The e-commerce sector has seen a progressive graph since the beginning of this century. In the past two decades, the sector has been booming. Also, this unprecedented crisis of COVID-19 has acted as a catalyst in the growth of this industry. And it will be more than safe to say that the future of e-commerce seems bright.
E-commerce has changed the way people shop and the way they interact with brands. Consumers now prefer to log onto a website and access the entire store with a tap on the screen.
Several factors decide the overall success of an e-commerce website. These include the quality of products, trustworthiness of the brand, product return policies, and shipping rates.
The e-commerce website’s design plays a pivotal role in piquing the customer’s interest in any brand. A seamless user experience is the key to customer engagement and satisfaction. We have compiled a website design checklist for you to give a perfect and successful website experience to your visitors.
- Security and Trust
The customer would want to keep their data safe and secure. So, an SSL certificate is strongly recommended. This will ensure the security of the customer’s personal & private information. Customers are more likely to complete a transaction that has an authentic SSL certification. Some ways to ensure trust in customers:
- Provide your company’s contact detailsÂ
- Provide links to your social media handlesÂ
- Data & privacy policies should be written clearly on your websiteÂ
- Policy for use of cookiesÂ
- Customer care informationÂ
- Reviews
Sharing product reviews will benefit your brand. It will help your consumers make buying decisions. Moreover, it will also help convince your customers that the products sold are original. This will also provide an insight into the previous buying experiences of other customers. Here are some tips for creating quality content around registered customers:
- Integrate a star-rating system for every productÂ
- Encourage existing customers to write reviews for products they’ve boughtÂ
- Easy access for customers to individual product pages where all reviews of a product are listedÂ
- Attention to detail
It is one of the most important sections of the website design checklist. Customers do not trust websites that do not use grammatically correct language. This weighs out the professionalism and legitimacy of the brand. So here are some points to make the best of your e-commerce website design:
- Avoid typographical errorsÂ
- Avoid usage of complicated sentences and jargonsÂ
- No missing product imagesÂ
- No broken links and links should lead to relevant pagesÂ
- 404 errors should always be avoidedÂ
- Ease of access with ‘One-click’ Â
- Avoid pop-ups
Pop-ups are unwanted alerts on the screen which will interfere in the customer’s shopping experience. This will detach the customer’s interests in the product.
Also, customers generally dismiss the pop-up window as soon as it pops up on the screen, even before they read the content of that pop-up window. Hence, even if you display any important information on the pop-up, it is bound to be ignored by the majority of customers, so it is better to avoid pop-ups.
- Tracking functionality
The tracking functionality makes a huge difference in the e-commerce website design. Customers like to know the whereabouts of their products at every step, whether it is being packed, shipped, or expected delivery dates. This gives them a real-time feel of the service and also builds customers’ confidence in the brand’s website. When customers order the products, they will appreciate receiving the status updates about their product’s location.
- Payment choices
If a customer will not be able to find their preferred payment options, they will most likely drop the idea of shopping from your website. So, it is very important to include a variety of payment options like Cash on Delivery, PayPal, credit cards, debit cards, UPI payments, etc.
- Customer service
Another important aspect of website design is to take online customer service, i.e. to make sure customers can reach your customer care department/chatbots easily. Unlike online shopping, in offline shopping, customers could visit stores and immediately ask all sorts of questions, face to face regarding the products. However, in online shopping this isn’t possible. It will prove very beneficial to include this service on your website too.[Text Wrapping Break]
Hence, a real-time chat service that allows your customers to post queries will improve the overall user experience. Moreover, a chatbot with a set of standard queries, questions, requests and complaints will also help in resolving simple queries on the spot, thus providing an instant solution which will satisfy the customers’ curiosity, resolve complaints and will ultimately help in increasing sales and revenue.
- Search and sort
The customers should be able to easily search the products that they want. They should also have a feature to sort and filter the search results as per their convenience.
For example, if customers are buying clothes, they should be able to filter by size, color, type of fabric, sleeve length, tops or bottoms, colors, etc. They should also be able to sort the filtered items by price, gender, what’s new, what’s trending, percentage of discounts, customer reviews and ratings, etc.
- Clear, sharp and optimized images
The main selling point of a product is it’s appearance. Optimized, relevant and clear images that display all the product features, will always grab customer’s attention easily.
Wrapping it up!
Customers ultimately aim for a seamless shopping experience. Designing a successful e-commerce website means creating a supreme shopping experience for your customers. This leads to increased trustworthiness, sales, revenues and ultimately higher brand value in the market.
