4 Elements Every Ecommerce Site Must Have

4 Elements Every Ecommerce Site Must Have

Most elements that you need in order to make your site successful are fairly easy to implement. The most important thing is to keep your future customers in mind at all times.

Seeing as how more than 50% of people in the United States now regularly shop online, setting up a store online seems like a logical business move for every young entrepreneur. However, you can’t just pay someone to design a site, sit back and wait for the money to start rolling in.
Starting a business properly takes some legwork.
Fortunately, most elements that you need in order to make your site successful are fairly easy to implement. The most important thing is to keep your future customers in mind at all times, because user-friendliness will bring you nothing but success.
Before you start throwing money left and right and building a website, there are a few elements that are fundamental to any successful ecommerce site. 

Flawless checkout system

If you’re an ecommerce merchant, an overly-complicated design is one of your biggest enemies. For most consumers, a flawless checkout procedure is crucial to their overall user experience. The Bayard Institute conducted a study a few years ago, which revealed that more than 70% of people abandon their carts because of a complicated, time-wasting checkout system. 
Therefore, your first goal should be to provide a smooth, headache-free checkout experience to your customers. How can you actually accomplish this? For starters, you shouldn’t include too many fields. Instead, stick to the ones that are necessary for the financial transaction and the delivery of goods. Also, you should get some plugins, like an address finder, that will speed up the whole process. 

Crisp visual content

In the past, ecommerce sites managed to get away with using nothing more than a low-resolution photo of the product and a price tag. But those days are long gone, and these days, consumers want to see crisp-clear photos from multiple angles. Some even want to see other people using the product in different environments, so embedding a YouTube video review of the product is not a bad idea.
Let’s get back to images for a moment. You see, technical aspects of the pictures you use on your site are vital. This, however, doesn’t mean you should use pictures with the highest resolution possible either. According to Adobe research, almost 40% of people will leave a website if they images don’t load in just a few seconds. 

Clear call-to-action

Even if you’re not familiar with the expression, you surely know what a call-to-action is. Basically, it’s the short sentence, usually at the bottom of the page that successfully converts random visitors into shoppers. While you the actual sentence should be simple and, well… actionable… there are a few more different factors you need to think about.
For instance, although we mentioned call-to-action buttons are usually found at the bottom of a page, you should experiment with its placement a little bit. Use certain heat map tools, such as Inspect let, and try to find what draws the attention of your visitors the most...  And if you have the time, do a split-test in an effort to refine your CTAs overall effectiveness. 

User-generated reviews

Although some people still turn to their friends and family members when it comes to product recommendations, a vast majority of today’s consumers read user-generated reviews. As a matter of fact, recent studies have shown that more than 90% of consumers consider the star rating on a certain product or service to be the biggest factor in their decision-making process. 
Depending on your site’s functionality, you can actually use certain plugins from some of the more popular review platforms to feature these reviews on your site. In this case, hiring experienced ecommerce web designers should do the trick. Don’t worry about negative reviews too much, because if you have a product without them, consumers will assume most reviews on your site are fake. 

The bottom line: Ease-of-use is the key

Once again, we need to point out that everything comes down to the usability of your site. If your customers get confused by the design or turned off by an unappealing design, they probably won’t return to your site, no matter how good your products are.
Although you shouldn’t sacrifice style for anything, your main aim should be simplicity. According to a recent HubSpot study, more than three-quarters of users think that ease-of-use is the single most important characteristic of a website.
Remember, you have mere seconds to attract a new customer and make a sale. You should always focus on making user-review enjoyable for your target audience. The goal is to help people find and purchase what they want, without unnecessary complexities along the way.

Posted by Nate Vickery

Nate Vickery

Nate Vickery is a business consultant focused mostly on SMB marketing and management. Nate is the editor-in-chief at one business blog - Bizzmarkblog.com. You can follow Nate @NateMVickery

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