There’s no one specific thing which can guarantee that your ecommerce store will become a hit… but there are absolutely a few things you can do which can increase the likelihood that your store will convert more of its visitors into buyers. Luckily, massive amounts of buyer behavior data has already been collected and analyzed by large retail corporations, doing most of the legwork for you where figuring out what your ecommerce site needs is concerned!
Great Website Design
Your website needs to look stellar, full stop. And if it doesn’t, you should upgrade! Dated sites don’t look trustworthy to savvy buyers. Your ecommerce functions need to be simple and streamlined. If your website doesn’t meet these qualifications, consider using a low-cost website builder; you can even compare some of the best with WebsiteBuilder.com review. The great part? Many modern website builders make it easy to upload, update, and alter product information, and offer secure checkout options with great additional features.
Optimize Your Homepage
Since your homepage is what many visitors will land on, it needs to have a lot of wow factor… while also helping your store sell. And unfortunately, it’s very common that online shops are designed without any thought to what makes a great online shopping experience. If the main point of your ecommerce website is to sell, then you need to be concerned with some of these details!
You should always have a clear and prominent, professional-looking logo in both the header and the footer. Always reference the brand name in any homepage text rather than ‘I’; this makes your website look more professional and is likely to increase your website’s profitability. Logos create brand loyalty, and knowing that the store in question has a brand subconsciously encourages visitors to trust the site.
You should also consider
Display products on the home page! Either with slider images, columns showing most-purchased or most popular items, or showing product categories; just make sure that your site’s visitors can get to your products from the home page.
Optimize Your Product Pages
There are a few things each of your product pages should always have! Every product should have more than 1 photo, for example; and should also display color and size options (rather than having different product pages for each color or size option). Some online store owners don’t add any copy or description about the product, but doing so always makes your website look far more legitimate.
If your product needs a sizing guide, link to it on the product page, as well as to your return policy. Another important thing? Item reviews or buyer comments. Potential buyers are always more swayed to purchase items which have reviews. And the last important thing to include on each and every product page, at the bottom, is either a ‘similar items’ or ‘customers also bought’ list! This increases click-throughs and up-sells, meaning visitors are more likely to buy more at your store.
Important Shopping Cart Features
The shopping cart experience can be great and breezy, or it can be so frustrating as to cause potential buyers to abandon the cart entirely. On the first step, buyers should be able to choose to buy without needing to register; according to some statistics, this can dramatically increase purchases.
Buyers should also be able to see shipping costs early on in the checkout process, and have a wide variety of payment options. Most simple checkout plugins can allow for as many as 50 different options, but ideally, you should be able to accept debit, credit, paypal, and google wallet payments.