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Building an ecommerce website takes a lot of work and dedication. Creating a successful online store also depends on the professional website designer you hire. This is because websites are technical creations.
There are many technical aspects that entail developing a perfect online marketplace. These 21 ecommerce site best practices will guide you through the work of building your dream website.
Simplify The User Experience
1. Avoid Clutter
Ideally, every website should be simple to navigate. Web users should know automatically where they want to go when visiting your website. Unfortunately, many web developers fill websites full of clutter that can confuse web users and cause them to leave.
According to this statistic, 53% of web users take more than three seconds to find the call-to-action (CTA).
Eliminating clutter and making your website clear and simple is the first step to driving more conversions.
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2. Simplify Your Menus
If your website has hundreds of category pages, would it truly make sense to only have four menu items? It doesn’t, but many websites practice this anyway. Include broad categories of the items you sell in your menu.
For example, if you sell sweaters, vests, and pants. You can add these categories to your menu to make navigation easier.
3. Add a Search Bar
Again, if you sell hundreds or even thousands of online products, new customers may not know the exact name of the products they want to see. For example, if you run a cabinet store and your customers want to browse grey cabinets, they may not know the particular name of the product.
By incorporating a search bar on your website, it will allow new web users to find desired products much simpler. This is what Nike does to help their web users find a broad array of shoe products.
4. Improve Your Website Speed
Page speed is one of the most important ranking factors for Google and all major search engines. Research proves that a one-second page delay can lead to a 16% decrease in user experience and a 7% decrease in conversions.
Worse, if your website has a two-second delay, you can be in huge trouble. By hiring a professional ecommerce website developer, you can tweak all of the technical aspects of your site and make it faster.
5. Don’t Feature Ads
Many ecommerce brands sell advertising space as a means of affiliate income. This is a huge mistake! Granted, this can be a great way of earning side income, but it’s not worth annoying your own customers.
That’s because most ecommerce ads look like spam and leave a bad first impression. Today’s consumers consider most ecommerce ads to be disruptive.
About 82% of consumers in the United States say that online ads can be disruptive. With that said, focus on converting your customers and building transactional income rather than affiliate income.
6. Go Mobile
Recently, 62% of all consumers used their smartphones to complete an online purchase. This makes a whole lot of sense considering that smartphones are essentially small computers.
They enable people to perform virtually any online task. To improve your conversions, your site has to be mobile-friendly. If you start thinking mobile first in all the design process of your site you will provide great usability and ease for your users.
Strive for High Quality and Relevant Content
7. Prioritize SEO
Many people who want what you’re selling will not go straight to your website. Instead, 46% of consumers will start the buying process on a search engine. If your online store isn’t at the top of the search engine result pages (SERPs), they’ll likely do business with your competitors instead.
By investing in an effective SEO strategy, you can take advantage of the high majority of shoppers who always click on the first three search results.
8. Create Content on a Regular Basis
Content is king! Google and other search engines consider content to be the most prolific ranking factor. Building a blog on your website will cultivate a large following through search engines that may one day purchase your products.
9. Write Informative Product Descriptions
When people visit a product page, the first thing they are thinking is, “why should I spend my money on this?” Informative product descriptions lists features, benefits, and other pertinent information that can lead web users to making a purchasing decision. Remember, a well-informed buyer is more likely to go straight to checkout.
10. Feature High-Quality Images
Having an ecommerce store means that your customers won’t get to touch and feel your products as they would in a physical store. They rely on images to give them the insight that they need.
Feature only high-quality images of your products so your customers can familiarize themselves with your brand.
11. Present Video Demonstrations
According to Forbes, 90% of consumers say that videos always help them make a purchasing decision. If you’re selling a product that your customers are unfamiliar with, creating video demonstrations will be highly-effective.
As you can see, this brand shows exactly how their luggage products work. If pictures paint a thousand words, imagine the impact that videos will have on your conversions.
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Make Transactions Easy
12. Reduce Steps in the Checkout Process
Once a website user wants to checkout and does so conveniently, that makes your job a whole lot easier. However, additional steps in the checkout process could eliminate your chances to convert the most qualified leads.
28% of consumers claimed that they abandoned a shopping cart because the checkout process was too complicated. With that said, only collect essential information from your web visitors, such as billing and shipping information.
13. Don’t Force Shoppers to Create a Profile
Again, you don’t want to over complicate your checkout process. For this reason, offer the feature to allow guest shoppers to check out.
However, you can add an incentive to encourage web visitors to sign up.
Express checkout incentivizes users who sign up for your website.
14. Accept as Many Payment Options as Possible
This is a no-brainer. Different people have various sources of income. If you want to convert a bunch of your target audience, make it possible for them to purchase your products using several debit and credit card providers (Visa, Mastercard, Discover) and payment gateways (Paypal, Bitcoin, CashApp.)
15. Provide Different Methods of Customer Service
Contrary to popular belief, consumers normally have a lot of questions before purchasing a product. Having a dedicated customer service staff isn’t enough. Instead, you should create different avenues to contact them.
Through live chat, email, and phone, you can give your target audience an abundance of options to reach your customer service team with their questions and concerns.
Capture Customers Every Step of the Way
16. Send Abandonment Emails
People may abandon their shopping carts for a variety of reasons. This doesn’t always mean that they are disinterested with your products. To be sure, send a follow-up email asking why they decided to abandon their cart or to remind them of future discounts relating to the products they left behind.
17. Build an Email List
Every online store needs to have an email list. Since you can’t possibly convert every web visitor your site comes in contact with, you should instead collect their email addresses to reach out with promotions and deals.
A great way to encourage email list sign ups is through the checkout process.
This box is checked by default, which means people will have to manually uncheck it if they don’t want to be a part. Once you build a large email list, you can advertise your products on a regular basis via email marketing.
18. Use Customer Reviews and Testimonials
Adding customer reviews and testimonials is also a great way of establishing credibility on your website. It can often become the final trigger for someone’s purchase. The best way to collect reviews and testimonials is to ask for them after a person checkouts.
Doing this may be scary since not everyone will be satisfied with your products. However, that’s alright. A few negative reviews mixed in with positive reviews will show that they are legitimate.
Get Creative with Marketing, Offers and Promotions
19. Experiment Often
How do you know if your online store is converting the highest possible qualified leads? You never will know unless you conduct experiments. By running A/B, or split tests, you can test every aspect of your website to produce more conversions.
Again, increasing conversions means you will have to get creative and technical with your web development approach.
20. Provide Free Shipping
This practice is simple – don’t charge shoppers for shipping. This is because unexpected costs are the #1 reason for shopping cart abandonment.
Put yourself in your customers’ shoes. If you see a moderately priced item you want to buy and then get hit with shipping costs in addition to taxes, wouldn’t you be annoyed? These added costs always drive customers away, so it’s not worth charging for shipping in regards to your bottom line.
21. Partner With Influencers
Building credibility on your website is key to attracting customers. What better way of establishing brand trust than by partnering with celebrities and influencers who have mass followings.
Of course, this marketing ploy won’t be free. Nonetheless, celebrities and influencers reach people regularly that will listen to everything they say. Therefore, it’s definitely worth a try.
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At Pixel Chefs, we have mastered all of these ecommerce best practices and more. If you want to build a custom ecommerce website, give us a call today to speak to a member of our team.
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