Building an ecommerce website can be a daunting task. There are so many moving parts involved in the process. However, there are plenty of best practices that you can follow to make the process easier. To help you out, we’ve put together a list of simple tips for anyone looking to create their own ecommerce website.
Table of Contents
Build a clean and easy-to-navigate design
Good e-commerce website design is user-friendly and easy to navigate. If you want to create an online store that’s easy for your customers to shop, here are some tips for designing your site:
- Use a clean and easy-to-navigate design. Make sure the layout of your site is simple and intuitive so that visitors can find what they need quickly.
- Use responsive design. Responsive web design allows your website to look great on any device—smartphone, tablet, or desktop computer—no matter where customers come from or how they choose to view the content on their screens.
- Choose good colors and fonts for text elements such as headlines, headings, and paragraphs (and use sparingly!). The right typeface can make all the difference between a professional-looking website with a welcoming vibe versus an amateurish one with sloppy typography giving off negative vibes!
- Choose an appropriate logo with plenty of contrast against its background color.
- Create a clear navigation system using text links at a minimum but also consider adding arrows pointing to where each link goes so users know exactly where each will take them without having to guess.
- Include social media icons in your header so people can easily connect with others through various channels like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.* Include search functionality so people can quickly find what they’re looking for without wasting time scrolling through pages upon pages trying to figure out which products fit their needs best!
Use high quality product photography
- Use professional product photography. You’re building an ecommerce store, so you want your products to look as good as possible (maybe even better than they do on Amazon). While you could get away with taking some photos of the product yourself and uploading them, it’s best to hire a professional photographer who knows his or her way around a camera.
- Use high resolution photos. When it comes to creating ecommerce websites, photographers always have high-resolution images in mind—a great photo will lose its impact if the resolution is low and grainy.
- Use actual product photos. To make sure customers know exactly what they are buying from your store, make sure that all of your product images are taken straight from real life so that buyers can see exactly what they think they will receive when making their purchase (or return) later on down the line!
Use descriptive titles, descriptions, and tags for each of your products
When you add a new product, it’s important to use the right title and description.
- Use descriptive titles, descriptions, and tags for each of your products. Your goal in doing this should be to help customers find what they’re looking for by making it easier for them to search through your store.
- When deciding on a title, focus on describing what the product actually is (e.g., “Blue Cotton Shirt”) rather than listing its features (e.g., “Long-Sleeved Button Up”). The same applies to descriptions: try not to make them too long or complicated—just give customers enough information about what they can expect when purchasing from your site.
- Finally, take advantage of keywords! You want Google search results that will show up in front of potential buyers when they’re searching for something specific like “blue cotton shirts” or “long sleeve button ups” so include those terms in both titles as well as descriptions!
Test your responsiveness across all devices
So, you’ve built your website. And now it’s time to see if it works. You know the basics of responsive design and how to test your site on different devices, but how can you make this process easier?
- Test on different browsers: Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge and even Internet Explorer are all used by a significant percentage of internet users worldwide. If you don’t test with all these browsers then there’s a chance that some users won’t be able to use your site as intended because their browser doesn’t support certain features in HTML5 that are required for good performance across most devices (like video).
- Test on different operating systems: It’s important not only to check whether or not your website functions properly in Windows OSes and macOS but also Linux-based systems such as Ubuntu and Debian Linux flavors because many people around the world have chosen these platforms over others due to their lower costs when compared against other options available today such as Apple’s iOS platform.”
Test the page speed
The speed of a website is an important factor in the customer experience, but it’s also crucial to your company’s success. A slow page speed can have a significant impact on conversion rates, which means that if you don’t optimize for speed, you’ll be losing money.
What’s more, most people are used to seeing websites load quickly—and anything that takes longer than 2 seconds will feel like an eternity (especially when there are so many other options out there!). If your site is taking too long to load or if it looks like it’s loading slowly even though it isn’t, then chances are good that potential customers will never make it back again.
