What Your E-Commerce Site NEEDS: 2023 Edition!
Are you building a new ecommerce store for your company or looking for ways to improve the functionality of your existing one?
Taking inspiration from the top ecommerce brands can help you create an ecommerce experience that will delight your customers.
The following features are essential for ecommerce sites.
Navigation
You've likely heard that first impressions are everything, and nowhere is that truer than on the internet.
Potential customers who visit your website form an opinion of your business within seconds.
If your site is challenging to navigate or cramped and cluttered, they will likely click away and take their business elsewhere.
On the other hand, if your site is attractive and easy to use, they'll be more likely to stick around and spend their hard-earned money with you.
The layout of your website is crucial in determining whether or not you make a sale, so it’s essential to take the time to get it right.
With a bit of thought and effort, you can create a layout that will entice customers to buy from you again and again.
Providing a user-friendly navigation system is the key to assisting customers in quickly finding the products they require.
Products should be categorised logically, with the most popular categories listed first.
Some people look for products by brand, while others look for products by category. Their navigation bar reflects this organisation, with quick links to low-cost and sale items.
Searching
Site search, in addition to user-friendly navigation, is a feature found on most of the top ecommerce sites.
Customers can skip the navigation and search for precisely what they want. Conversely, adding smart search functionality can help you recommend your customers products that they ‘might’ want or find interesting.
As with all things data-related, Google Analytics can be used to track the majority of site searches.
Footers
Have you thought about how to use your website’s footer best to help customers find your best products?
Consider creating a list of links to the most popular products, services, and information that customers are looking for.
Also, please include links to everything they want customers and search crawlers to find from any page on their website.
Product Videos
Conversions can be increased by including videos on your product pages.
According to to Think With Google, more than half of all shoppers said online video helped them decide which brand or product to buy.
Most ecommerce platforms allow retailers to include videos and images on their product pages.
A quick tip about this - we’ve found that 4-5-second-long videos are the best. What's with people’s attention spans these days? Not only that, it doesn’t take up too much of their data quota, nor is it too short a video that they can’t learn anything useful from it.
Reviews
Product reviews and ratings are the most common type of user-generated content on ecommerce sites.
This section of an ecommerce product page is critical for providing shoppers with social proof that a product will meet their needs.
Customers can rate and review products on eBay, which displays reviews below product descriptions and sponsored items.
Other eBay users can also rate reviews as helpful or not, which moves the best reviews to the top of the list on the product page.
Return Policies
Do you want to boost consumer trust in the products you sell? Include a generous return policy on your product page.
Place it near your add to cart button to increase the likelihood that it will increase the number of purchases.
Product FAQs
Another way to incorporate user-generated content into your ecommerce store is to include a section of frequently asked customer questions.
This section can benefit your store in a variety of ways.
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Increase your sales by responding to your customers' top pre-sales questions about your products.
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Reduce the time your customer service team spends answering product questions before and after the sale.
Customers can ask, answer, and vote up the best questions on product pages, ensuring that the most frequently asked ones appear at the top.
Store FAQs
Consider adding a FAQ page for your main store in addition to the FAQ for your product pages.
This should cover any general questions about online privacy, security, payments, shipping, returns, and other shopping concerns that people may have.
In its help centre, Etsy provides answers to the most frequently asked questions.
This frees their customer service team from answering general questions, giving them more time to solve complex problems.
Order Tracking
When a customer orders, the first thing that comes to mind is, "when will my order arrive?"
Make it simple for customers to check the status of their orders on your website.
Customers do not need to log in to track their orders at AutoZone.
They only require their email address and the order number from their order confirmation email.
Email Opt-Ins
Emails sent by ecommerce businesses have an average open rate of 15.68% and a click rate of 2.01%, according to Mailchimp benchmarks.
This is significant given the revenue-generating potential of ecommerce emails.
If you can't get visitors to buy something from your website, one of the subsequent best conversions for your store would be to get them to sign up for your email list.
This would enable you to contact them in the future with sales and email promotions.
A pop-up prompts visitors to subscribe to Samsung's email list to receive their latest offers.
Another way for ecommerce retailers to collect email addresses is to include an opt-in form in their website's header and footer.
Notifications…The Push Kind
Push notifications are the next best way to capture your ecommerce store visitors as subscribers if you want to avoid spam filters and social media algorithms.
Visitors can subscribe to your latest updates in their browsers using push notification services.
When you have a promotion that you want to notify subscribers about, you can send a message to their notification centre via their browser.
Shein is one of many ecommerce sites that allow customers to sign up for push notifications.
Visitors who subscribe will see Shein's most recent messages in their desktop notifications.
Chatbots
One of the advantages of running an ecommerce website is the ability to generate revenue 24 hours a day, seven days a week, all year. This also includes providing support to your customers during those hours.
