Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you might have noticed that business is slowly but surely shifting from brick-and-mortar stores to the Internet. In the last few years, there was a great number of trends in eCommerce website design, such as 360 product views, advanced filtering, dynamic product search, and animation. But while these trends may make your eCommerce store more visually appealing, they are not a guarantee that you will see higher conversion rates or improved UX.
Before you start implementing trending features in your eCommerce store, you need to make sure you have all the essential elements first.
Here is a list of 6 must-have elements that will help your eCommerce website stay competitive and relevant.
1. User-Friendliness
Studies have found that nearly 75% of consumers say that the ease of use is the most important feature of every website.
When it comes to creating a user-friendly eCommerce site, you need to focus on simplicity. Your goal is to make it easier for users to find what they’re looking for quickly and easily. Improve the user experience by providing filters, product categories, visual navigation, and an autocomplete option. Not all top eCommerce platforms are able to offer such a variety of features, so be clever when choosing a platform.
2. Mobile-Friendliness
If you don’t already have a mobile-friendly eCommerce store, you need one ASAP. Here’s why:
- Four out of five people in the States are now online shoppers, with more than 50% of them have made purchases via a mobile device.
- Users who have a negative experience in your online store are about 60% less likely to buy from you in the future.
- 40% of consumers say that they use their smartphone to conduct research before making a purchase.
- In 2019, mCommerce sales broke records on both Black Friday ($2.9 billion) and Cyber Monday ($3.1 billion).
Optimizing your eCommerce website for mobile and providing a better UX is the best way to boost your SERP rankings and improve sales. The best solution is a responsive design. Responsive sites intuitively adapt to any device size in order to provide the most user-friendly experience.
3. High-Quality Images
High-quality product images are a key driver of conversion, engagement, and retention, as well as overall customer lifetime value. In fact, over 50% of online shoppers think that product images are more important than product descriptions, ratings, and reviews.
Luckily, creating beautiful product images is now easier than ever. There’s an assortment of great, affordable tools and resources you can rely on. For instance, there are tools to create an invisible mannequin effect, edit and retouch images, remove image background, as well as a variety of tutorial websites that can help you develop your product photography skills.
4. Customer Reviews
Asking customers to leave reviews about products they’ve bought from your store is no longer a choice; it’s a must for all serious online retailers.
Research has found that over 90% of prospective shoppers take the time to read product reviews before making a purchase. Another research carried out by Touche and Deloitte also found that customer-centric companies are 60% more profitable than companies that don’t focus on the customer. This is proof that the moment you put the customer at the core of your business, you’re closer to success. And this is the reason why businesses are looking for customer feedback tools to make the process easier and more efficient.
Customer review tools enable you to check all reviews from one central location, allow you to automatically prompt your customers to leave reviews, and share those reviews on your website or your social media profiles. They also allow you to create reports detailing the ROI of the collected customer reviews.
5. FAQ Page
A good FAQ page is one of the most important elements of a website. Even though every great eCommerce website needs to have awesome product pages, valuable content, and clean architecture in order to provide an outstanding UX, it is the FAQ section that draws most of the traffic and converts more customers.
The FAQ page of your website is the go-to section for your existent or prospective customers who want to learn more about your business, your products, shipping policy, return policy, delivery dates, and more. In fact, studies have found that the FAQ page is the second-page people go to after the Home page or Services pages.
Instead of guessing what your FAQ page should look like or what topics it should cover, you can use a variety of tools, such as WordPress FAQ plugin, to help you create an awesome FAQ section.
6. Contact Us Page
While you have probably put a lot of effort into building a great homepage that perfectly reflects your brand, basic pages often get overlooked. By creating a unique, more personable Contact Us page, you’ll provide your customers with a better experience.
In the world of eCommerce, trust is the most important currency. If people trust your brand, they are more likely to buy from you, recommend you to others, and come back for more. Being easily approachable is the best way to build trust with your potential and existing customers.
Final Thoughts
The success of an eCommerce site doesn’t depend solely on high-quality products. There’s a number of other factors at play, the two most important being the site’s design and how it is marketed.
The above list includes the most essential features that every good eCommerce site should have. However, depending on your business and products, you can modify these features or add others.