For eCommerce aficionados, the possibilities are endless. With over 230 million Americans now shopping online, according to Statista, there has been no better time to get into the eCommerce industry.
But no industry is without its own trappings, the lack of which will make it come off as illegitimate or even an impostor.
If users are bouncing off your eCommerce site too much, your website appearance may be the reason.
For an eCommerce site, I highlight the six things you should build into it from the beginning if you want to succeed.
6 features every eCommerce website must have
If an online shopper lands on your eCommerce website and does not see (or see) any of these things, they may distrust your business immediately.
Security measures
If you are serious about making money on your eCommerce website, the last thing you want buyers to see when they land on your website is this:
This communicates three things in the mind of a user:
Your website is not secure
Your business is illegitimate
You don’t take your business seriously
Each or all of these will lead to the same thing: the decision not to purchase.
It’s 2021 and consumers are smarter than ever with many options to choose from at the click of a button.
And this is why you must put the right security measures in place. Below are the steps you need to take to shore up the security of your eCommerce website.
Install an SSL certificate
Enable two-factor authentication to avoid phishing and show customers that they are protected
Have a privacy policy page and place it where customers can easily find it
Have a refund guarantee policy and put it where customers can easily see it
Display related items or products
There are many reasons as to why someone might have landed on your eCommerce website; they may have come to look for a product; to read reviews; to buy; and so on.
My point is, not every visitor has a purchase intention. But you can increase their chances of making a purchase by showing them related items.
Because, no matter what they came for, showing them alternative items could help trigger their purchase instinct.
When I searched for MacBook on Amazon, this is what I found:
And below it, there was this:
The good thing about this is that, it’s probably some minor problems I have with my MacBook that led me to the Amazon website in the first place.
Even if I can’t afford a new Apple MacBook at the moment, any of these related products could have been what I needed to immediately solve my problem. So, my visit to the website will not go to waste.
With just a simple tip like this, a consumer’s intention can go through a radical shift in seconds. I have experienced this time without a number while shopping for teas online.
Create a FAQ section
FAQ is very common with SaaS and eCommerce these days, and most of them are related to money safety.
In a sense, someone who has other alternatives want to know how your product/service helps them before they settle for you.
If you can answer most of the things that cause them to worry, you are more likely to win their trade.
For example, a visitor who wants to buy on your eCommerce website for the first time would want to know if you have a money-back guarantee policy and how it works.
Most of these questions are a matter of money safety, and if you can answer them before they ask you directly, you help them make decisions of purchasing from you easier.
Getting the right questions to answer in your FAQ section should not be hard. Here are some suggestions on how to find the most relevant questions your customers have:
Go through your support ticket and email boxes and find recurring questions.
Ask your customers on social media
Check your competitor’s FAQ section
Brainstorm what your customers are most likely concerned about and use them to develop a series of FAQ questions and answers
Don’t forget the positioning of your FAQ section. It’s better left at the footer of your website on every single page that’s on the website.
User-generated reviews
Given how popular user-generated review has become, it’s a red flag for customers to get to an eCommerce website and not see any review from a third party.
According to this report from Econsultancy, 63% of consumers are more than likely to purchase on a website if it has user reviews.
What’s more, word-of-mouth marketing is the most powerful kind of marketing anyone can hope to get. And human-to-human conversation makes it easier to accept something to be true than what’s heard from a vendor.
Be sure to dedicate a space for user-generated content and also encourage it from your website users.
Blogging
What do BigCommerce and Shopify have in common?
They own a huge part of their growth to their successful blogging activities.
Not every eCommerce will reach the popularity and success of Amazon. But if you are going to get relatively big, you can no longer scoff at blogging.
These days, ads are becoming more and more expensive due to the new drives by tech giants to protect consumers’ privacy.
If you haven’t been thinking of blogging as part of your marketing mix, now it’s time to start considering it.
There are many ways blogging can help your eCommerce business succeed; from traffic to awareness generation to high DA to appearing on the rich snippets on Google, and a lot more.
This is not a place to get deep into it.
Search bar
And last but not least is the search bar. An eCommerce simply cannot exist without it.
Since eCommerce is a marketplace and the ease of shopping is the major motivation for online shoppers, you must have a search bar to make it easy for them to search for anything they want.
Wrapping it up
This is just a checklist of six things, and it is not exhaustive in any way.
When building an eCommerce website, your mind is more likely to be on architecture, UX, products, marketing strategy, and so on.
But no matter what you do, if any of these five things is missing on your website, your efforts in other areas may flop.
Rather than seeing this as a guide to building an eCommerce site, consider it a nudge in the right direction.
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