This goes without saying that anytime soon eCommerce stores will be taking over the brick and mortar stores. It is estimated that by the year 2040, 95% of the purchases happening in the world will occur through eCommerce.
With the emergence of various user-friendly and efficient eCommerce platforms, setting up an eCommerce website and making it live has become an easy task. But apart from providing ease, this emergence has also led to exorbitant competition in the market.
Do you think any eCommerce business will be leaving a single stone unturned while building their eCommerce website?
Well, definitely not. If you are building an eCommerce website for your business, you must make sure that your website tops in all regards be it in aesthetics, interface, processes, performance, etc.
Here, we are going to discuss the most significant features that you must have an eye on while building your eCommerce website.
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1. Home Page
A home page is an entry point of your eCommerce store. Every potential customer lands up on this page before accessing your services. It is very important for you to optimize your home page as much as possible. You have to be innovative while designing your home page because most of the incoming traffic depends on the overall buildout of your home page.
Let’s discuss some of the important features that you must consider while designing the home page for your eCommerce store:
- The brand logo depicts the brand value and authenticity of the website. It lets the customer know that he/she is browsing the real website.
- The prominent position for the brand logo remains at the top-left position of the home page. It should be clearly visible to the visitor.
- The navigation bar plays a vital role on the home page. Your navigation bar should list all the categories of the products you are offering.
- Many customers walk through all the categories of products and then prefer making a purchase.
- If an eCommerce business is targeting customers globally, then there should be an option of changing the language according to the preference of the customer.
- This will not only enhance the shopping experience of the customer, but also pass a message that your company is not here just for business, but also for developing healthy relationships with customers.
- The search bar is one of the features that directly impact conversions. Having a highly optimized search bar leads to more conversions. If the customer searches for a product and finds it on the top of the list, then the possibility is that he/she may buy it.
- If you are providing any discounts and offers, then there is no place better than the homepage of your website. Create the temptation for the customers by displaying all the discounts and freebies in the upper section of your home page.
- Having the links for FAQs, return and exchanges, shipping information, etc on the home page is a must. These pages contain necessary information about the business. Therefore, the link to these pages should be kept on the home page itself.
- There should be multiple options available for contact purposes. You should display phone numbers, email addresses, fax, etc.
- You should place a newsletter signup form at the bottom of your homepage that gathers the email address of the visitors. It further helps in email marketing and making the customer aware of your latest offerings.
2. Category Page
Besides the homepage of your eCommerce store, the category page is very crucial in bringing in the search traffic to your website. Optimizing the category page leads to an increase in ranking in the searches.
The customer can easily find their product and that leads to an increase in the chances of conversions. The category page acts as a bridge that connects your home page and product page.
Let’s ponder on some of the important features with regards to the category page:
- The picture quality matters a lot in eCommerce. The customer cannot touch or feel the product in any eCommerce store. So, the visuals of the product are what make the difference.
- You must work on the picture quality of your product. Try not to keep pictures the same as other websites. Also, make sure that the alignment of product images with respect to borders, size, and resolution must be consistent.
- Breadcrumb navigation is a very useful feature that turns out to be effective for the better shopping experience of customers. The prominent place for breadcrumb navigation is below the navigation bar.
- Breadcrumb navigation helps customers to know their exact position in the website, reduces the bounce rates and it is good for search engine optimization as well.
- A category page cannot show a full product list in one go. Therefore, it is advised to show the range of products visible on the page out of the total products available.
- Whenever a customer visits an eCommerce website he/she has a particular preference with respect to the product in mind and looks out for that particular type only. Here’s where product filtering and sorting functionality comes into the picture that can act as a powerful feature.
- Product filtering and sorting help customers to sort or filter products on the basis of different characteristics. The customers will be able to see the products on the basis of particular sizes, brands, prices, etc.
- The earlier the customer finds his/her type, the earlier will he/she purchase the product.
- Provide a precise & short description of each product. This helps in improving the SEO rankings.
3. Product Page
The product page is the heart of your eCommerce store. After lots of scrolling and browsing, the customer finally ends up landing on the product page. Your product page is obliged to give you conversions.
Since the beginning, we have been telling that the customers cannot touch, feel or try the product before they purchase, the details and design of your product page determine whether the potential customer will turn into a buyer or not. You should keep the following things in mind while designing a product page:
- You should give more emphasis on the product image. The product image should be big and crystal clear.
- Always have high-quality product images along with alternate views of the product and zoom-in functionality which will not only communicate visually but also increase the chances of conversions.
- Along with the prices, mention the discounts to attract the customers. You can strikethrough the previous price and write the discounted price. This will tempt the customers to buy the product.
- Don’t forget to display the options for selecting different attributes like sizes, colors right next to the product image.
- It is always advisable to put a trust mark near the “Add to cart” button. This induces a sense of trust in the subconscious mind of the customer.
- Providing product comparisons can actually increase the conversion rate because the customers always compare features and other attributes among various similar products and then make a purchasing decision.
- Following the psychology, if you place the product comparison option, it will make it easier for the customers you compare without switching between tabs or web pages. Thereby, providing a better shopping experience.
- Keeping a share button near the product image is a good marketing strategy. This tempts the customers to share the product with their close ones if they like the product.
- Keeping the share button for each social media platform is a good approach because that will make it easy for the customer to share the product across any platform with just one click.
- You can enhance the shopping experience of your customer by keeping the customer reviews on the product page.
- The reviews will be obviously both positive and negative, this will give a notion of authenticity and genuineness to the customer while they decide on making the purchase.
- Related products sometimes help customers to find the product that they are looking for and this increases the chances of purchase.
4. Checkout Page
The checkout page is the last stop in your eCommerce store where the customer makes the final payment for the purchase. You should try to make the checkout process very seamless with no hitches.
You should keep on working to optimize your checkout page so that it doesn’t trouble your customer in any way. Few points that need to be considered while designing the checkout page:
- Your checkout page should support multiple modes of payment and should include the payment modes which are widely used by your customers.
- Your checkout page should mention all the necessary details about the products individually like price, size, type, etc.
- Your checkout page must provide the complete break up of the cost which should include product cost, discount given, shipping charges, etc.
- Again, placing a security stamp or mark brings to the notion of trust among the customer so that customers feel comfortable while filling in the card details.
- Last but not the least, there should be an option for changing the product on the checkout page which makes the life of the customer easy while changing the product that was mistakenly selected.
5. Few things to keep in mind
Some of the general things to you should consider during the buildout process of your eCommerce store:
- Make sure that your eCommerce website is compatible with all the browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Safari, etc. Also, the website should be compatible with all the devices like smartphones, tablets, and desktops and should work seamlessly on these devices.
- This goes without saying that your website should get loaded in 2 to 3 seconds otherwise you may lose thousands of potential customers.
- It has been observed that people wait at a max of 4 seconds for the website to load. So, you must consistently work in optimizing your eCommerce website.
- Your eCommerce website should be highly secure because it is a matter of security for your customer. You must use SSL certificates for your website.
- It protects the confidential data of your customers and also improves the search engine ranking of your website.
- Your eCommerce website should be resilient to any downtimes. You should have a proper data backup management system so that your website not only becomes reliable but also becomes robust enough to handle any changes.
These were some of the points which you should definitely look out for while designing your eCommerce store. Regardless to say, you should consistently work on optimizing your eCommerce store so as to stand out there in the market.