According to a survey of 5,000 consumers conducted by LivePerson, positive sentiment toward using chatbots nearly doubled between 2020 and 2021, rising from 31% to 61%.
Many ecommerce stores use chatbots to answer basic questions and direct customers to a specific product or support page.
Lowes employs an online expert that’s ALWAYS online in the form of an automated assistant with specific prompts for visitors to select when looking for a particular answer, finding a specific product, or resolving a simple customer service inquiry.
Coupons
When a coupon or discount box appears on a checkout page, customers frequently search for coupon codes on Google.
In the United States, 88% of shoppers use coupons when they shop, according to coupon websites such as slickdeals.com, groupon.com, and retailmenot.com.
Give customers great deals through your coupon codes if you want to keep them on your website throughout the checkout process.
Victoria's Secret highlights its latest offer with a bar at the top of its website.
When visitors click View Offers, they will be presented with additional offers and coupon codes to use at the checkout.
Product Availability Filtering
Do you provide customers with a variety of pickup and delivery options?
Allow customers to quickly find available products with their preferred pickup or delivery method.
Walgreens provides a product availability filter that sorts products based on pickup, same-day delivery, shipping, or in-stock availability. Because of the quick availability, you have the best chance of converting customers.
Mobile App
Consider having a mobile app for your store and a mobile-friendly store where customers can purchase from any device.
Mobile apps allow you to keep your brand in the minds of your customers by placing your app icon/brand logo on the smart devices they use the most.
You don't have to wait for customers to open a browser or another app for social media or email to see your most recent sales messages.
You can send those promotional updates to your app's customers who have notifications enabled.
Customers can shop for products online and have them shipped to their homes or reserved for in store pickup using the Home Depot app.
Gift Registries
If you search Google for gift registries, you will find dozens of well-known brand retailers.
Target, Amazon, Walmart, Crate & Barrel, and Bed, Bath, and Beyond are just a few retailers appearing on the first search page.
Why are gift registries essential for increasing sales? Consider wedding registries for a moment.
80% of respondents set up a wedding registry, according to The Knot 2020 Wedding Registry Study.
According to Baird's 2022 survey findings, Amazon is the top wedding registry provider, with 45% listing penetration.
Language!
If your online store serves customers in a specific region, you have two options for supporting the top languages spoken in that region:
Customers can use Google Translate to help them translate your website into their native language.
Make multiple versions of your website for different languages.
Xfinity's www subdomain is in English, and their ES subdomain is in Spanish.
The En and Es links in the main navigation bar allow you to switch between English and Spanish content.
While we’re on the topic of foreign languages, let’s talk a bit about foreign currencies. It might be worth putting in a currency conversion on your prices to help buyers make decisions easier about purchasing your products.
Loyalty Incentives
Do you want to keep your customers? Offering a loyalty programme is one way to encourage people to return to your ecommerce store.
These are usually free or paid programmes that provide customers exclusive or early access to the best deals.
Many allow customers to earn points for each purchase, which can be redeemed for various rewards such as a specific dollar amount off your next purchase or a free product.
Ulta is one of many companies that provides loyal customers with a free rewards programme.
Customers can sign up for free and earn points that can be redeemed for products and services both online and in-store.
Carousels
While marketers may disagree on the importance of image and video carousels on the homepage, many ecommerce brands employ them.
Carousels with the latest promotions and sales are available at major retailers such as Walmart, eBay, Home Depot, Samsung, Wayfair, Lowes, Costco, Sam's Club, and Kohls.
Chewy is yet another ecommerce site with a homepage carousel. Theirs promote auto-ship orders, healthy pet food, flea and tick medications, pet bedding, and other products.
Store Information
If your ecommerce brand also has physical store locations, you can increase offline sales by including information about the nearest store in the header of your website.
Customers could shop online, reserve for in-store pickup, or browse their local store inventory before making an in-store purchase.
Costco provides a link to the nearest location based on your zip code. They also show the current store hours.
Data Protection (PDPA)
Depending on where your ecommerce store is located and the customers it serves, your site may require a policy that informs visitors of the data collected about them on your website via cookies and other analytics tools.
Michael's ecommerce store displays a popup informing visitors about cookie usage to improve user experience and analyse website traffic.
Visitors are then given the option of accepting the policy or changing their cookie preferences.
Closing Words
It's important to remember that you don't always have to reinvent the wheel to give your customers a great shopping experience.
It's simply a matter of listening to your customers' feedback and keeping an eye on your competitors to see if new ecommerce trends emerge.
While you don't have to test every new feature your ecommerce platform has to offer, you should investigate the ones your customers have come to expect from the top retailers in your industry.
Combine customer feedback with A/B testing to determine which implementations increased sales and customer satisfaction.
