6 Crucial Elements of an Ecommerce Site

Have you ever visited an ecommerce store online to buy something only to find that the site loads too slowly, is buggy and doesn’t make finding what you need any easier? If you have, then you probably recall the frustration of waiting for the site to load, the stress of not being able to find what you want on time and a few other issues. The truth is a fully functioning ecommerce website is easy to use, smooth and handles all your transactions flawlessly. So, what do you need to do to build an amazing ecommerce site?

Clean Sophisticated Design

When you visit Amazon, Zappos or Ebay, what do you see? Clean designs, isn’t it? It’s not cluttered with scripts, videos and excessive images, right? This is the very first thing you need take into consideration. No one likes cluttered stores. They look amateurish and don’t instill any confidence in your visitors.

People love the lean, clean, yet stylish look of stores like the Apple store. While your company may not be as big as Zappos or Amazon, you want to replicate the same processes or design during the ecommerce web development phase. In fact, this should be the goal of your ecommerce web designers.

Fast Loading Speed

I love fast loading websites, don’t you? They’re very quick and don’t waste your time. Gotta love something like that. As a rule, your ecommerce store shouldn’t more than 4 seconds to load. Anything more and you’re losing customers and hundreds, if not thousands of dollars.

People don’t like to wait for minutes for a store. If it isn’t loading as fast as they want, they’ll click that back button and leave your store for your competition’s –possibly forever. Studies have shown that faster loading websites tend to generate more revenue and sales. If you think your website could do with a bit more speed, try using a Content Delivery Network (CDN) service.

Responsive Mobile Design

If you’re like me, you probably bought something online through your phone or tablet. People are doing a ton of purchasing on the go nowadays. They’re booking restaurants, hotels, flights, contacting businesses and generally doing most of what was only possible on the PC before. Now, most of these people will only buy from websites that are adapted to their mobile devices.

This means that if your ecommerce store was coded using the Jurassic-age html language, people will leave your store, period. Instead, incorporate responsive mobile designs into your ecommerce web development phase. Talk to your ecommerce web and let them come up with fast-loading, non-buggy and stylish mobile ecommerce store designs.

Easy User Interface Navigation

Do you know why it’s easy for you to find something in a department store? It’s because they are arranged categorically. For instance, all household items are found in the household section. So, all you need to do is locate the section to find what you need. This is how your ecommerce store should function.

If you have a fashion store, you should have a men’s category, followed by a brand sub-category. The point is that people should be able to find whatever they are looking for in your store in a few clicks –the general consensus is 3-5 clicks. So, make sure that your store is easy to navigate.

Cut Down on Your Selections

Admittedly, most ecommerce stores would like to be as big as Amazon or Zappos one day. For now however, you need to focus or “nicheify” your products if you’re a startup. There are many ecommerce stores in specific niches that are doing really well. Having too many products listed can be a logistic nightmare for a small operation.

Setup Excellent Search Facilities

Avoid using the standard Google search bar. Task your ecommerce web development team with coding a special search facility for your website. Your search facility should only return the best and most relevant search results. Trust me, online stores with a high irrelevant results ratio will lose both its credibility and many prospects. Along with this, you should have highly visual product pages with adequate product descriptions. These are crucial to your success.

Easy Ordering Process

Try and make the ordering process as easy and seamless as possible. Your customers shouldn’t have to jump through hoops to place their order. They should be able to do it five clicks or less. Talk to your ecommerce web development team about this when you’re making your inquiries and make it is integrated into your store.

Owning an ecommerce store can be both profitable and rewarding, but you need to do it right. Choose only reputable ecommerce web designers and developers like BCP Digital Marketing and you’ll get great results.