7 essential features of an effective e-commerce website
Every e-commerce store is created unique. Some online stores only include the basic, while others are fully packed with various features. But, it’s not about how many features that your website has that matter – It’s about the effect that those features in converting visitors into your customers.
An online merchant knows the importance of a professional-looking website. As the competition of all online businesses increased, your e-commerce website must contain some advanced features to attract your targeted customers.
So, in this article, we’re going to explore 7 essential features of an effective e-commerce website that your online store should have enabled to bring in more sales and boost your customer satisfaction. Let’s get started.
1. User-friendly interface
The greater chance a sale will come from the beginning when you make your store easy to navigate. Your website homepage should encourage visitors to click on products or categories of items they wanted to purchase. Pop-up is a perfect choice in this case, nothing can stimulate customers and help them to find the right product like this feature. Product categories should be self-explanatory and should be broken down into subcategories so visitors can quickly find what they are looking for.
Once the customer wants to type in their query, your search bar should be easy to find and quickly list all applicable items that are currently available for sale.
2. Optimize a convenient checkout process and shopping cart
The best shopping cart feature is that it has to be easy for customers to add or remove products, go back to the store site to make changes, or buy something new. Adding items to the shopping cart should be simple. Color choices or style choices should be easy to view and select. Customers like to view what they have in their cart while proceeding to shop, so make sure you have a design and functionality that makes it easy.
Aside from unexpected causes, customers abandon their carts due to the long and complicated checkout process. Commonly, online stores divide checkouts into several pages for different information, such as billing information or shipping details. But, to prevent abandoned carts, it’s important to make the checkout process smooth and quick. Don’t confuse the shopper during checkout. Keep things basic and value your customer’s time. They should feel confident shopping on your website.
Create one-page checkout will take fewer steps and fewer clicks, customers want the path of least resistance, reducing steps and clicks, keep the checkout process short, simple, making it more appealing to customers.
3. Multiple payment methods
Another important feature that you should offer a variety of payment process options to customers so that they can pay in the way they prefer. Consider using multiple payment gateways like bank transfer, cash on delivery, or digital wallet payments. By adding multiple options, it will improve customer satisfaction to make a purchase and can scale-up your conversion by a significant margin. The more options you provide, the more comfortable users will feel during checkout.
For a quick and user-friendly checkout, you can use payment methods such as PayPal, Google Pay, Stripe, Sage Pay, First Data, Mobilpay, 2Checkout, etc.
4. Upsell & cross-sell features
The product page is the main page of your online shop. It should be added the right amount of information that customers need and be presented in a way that customers can engage with. But, apart from product details, you can add functionality that can increase your store’s average order value instantly: upselling and cross-selling.
You can upsell by adding extra variants or additions to the product that increases its cost. Related product suggestions also are a big thanks to increasing the profits of your e-commerce store. Not only will this feature improve customer expertise by serving guests to read a lot about the product in your store, but it will also facilitate upsell accessories and related products. The cross-sell section on a product page introduced customers interested in that product to other products that may either complement it or are similar.
5. Customer support tools
Before and after any transaction on your online store, customers may find the need to contact your store for assistance. When this happens, you’ll want to make that process as easy and convenient as possible for the customer. Thence, build a professional customer care style is necessary. Using at least one of these customer service tools for the best support.
- Live Chat: By enabling live chat on your online store, you can allow customers to send messages to your Facebook page through Messenger. There are many options available for adding live chat to your website, including the Facebook Chat Box app. You can also enable a chatbot for general questions or for periods where you’re not available.
- Contact Us Page: Every online store should have a page that details your business’s contact information to the customer. This includes your business phone number, email address, and any other form of contact.
- FAQ Page: Sometimes, self-service support is the best solution to a problem. This could either be due to customer preference or your availability for support. Either way, it would be beneficial to include a section on your site dedicated to answering frequently asked questions that your customers may have about your products or service.
6. Integrated shipping
The delivery systems can make or break the e-commerce website. The best of them integrates various delivery options, such as UPS, FedEx, or anything else with the shopping cart. This not only makes the process seamless but also makes it easier for the customer to track their products. This will also make the process of charging delivery fees more transparent.
7. Multichannel marketing
Your online store should have multiple options for marketing and expanding your audience. There are a seemingly endless number of marketing-centered features that you could add to your store. So, check out some of the most common and effective forms of marketing integration.
- Email Marketing: Your online store should naturally gather email addresses from each customer that purchases your store. You can also gather email addresses from non-customers through a newsletter signup feature. With those email addresses, you can keep customers up to date on sales, new products, or any other changes to your business easily.
- SEO Tools: Search engine optimization, which is known as SEO, is an affordable way to increase your website’s visibility on search engines. You should include features enabled that allow you to optimize every page for high ranking on search engines. This includes custom meta tags, meta descriptions, and image alt tags.
- Social Media Buttons: Customers look for a brand’s social media presence as a sign of trust before purchasing on their website. The best way to showcase your accounts is through clickable social media buttons on either the header or footer of your site.
Most modern e-commerce platforms have all of these features built-in, so you won’t need to hunt down extra applications to enable the functionality we mentioned.
In conclusion
An e-commerce store not only needs to be pleased to the eye but also has to have a stress-free shopping experience as well.
For more tips on improving your store, check out our other articles here on Autoketing.
In case you’re looking for trustable applications to your Shopify Store, check for the reference resource Shopify App Store
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