eCommerce websites have become so much sophisticated and offer such a wide range of products that one can remain fixed to the screens for hours.
But each eCommerce store doesn’t share this kind of popularity of customer flow because they falter on one or the other front which seriously limits the web traffic or a desirable number of sales.
Read More: A Guide To Maintain Your E-Commerce Venture
Here are 8 most essential things, which need to be considered in order to improve the appeal and feature of your eCommerce website.
Quick site load time
An eCommerce website is known to be bulky in size and it has to be coupled with robust server support in order to offer quick loading time.
If an online store has more than a few seconds of load time or seems to take longer to come up with images then it shoots up a bounce rate to a great extent.
Work towards limiting the duration taken for the site to load by optimizing the size as well as website content from the images and videos and fix the broken links and other aspects.
Boost up your servers and ensure that the website offers a consistent and quick load time during the browsing of products until the check out process is completed.
Focus on intuitive navigation
A large variety of products on the eCommerce website helps in bringing a wider number of shoppers but poor navigation support will deter them from coming back gain.
Hence, it is vital to creating a robust design which offers intuitive navigation support without limiting the website user’s choices.
Offer a wider range of sorting abilities to the shopper, which can easily segregate the products, as per various categories, price, type, size, and others in an easier and simplified manner.
Just be careful while providing various searchable options to online shoppers as too many options might even result in creating decision paralysis among them.
Give away freebies and deals on the homepage
Online shoppers are impatient breed and they will abandon your online store as soon as they find there are no freebies or best deals to look out for.
Therefore, showcase the most attractive deals and offers on your homepage and even give out discount coupons right at the time of entry to the website.
This will keep the online shoppers engaged for considerable time on your online store and it will even result in good sales.
Must have a store finder
Store finder tab happens to be the must-have option for the online stores which possess a number of local and national brick and mortar stores.
Most of the conservative shoppers prefer to check out the actual store location in order to gain trust or to simply find out the nearest store.
Store finder can be placed either at the top or at the bottom of the webpage and ensure it offers a search box for a country, zip code or city search.
Integrate smart chat and customer support
It is not feasible for an online store to provide personal attention to each and every visitor who comes on the website to assist in buying products.
But there is a certain alternative which can help you in reaching out to your customers then and there without any hesitation. Integrate chat support, which will allow the users to get in touch with you regarding any issue related to the product or clarify any point.
Chat support will also be able to take the customers out their decision paralysis mode by providing swift and smart replies to their queries.
Disclose the payment systems and shipping fees
Some of the online stores lose their customers right at the time of payment either due to high shipping costs or non-acceptable payment methods.
This is a severe case which has to be handled cautiously because this leads to the bad shopping experience and might keep such shoppers away from your site for one and all.
This can be easily avoided by simply disclosing the shipping costs and different kinds of acceptable payment systems right at the beginning.
Integrate the most number of payment gateways in your cart software and showcase them on every page of your website.
Shipping costs should be shown directly at the products page as no shopper wishes to be surprised by higher shipping costs at the time of payment.
Show Trust Marks on the Website
Online frauds are a common thing in modern times and the eCommerce world has suffered a lot with it.
The website, unlike a physical store, doesn’t offer much apart from the name and number of products listed on it.
It is not enough to convince the online shopper that this is the right platform to spend their money on buying products and it even doubts the security level related to payments made via net-banking and cards.
In order to develop a trustworthy, safe and secure website for the users, show the trust marks on the website.
There are a large number of online accreditation certifications, which are provided by a number of online authorities such as Network Solutions, GeoTrust, Verisign, MasterCard, Visa and other.