Several studies have shown that a large percentage of modern users prefer mobile commerce apps to eCommerce websites. Hence, your eCommerce website must deliver an optimal user experience to beat the competition and mobile commerce. You have to consider several factors to make the web store keep visitors engaged and seduce them to buy the products/services. In addition to focusing on the look, feel, features, and functionality of the website, you also need to explore ways to optimize its user experience. To optimize the website’s user experience, you need to enhance its accessibility, usability, security, credibility, and search engine visibility.
10 Points to Consider while Launching Your First Ecommerce Website
1) User
While planning and developing your first eCommerce website, you must focus extensively on the users and their choices. It would help if you remembered that a web store does not allow customers to touch, feel, or smell the products physically. Hence, you must keep the users engaged by making their shopping experience fast and hassle-free. You can always keep the visitors engaged by offering products at discounted prices, providing free shipping, and keeping the shopping and checkout process simple.
2) Design
You also need to focus on the eCommerce website’s design and user interface to impress and engage visitors effectively. Unlike established brands, you need to explore ways to gain the trust and confidence of visitors. Hence, you have to include some website design elements – a recognizable logo, shopping deals, product options, product review and testimonials, and a call to action. At the same time, you need to ensure that the eCommerce website’s look and feel are both intuitive enough to keep the purchase process simple and straightforward.
3) Mobile Optimization
As mentioned earlier, a large percentage of modern users prefer m-commerce apps to eCommerce websites. Likewise, most people nowadays access eCommerce websites on their smartphones, tablets, or phablets. Hence, you need to ensure that the eCommerce website delivers optimal user experience on both computers and mobile devices. You can always opt for responsive web design to make the web store look good on each device with a single code base. The mobile optimization will further enhance the website’s visibility on major search engine results pages (SERPs).
4) Social Elements
You need to include many social elements on the eCommerce website to impress the users. The users must have the option to share the products purchased from your web store with their friends through popular social networks. Also, the social elements will help users to promote your new eCommerce website and enhance its popularity. You can even use the social elements as an efficient tool to gather information about customers and track their behavior.
5) Search Box
No eCommerce site can display all its products on a single page. But you can always impress visitors by displaying branded goods to the visitors initially. Also, you must allow customers to check your products based on specific criteria or categories. The website must allow visitors to search and find relevant products without any delay or hassle. Hence, you need to ensure that your eCommerce site includes a robust search box. The search box will enable users to find a specific product and buy it directly, without browsing through an array of products.
6) Shopping Cart
Your choice of the shopping cart will directly impact the user experience delivered by the eCommerce portal. You have the option to choose from an array of open source and commercial shopping carts written in different programming languages. But you must opt for a shopping cart software that enables users to check their previous and current purchases quickly and conveniently. Also, the shopping cart must allow users to add or remove items without any hassle. At the same time, you also need to enhance the shopping cart’s accessibility and visibility by using the commonly used simple basket icon.
7) Payment Options
The choice of online payment options varies from one customer to another. Some customers prefer making payment through their debit/credit cards or internet banking facility, while others opt for popular online payment options like PayPal and digital wallets. Hence, you need to ensure that each customer can make payment for the products purchased by him with any payment option. At the same time, you also need to keep the online payment and financial transactions of customers secure using a reliable payment gateway and the latest encryption techniques.
8) Trust Marks
It would be best if you remembered that many people are skeptical about new eCommerce websites. Hence, it would help if you explored ways to enhance the eCommerce website’s credibility and win customers’ trust. Besides including robust security features in the web store, you also need to display the accreditation certificates and trust marks of reputed brands. The trust marks and accreditation certificates will enhance the credibility of your newly launched web store. The trust marks will assure customers that their personal data will remain private, and online transactions will remain 100% secure.
9) Option to Answer Pre-Sale and Post-Sale Questions
While buying products from a new eCommerce website, users often ask various questions before and after the purchase. Hence, you must answer customers’ pre-sale and post-sale questions to increase your sales and revenue immediately. Like other websites, you can answer the pre-sale and post-sale questions of customers through either online chat or phone call. But the customer must be able to see the options available to clear his doubts and answer his questions. You need to ensure that the phone number or online chat option is clearly visible to each customer. You must also deploy a skilled customer care executive to answer the pre-sale questions of website visitors appropriately and convert them into customers.
10) Search Engine Visibility
You can easily divert regular search engine traffic to the eCommerce website by complying with the guidelines recommended by popular search engines like Google and Bing. For instance, Google ranks websites based on metrics like mobile-friendliness and load time. Also, it recommends entrepreneurs to build web stores with responsive web design. While planning the eCommerce website, you must keep in mind the guidelines and recommendations of major online search engines. The search engine optimized design will help you to get regular website visitors without launching expensive digital marketing campaigns in the future.
You further need to assess all important aspects – user interface, functionality, performance, usability, security, and user experience – during the eCommerce website development phase to make it popular within a shorter amount of time. You can even consider investing in analytics tools to understand website visitors’ behavior and preferences based on real-time information collected from various sources. However, it is also important to update your eCommerce website consistently to meet the emerging technologies, industry trends, and customer preferences.
