5 Must-Haves When Building Your ECommerce Site
What makes some eCommerce sites more successful than others? When an online business’s site design has popular and useful features, it improves the customer’s experience and can boost sales.
How can you show site visitors you’ve got the products they need to improve their lives and resolve common pain points in your industry? Here are five must-haves for building a usable, engaging eCommerce site.
1. Detailed Product Pages
When eCommerce businesses provide an abundance of information on their product pages, they give customers everything they need to make well-informed buying decisions. Examples of essential product page details include product images, shipping costs, product descriptions, sizing charts, color options, product availability, and size options.
To make the most of your product pages, work with digital marketing professionals. For instance, an eCommerce SEO agency can audit your product pages and let you know which elements are working and which you need to adjust to enjoy greater results. Ecommerce SEO services help optimize product pages to appeal to your target audience and increase your search engine rankings. This is a great way to accomplish multiple goals with one service.
2. Guest Checkout
How many times have you gone through the trouble of scrolling through product pages, making your selections, and filling your cart only to receive a prompt to create an account when you get to the checkout page? After putting in all that effort to find what you want, the last thing you feel like doing is putting in more work before crossing the finish line.
Sidestep this mistake by giving customers a guest checkout option. Not only could this boost your sales, but it also shows your customers you respect their time. If you like, you can follow up on their purchase with a message encouraging them to create an account on your site for faster checkout on future purchases.
3. Customer Reviews
When customers leave positive reviews of your products, share them on your site. Many customers rely on reviews to decide whether to buy a specific product or support a business. Not only could a review increase your sales, but it could also improve your brand reputation. Send a follow-up message to customers after they make a purchase to see how satisfied they are and encourage them to leave a review on your site.
4. Easy-to-Access Shopping Cart, Search Box, and Login Box
The shopping cart, search box, and login box are grouped together on this list because they’re usually grouped together on eCommerce sites. However, some eCommerce sites make it difficult for users to navigate to their shopping carts. This ends up being a frustrating experience for shoppers. Since practically every eCommerce site has a shopping cart function, make it easier for people to find it by placing it where they expect to find it. Most eCommerce sites have the shopping cart logo on the top right corner of the screen.
If you sell a lot of products, adding a search box to your eCommerce site makes life easier for you and shoppers. When customers know exactly what they want, they can enter it into the search bar and find it in a snap, rather than wade through pages and pages of products.
Guests who want to make a private account on your site can use a login box to sign into their account. There, they can check the status of their recent order, view past orders, and update their payment information. You can also send customers special discounts, promotions, and sales through their private accounts.
5. Payment Method Icons
Most eCommerce businesses accept credit cards like MasterCard and Visa, but limiting payment options could leave customers who use alternate methods out of luck. If you have customers across the globe, they may use alternatives like PayPal, gift vouchers, or bank transfers.
If you accept multiple payment methods, make it obvious. On the bottom of site pages, include logos of your accepted service providers and methods. Accepting various methods of payment helps you sidestep the technical limitations of some options. The more options your customers have to pay, the more options you have to get paid.
Optimize your shoppers’ experience on your site by including must-have elements. By incorporating the above tips, you could receive a boost in sales before you know it.
This article has been published in accordance with Socialnomics’ disclosure policy.
