Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate is a must for any e-commerce website. It’s used to encrypt the data between your server and users’ computers or smartphones, so the payment information will be protected from any external interference.
When the website is secured by an SSL certificate, HTTPS will appear in its URL.
In addition to secure payments, the existence of the SSL certificate will also help your website to be favored by search engines.
Order Tracking
Allowing your customers to track their order is a value addition to your customer service efforts. In logic, it is their right to know the delivery status of their order and where exactly their shipment is.
About 99% of customers expect being able to track their orders throughout the shipping process.
With an order tracking application, you can provide your customers with a unique order tracking number, along with an estimated date of delivery. You can notify them at each stage of delivery process.
The end note
Designing and developing an eCommerce website is not an ordinary task. It involves in-depth industry knowledge and vast experience in the realm of professional web development. The idea is to offer your users convenience while keeping your website simple and useful.
