E-commerce is not just about selling products online. There are several sites today that sells exciting gadgets, inexpensive clothes, children toys, books and lot more other products. As a result, e-commerce business owners struggle to get enough visitors and customers to their site. Even if you stock products from the top brands, getting eyeballs on your site and making the customer to complete the purchase is a great challenge. This is especially true if another store has already emerged as a strong online seller. Well, just as you need to decorate your brick and mortar store, you also need to design your online store to grasp visitors’ attention and earn their trust. This is when an efficient web design comes into play. All websites are different and what make them unique are certain features that attract online shoppers.
Also Read: 6 Web Design Trends You Must Know for 2017
So if you also want to build your own E-commerce site this year, make sure it has the following 10 features:
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Ease of use: According to 76% of consumers, the most important factor in a web design is its ease of usability. This means the website should make it easy for them to find what they want. An e-commerce site should, therefore, be designed with a goal of simplicity in mind. At the same time, it should also look elegant and attractive. In general, whatever design layout or elements you choose, they should not act as a barrier while a site visitor is looking to purchase the product. The entire navigation experience should be smooth and straightforward.
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High-resolution photos and videos: Gone are the days when you need to put just one photo of the product to help the customer make buying –decision. Today, customer have become choosy and they want to see the product from different angles and by zooming in and out to make sure that it is worth their money. They have become more informed and hence go with the sites that offer multiple high-resolution image products or videos. Moreover, images should not take too long to load. In fact, according to Adobe, images that take too long to load or do not load see a consumer drop-off rate of 39%. Hence, apart from putting brighter and clearer images, you should also optimize them for better customer experience.
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Mobile-friendly website: The entire world is going mobile. In fact, it has been found that one in three online purchases is completed using a Smartphone. This means if you want to make more visitors land on your website, you should make your web design mobile-ready. In a responsive website, content and images intuitively adapt to whatever device the person is using to provide the most user-friendly experience. Google has also declared that all websites need to be mobile-friendly by 2017 otherwise, they have to suffer the SEO consequences.
Also Read: How to Optimize Your eCommerce Website For Mobile Devices
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Customer reviews: Shoppers like to read customer reviews. In fact, it has been concluded that 92% of consumers now read online reviews and Star rating is the number one factor used by them before making a buying decision. Now that doesn’t mean that you need to work on generating fake 5-star reviews. The reviews should be completely user-generated and if they are genuine, they are usually a mix of positive and negative feedbacks, which is good. The products with no single negative review are assumed as fake by shoppers today. Hence, you should use genuine reviews only. For this, you can use plugins from the most popular review platforms including Facebook, Google+, Foursquare and Yelp.
Also Read: 16 useful Free WooCommerce Extensions
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Special Offers: Your e-commerce website’s header is a perfect place to display your special offers and discounts. Many marketers just rely on e-mails, newsletters, and social media to inform people about the ongoing offers and discounts. Although these practices are good, you must not forget those visitors who have by chance landed on your website through organic search. Special offers and discounts motivate the visitors to browse through your website and purchase more products.
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Wish Lists: An e-commerce website is certainly incomplete without wish lists. Customers use the wish list to shortlist items they have liked and want to purchase later on or in the future. Wish lists let you create separate lists for different items such as clothing, home appliances, furniture, home furnishings, décor, mobiles, gadgets, toys and more. You can create a separate list of gifting items too. This makes it quick and easy for the customers to make a decision when they will actually be going to buy the product.
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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs): A customer may have several questions related to a product which is both complex and expensive. For example, if a customer is looking to buy an expensive smartwatch for the first time, he will have several doubts related to the features of the product such as “Can it be used as a normal wrist watch?”, “Does it have fitness tracker app?”, “What’s the warranty period of the product?” and much more. For such products, you should include a separate FAQ section in web design that clears all the common ambiguities a person may have related to the product. This builds your site’s credibility and creates confidence among customers.
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Security features: The long-term success of your e-commerce business largely depends on how secure your site is. The nasty cyber criminals keep looking for ways to breach the security system of e-commerce sites and to avoid this you need to take extra steps to ensure privacy. As an e-commerce site owner, you should incorporate robust security features such as SSL certificate, two-factor authentication, firewall, and privacy policy link in the footer to ensure smooth and secure online transactions.
Also Read: How to Optimize Your eCommerce Website For Mobile Devices
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Advanced payment option: Limited payment options limit a person’s ability to buy online. With the proliferation of one-click payment options such as Apple Pay and Paypal, you can’t expect every customer to pay via card. In this tech-savvy world, you should also expand your boundaries and incorporate latest payment options to your site that are both safe and convenient for the customers.
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Return Policy: Return policies are an indispensable part of E-commerce web design. Before purchasing a product, a customer wants to make sure that he or she is taking a safe decision and that if they are unhappy with the product, they can simply return or replace it. Your every product page should provide a link to your “Return Policy” page somewhere. It should not be concealed from the eyes. The policies should be written in a clear manner that is easy to read and understand. Transparent return policies and easy product return process create a trust among customers. In fact, a survey by Invesp concluded that 92% of customers will buy again from the site if product return process is easy.
