The Most Important Elements Of An eCommerce Website
eCommerce is on an upward trajectory and it’s definitely here to stay.
This means that any brand with products or services to sell should have an eCommerce store. It also means that there is going to be a lot of competition to get your brand noticed online, so you need to get your eCommerce website just right.
If you want to sell your products online, here’s what you need to have on your website:
1. Responsive Design For Mobile
Mobile is everything for online. You want to provide your customers with a shopping experience that’s as good on a large desktop computer as it is on the smallest screen of a smartphone. This means that you need to have a strong mobile-friendly design for your website rather than just shrinking everything down to fit the screen size.
2. Carefully Considered Categories
The way you categorize your products on your website needs to make sense to your customer. They should be able to find what they’re looking for with ease – otherwise they’ll get frustrated and go to a competitor.
Clothing retailers usually start with broad categories – menswear, womenswear, childrenswear and unisex. Then they break that down further into groups such as tops, bottoms, dresses, jackets and shoes.
3. Clear Cart And Checkout Buttons
The main point of an eCommerce website is to get people to make purchases. Each product page needs to have a clear button for adding that product to the user’s cart, as well as clear options to pick product size and colour (if applicable) and quantity of that product.
Once the user has got items in their cart, they need to know where to go next – and they need to see this easily. Make sure that you have a view cart button that is clearly labeled, as well as a checkout button that is quick to spot and click on.
You have to encourage users to complete those sales.
4. Proper Security For Customer Data
On an eCommerce website, customers are generally asked to create profiles with their personal details and often store sensitive information like addresses, identification documents and payment methods. You have to ensure that all of this data is stored securely and can’t be accessed by the wrong people.
The first step is to get an SSL certificate for the website. A website with on of these will have the closed padlock symbol in the URL bar of the internet browser. This immediately indicates to the user that your website is secure and trustworthy.
Other options include two-step or multi-factor authentication for users to set up their accounts and to access them in the future. This makes it that much harder for hackers to get into the website via unsecure profiles and steal personal data.
5. Multiple Payment Options
People like to have options and when it comes to online shopping, they want to be able to pay using a method that they feel most comfortable with and feel is the most secure. This means you have to give them different choices because no two people are alike.
The most common choices are credit card payments, online wallets such as PayPal and Venmo, and even standard electronic funds transfers. The likes of Apple Pay and Amazon Pay are also growing in popularity. For smaller businesses, you could even opt for a cash on delivery setup if it works with your customer base.
A great way to encourage users to shop on your website is to showcase the different options you have for payment. Display a list of icons so that users can see instantly what’s on offer.
👉 Need help creating an eCommerce store that ticks all the boxes? Chat to Let’s Go Media and see what we can do for you: hello@letsgomedia.io or for Instant Whatsapp Communication: +27 83 9555 891