When it comes to e-commerce, it’s all about design, functionality, and features. Be it animation, 360-degree product view, or dynamic product search, there are some much-needed elements every e-commerce website should have to stay relevant and competitive in this digital world.
In this article, we will focus on exploring 10 must-have features you need to attract more online shoppers. If you’re planning to jump into the e-commerce game, continue reading till the end.
- Mobile-Friendliness/Responsiveness
It doesn’t matter if you have lots of product pages or a few ones. Building a mobile-friendly website for your online customers will help you improve your sales as well as ranking. I mean, just look at the stats that states that mobile shopping represents more than 50% of online transactions worldwide. As a large portion of online traffic comes from mobile phones, it has become quintessential to make your website highly responsive or mobile-friendly. This will help you adapt to whatever device is accessing your website.
- User-Friendliness
User-friendliness is all about keeping your e-commerce website simple. From navigation to page loading speed, everything should be as hassle-free as possible. A study shows that 76% of shoppers say the most important factor of a website is ease-of-use. Therefore, your objective should be to help your customers get to what they want faster and without dealing with any unnecessary complexity.
- Dynamic Product Search
As shoppers often make mistakes in typing keywords and brand names, you can make it easy to give them relevant results with the help of an advanced product search. Whatever the shopper search, your website would be competent enough to find all the relevant products and services in the results. This subtle yet effective feature will help you create a better navigation and shopping experience too.
- Customer-Generated Reviews
You know, customers love reading reviews. They only use a business if it has good stars and reviews. You might think that negative reviews will kill your sale. Absolutely right! But the flip side can often be positive. It actually shows that products without negative reviews are censored and credible. If a business only features positive reviews, shoppers would assume that these are fake. All forward-thinking e-commerce websites are using reviews as user-generated content, driving social proof and building a bigger customer base.
- Shopping Cart
The shopping cart is an integral part of e-commerce, allowing end-users to store their products to proceed with the checkout process. A flexible shopping cart allows both guest users and registered users to checkout as easily as possible. Here, guest users do not require signing up on the website, hence making the checkout process quicker.
- Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Buyer confidence is very fickle. A Frequently Asked Questions page helps customers find the answers they are looking for and keeps their eye on the product. The best way to create a FAQs page is by compiling all the questions your shoppers keenly ask. This will not only help your shoppers find answers to their questions, but it will also reduce a lot of the customer support tasks on the back-end.
Additionally, your FAQ page is an opportunity to add a human touch to the shopping experience. So, you should try to come up with questions that would help them make better-informed decisions.
- Security Features
As online transactions are an integral part of the e-commerce sphere, you have to make sure your store is safe from any potential cyberattack. The checkout process should be carried out through a secure payment gateway and passwords must not be stored in a readable format. It’s crucial to protect customer information and take necessary steps to ensure safety and privacy. Also, address the store’s privacy policies and promises so that customer data is not shared with any third party.
- Live Chat
The kind of customer service your website offers plays a crucial role in the overall growth of your online business. Therefore rather than holding customers’queries, start answering them instantly by adding live chat support. By offering a livechat feature to your shoppers, you can start facilitating prompt communication, helping your visitors get over their difficulties. This will also help you add a human element to the online shopping experience.
- High-Quality Photos and Videos
We all are visual creatures and want to see more than a stock photo image. Businesses that put in the extra effort to have high-quality photos and videos throughout their product pages ultimately win over shoppers. These visual elements not only appeal to customers, but also showcase your brand story and product features in an engaging way. Additionally, this creates an opportunity to be more creative and stand out in the ever-competing industry.
- User Account
Another major feature that can drive your e-commerce store is the desire for a streamlined user experience. By offering one-click purchases and subscriptions, your store can do extremely well. That’s what e-commerce giants, such as Amazon and eBay, are doing right now. You can refine the checkout process by making user accounts a standard for busy shoppers.
Ending Thoughts
Your e-commerce store should be up-to-date in order to keep your shoppers engaged. Take a step further ahead of your competitors and keep updating features on your website. Make sure to cater to the trends of transparency, personalization, and curation, and you will turn your visitors into regular customers.
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