The development of an ecommerce website requires a lot of consideration of factors that will work as the foundation of your site. It is crucial for you to take an extra care of each and every aspect of the site, be it enhancing the user experience (UX) or boosting the performance of your site in order to create a lasting impression on the users. If you are planning to start an ecommerce website, here are the 10 tips you should really consider:
1. Mobile Friendly/Responsive Design
The number of mobile users has increased considerably from last few years. According to The New York Times, “the mobile industry is now valued at more than $1.6 trillion. It’s expected to spike to a multi-trillion dollar industry in the next ten years”. Thus you must ensure that your ecommerce website has a responsive design and it should be optimized for every device be it a mobile, tablet, laptop or a desktop. Be it basic navigation or checkout or payment, the customer should have a great and unforgettable experience. When an ecommerce site is simple to use, it is inevitable that the users will definitely come back again and also recommend your website to others as well.
2. The Product and Services Delivered by Your Business
You should always be clear about the products, services, items or commodities that you have decided to sell on your ecommerce site. It becomes very confusing and challenging for ecommerce businesses to decide what products and services to sell and what not to introduce. Furthermore, being a business owner, always be clear about the goals of your site, for instance, like the ecommerce giants Amazon and eBay, do you want to incorporate Kindles and ebooks stores, clothing and wears stores, electronics and gadgets and other such products.
3. Website Content
Most ecommerce business owners tend to pay less attention to the content and that is where a huge mistake is done. Content is an essential element of your website and you should always strive to create such a content that is unique and tells an alluring story regarding your brand. Also, it is important for the content to be meaningful as only then will the customer be interested in moving forward. Often it is seen that businesses hastily try to fill up the pages of their website, thus ending up losing customers. You should create such product descriptions that are packed with searchable details, for instance, the material, brand, sizes, patterns and much more.
4. Product Images
Always keep a check on the images that you are displaying on the site for your product. Ensure that your product photos are professional, for instance, the image should be of high resolution, it must be clicked from various angles, you can use different lighting techniques and it should also be optimized for mobiles, tablets, and laptops. The images that you upload should not just be attractive but also generate an emotional response from your users.
5. Optimize Site Performance/Site Speed
It is very important for your site to have a good speed because if it is not, customers will not take a second to abandon your site and go to another one. People are looking for quick responses and fast loading speed, thus you should ensure that your site is optimized to function as quickly as possible. If you want to speed up your site then always remember to compress your images as it helps in reducing the download time, thus making the site faster.
Tips for Developing an Ecommerce Website – An Infographic
6. Online Marketing Strategy
It is one of the most important aspects to consider while developing an ecommerce website. Everything depends on how well you do online marketing, for until and unless people will not know about your site, you will not be successful. It is advisable to devise a full-fledged market strategy even before you start to work on your website design and development. It’s important to first identify the target audience and then plan accordingly. You can make the best use out of the social media and networking sites that are so popular these days. Apart from this, you can use blogging, email, coupons and other attractive plans to catch the customer’s eye.
7. Checkout/Payments
It is yet another important aspect of an ecommerce site and you must be sure about which payment merchant to employ while accepting credit cards. You should have a PayPal account so that there are no problems confronted during the time of billing. The payment page should be simple and hassle free so that the customer doesn’t get intimidated while paying and feels completely safe while doing the transaction. In order to make the exit swift and keep the customers on, streamlining the checkout process, saving the shopping cart, email follow up and guest checkout are all great methods. Always make sure to make it easy and swift.
8. Site Search is Important
It is proven by various statistics that often people use the search option provided in an ecommerce site to look for their desired product. Thus, it becomes essential for you to incorporate this search functionality in your ecommerce site as well. You can also use the additional options such as the auto-complete to assist the customers in their searches. This saves a lot of time of the customers and makes the entire process of shopping quick and easy.
9. Mode of Delivery and Pricing
Another vital aspect of an ecommerce website is the way you provide the delivery and pricing of your goods and services. Shipping depends on the sort of products you are selling. If you are providing digital products such as ebooks, DVD’s and Video’s, customers can make the purchase and then simply be redirected to the page from where they can download it. Whereas while purchasing the physical products, the shipping is done through courier services. Thus, make sure you have the right kind of shipping.
10. Security is Essential
Most of all, your ecommerce site should support SSL to encrypt information that ought to stay secure particularly details of credit card and other such payment information. However, you should also ensure to guard the customer information such as house address, contact number, email, etc. Furthermore, security is necessary to suffice PCI compliance for all the businesses who take credit card payments. The customers should feel safe and secure while sharing their information with you so that they can buy without any hassles.
Thus, as long as you keep working diligently on each point mentioned above, be it the content of your site, your product images, the marketing strategy, the shipping or the security, you will be surely going ahead in your ecommerce business.
Zahoor Bhat has over 10+ years of experience as an online editor and media manager. He has worked with major online news and content sites as a media manager. He is well versed with major content management systems and web platforms such as WordPress and social media networks including Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Google Business, Yelp, Instagram & Linkedin. He is an expert in content creation, proofreading and finally making it live. Being a social media expert, he is able to make relations with social media influencers and make sure to generate leads and grow business via different social media platforms.
