The core of your complete e-commerce strategy is website creation. A poorly designed website will have far-reaching consequences for the success of your company operations. All of your other efforts, such as marketing, procedures, inventory, and customer service, will be for none if you don’t get it right.
When developing an online business, many factors to consider, with design, functionality, and user-friendliness being among the most important. The last thing an e-commerce business wants is for a customer to quit their shopping basket. A badly designed website may perplex clients, upset them, and result in lost deals.
During the building of a website, there are six crucial factors to consider.
1. Safety of the website
E-commerce sites should always be safe and secure. Nobody wants to put their personal information in danger by visiting a website that isn’t SSL secure. The use of secure socket layer technologies, firewall encryption, and the strictest security procedures is essential. All e-commerce systems are now required to be completely secure. Customers will not tolerate a website that jeopardizes the security of their personal information.
2. Searching capabilities
According to a growing body of evidence, search functionality on a website is becoming increasingly important. Approximately 30% of e-commerce platform users regularly utilize the site’s search feature. Autocomplete is also popular, and it’s a terrific method to filter down search queries by manufacturer, price, product lines, category, variety, and so on.
3. Enhancement
Optimization relates to some concerns, including an e-commerce platform’s technological performance. Consider that if a user has to wait more than three seconds for a website to load, the abandonment rate for e-commerce platforms is considerable. This has a negative influence on ROI, CTR, engagement, and a high bounce rate and abandonment. Various methods for optimizing e-commerce systems include picture reduction, speeding up CSS and JavaScript interactions, and leveraging caching.
Mobile functioning is perhaps the most important technical aspect to get properly. According to Statista, 72.9 per cent of all retail e-commerce will be produced by m-commerce in 2021, up from 58.9% in 2017.
You’ll need to make sure your site is mobile-friendly across various platforms and devices. Fortunately, nearly all current content management systems and e-commerce website construction platforms employ responsive design with a broad range of customization possibilities, making it much simpler to adapt to the mobile market and assure maximum consumer coverage.
4. Problems with registration
This is a crucial component to include in constructing and designing an e-commerce website. Some clients choose to check out as a guest, while others want to register and have their information recorded on the premises. Customers who wish to pay for a product or service without entering their credit card information have found guest checkouts to be a convenient option. Certain clients despise long registration forms, and website designers should consider this. On the other hand, returning customers are more inclined to register and take advantage of the benefits that come with repeat business.
When examining how to enhance eCommerce sign-up rates inside an online business, the following article from BSS Commerce gives an excellent rundown of the primary alternatives available to you.
5. Content Promotion
Allowing space for digital marketing campaigns is often overlooked in e-commerce website design.
The portions of the website that may be utilized to promote the brand – speak about the goods, engage with consumers, give updates or supporting documentation, and so on – become an afterthought since so much work is put into the technical aspects and UX of the construction.
This is wrong.
Ensure that features like Blogs, Support, Events, and New Product Announcements get enough attention from the main page, that their sections are well-designed, and that they’re easy to update.
Although it takes time for content marketing to produce results, once it does, it draws visitors and generates a devoted client base. As a result, it is a need for every e-commerce website.
It’s worthwhile to put out the effort because:
- It gives you a distinct selling point.
- It establishes your website as a fantastic source of useful information;
- It’s an essential foundation of a social media strategy, as it provides you with topics to talk about and something to share;
- It allows you to share the knowledge already in your company; it’s crucial to a successful search strategy; it supports your other digital marketing strategies, and it will bring you a steady stream of traffic.
Content marketing is all about creating material relevant to your brand/products and placing it on your website. For example, a guide to purchasing the right pair of pants, instructions on installing a washing machine, a viewpoint on the future of renewable energy, or excellent product page content.
When you develop content, it should perform at least one (and generally all) of the following:
- Be something that others will want to read and share.
- Position yourself as an authority in your area to reflect your brand properly.
- Assist with product sales—for instance, a size chart or a catwalk video.
- Make a concerted attempt to connect with your audience.
Infographics, guest blogging, videos, photographs, PDFs and papers, a blog, FAQs, purchasing tips, and customer reviews are all examples of content.
Most companies have more content than they realize, so figure out what you currently have before you add anything extra. To accomplish so, you’ll need to have a brainstorming session with important corporate figures. Inquire of them:
- What kind of material do we already have?
- What kind of material would our consumers like to see on our website?
- What are the tales that surround our products?
Extrapolate the answers from the data.
6. Payment Acceptance
It’s critical to provide customers with quick and dependable payment options, especially if you want to take foreign payments. The goal is to choose the most appropriate payment processors for your internet company.
The most important characteristics to look for in a payment processor are stability, security, and quickness.
Although certain payment processor systems (such as Square or Zettle) have their e-commerce website builder platforms, practically all current site builder platforms will allow for a simple setup with a number of the most common payment gateways.