So how do you test and improve your site’s performance? There are lots of tools available online that can help with this task—but one of the best ways is using Google PageSpeed Insights (GPSI). This free tool analyzes the performance of any given webpage and provides suggestions on how to optimize its design and code as well as tips for getting better results out into the world.
Feature customer testimonials throughout the shopping experience
Use customer testimonials to sell the product. Use testimonials to build trust in your brand and website. Testimonials can also increase conversion rates, improve social proof, and increase sales. You can use video or text testimonials—or both—to showcase customers’ experiences with your product or service.
Employ a smart checkout process
- Employ a smart checkout process
Your customers don’t want to be slowed down by a complicated checkout process. And if you have multiple forms, payment options and other confusing elements in the way of the final sale, you could end up losing them entirely. Instead, simplify it with as few clicks as possible:
- Use a single page checkout (you can even get away with using just one form if your product lines are simple enough).
- Use a single form checkout process that doesn’t give customers any reason to leave the site they’re on while filling out information. This will make it easier for them to complete their purchases without having to hunt around or switch pages unnecessarily.
- Make it easy for shoppers and encourage them into completing their orders quickly by having an intuitive flow throughout each step of your design
Offer multiple payment options
Accepting payments online is important for ecommerce websites. You need to make it easy for your customers to pay you, and one way to do that is by offering multiple payment options.
We recommend accepting a minimum of two different payment methods, but ideally three or four. The most popular payment methods are debit cards, and credit cards (Visa, MasterCard, American Express), PayPal and Amazon Pay, but there are other options that might also work well with your business model: Venmo; Apple Pay; Google Pay; Square Cash/Square Invoices; Stripe Payments as a Service (PSA); Braintree Marketplace; Shopify Payments; Facebook Credits
Provide good customer support on your store
And finally, you need to provide good customer support on your store. This includes:
- Providing telephone support
- Providing email support
- Providing live chat support
- Providing FAQs (frequently asked questions) pages with answers to common issues and questions that customers have when they’re shopping on your site. You can also provide a contact form in case the person wants to reach out via email instead of chatting or calling you.
- Providing a knowledge base where people can search for answers about the products that are sold on your site, including descriptions and images of each product.
- Creating a community forum where customers can ask each other questions about their purchases and get answers from others who’ve already bought from you before them. You could also create online help videos so people know how best to use whatever it is they’re buying from you! If someone ever has trouble using something bought from your store, let them know where else they might find information about what exactly it does/does not do–this could be very helpful for those who don’t know much about certain kinds of items being sold elsewhere online yet need more direction before committing themselves fully into making such purchases without any prior knowledge beforehand (like buying something big like computers).
Set up an effective returns policy for your customers
You should have a returns policy that’s clearly stated on your website, and it should be easy for customers to find. Your returns policy should also be easy to use, fair, consistent, transparent and simple.
Ideally, you want to make the process as easy as possible for your customers so that they feel confident about purchasing from you in the first place.
Enable abandoned cart recovery features on your store.
Enable abandoned cart recovery features on your store. Get in touch with customers who abandon their carts and offer them a discount or coupon code for a future purchase, a gift card or even free shipping. As an example, one of our clients offered $10 off any order over $50 if the customer returned within 24 hours to complete their purchase. They also offered an additional 5% off if they used Google Pay when checking out.
Following the above best practices will be helpful in building an e-commerce website.
Following the above best practices will be helpful in building an e-commerce website.
- Use high quality product photography. One of the most effective ways to build trust with your visitors is by providing high quality product images.
- Use descriptive titles, descriptions, and tags for each of your products. The title and description should accurately describe what the customer can expect when they make a purchase from you. Be sure to include keywords that are relevant to customers looking for this type of product so they can easily find it on search engines such as Google or Bing!
Do you need help Building your Ecommerce Website?
We hope this list will inspire you to make all of the right choices when building your own online store. We know it can be a challenge, but with the right tools and resources on hand, you can create an ecommerce website that’s sure to impress your customers. Remember that there are many options for getting started with ecommerce—it just comes down to finding what works best for you!
If you’re in need of an expert web design team to help you on your online journey, contact us at Social Spike, and see how we can take your online business to the next level.
