13 Key Factors for Successful eCommerce Website

Mobile Responsive:

To drive online sales, a mobile responsive website is the fundamental requirement. Study shows the total number of mobile users has crossed 3 billion. Since people spend most of their time on mobile phones, it would be a blunder not to make your website mobile friendly.

More than 50% of the website traffic comes from mobile devices and Google also prefers mobile-responsive sites for higher rankings of Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). Even for online shopping, users are more comfortable on their smartphones rather than desktops or laptops.

So, whenever you hire an eCommerce website development company, make sure to tell them that you need a responsive design that would make your eCommerce site accessible from any type of device and screen size. Another plus point of responsive websites is that it becomes easy to use and understand from the user’s point of view. A good user experience will make sure that your visitors stay, browse products, and finally, place the order.

Contemporary Website Interface:

In 2023, you cannot expect your visitors to like traditional and old-fashioned websites. Poor use of color schemes and visual elements that do not match your brand tone can make your website look ugly and turn away visitors.

Therefore, to make a lasting impression, you need the expert help of a creative graphic design company to design a visually appealing eCommerce website for your business. A beautifully crafted site exudes a modern look-and-feel and also the usage of colors perfectly harmonizes with the business logo and brand colors.

Apart from the design interface, the website layout and navigation must also be looked after to make the shopping experiences of the customers convenient. The design must appear logical to your visitors with legible fonts and the correct use of graphical elements.

Quality of Images:

The products are the primary points of focus for every visitor coming to an ecommerce site. And product images are the first experience that users will have on your website. The images create a vision of the real product in your visitors’ minds and convince them to buy from you.

Hence, presenting high-quality images will help your potential customers understand the product details better. Also, presenting multiple pictures from different angles will allow them to see whether they will get everything they actually need from the product.

If you have an actual image of the product on a real background surrounded by its context, that’s even better! This will make your audience relate or connect with the experience of using the product in real-time. Additionally, you must not forget to incorporate the product zoom-in feature because it ensures that customers get a closer picture of product quality, color, and design.

Easy payment method:

Payment integrations are must-haves for eCommerce sites. Cash-on-delivery mode is no longer a preferred payment method for online shoppers. They are loving the convenience of swiping and paying in seconds the moment they place their order. So, keeping this in mind, eCommerce owners need to integrate easy and hassle-free modes of online payment on their websites.

Also, customers should have access to multiple payment options and plans such as debit cards, credit cards, internet banking, digital wallet, and so on. Providing buyers with diverse payment methods will increase your customer retention rate. The more comfortable they are while making purchases, the higher their chances of coming back again.

Live Chat System:

The one thing that always irritates a customer and makes them prefer offline shopping over online is poor customer service. They miss the face-to-face interaction with the retail store person who guides them in finding the right product and address their queries attentively.

Fortunately, now you can provide personalized customer service to your customers online also. Integrating live chat functions through AI-powered chatbots makes it easier for customers to solve their queries in real-time. It is more convenient that the traditional method of approaching the support team via email and calls.

Live chats have made direct interaction with customers possible 24*7. They can also share their valuable feedback on a particular product which grows their trust in the online platform. Perhaps, you will find them returning back soon. Apart from strengthening customer-seller relationships, live chats also cut down your company expenditures on hiring an entire customer support team.

Ease of Navigation:

Website navigation is another big thing that visitors notice after they land on your site. If your visitors face difficulty in finding what they are looking for, they will leave right away without putting in any extra effort. Always remember, they are plenty of options available to your visitors. So, unless you do something extraordinary and provide them with an interactive user experience, they are not going to stay for longer.

A website that has a clear navigation menu will help your visitors find products easily and move around the site with zero confusion. In particular, product information should be clearly visible and CTAs should be easily clickable.

Web Speed Optimization:

Ecommerce websites that take a longer time to load will be abandoned soon. Hence, site speed optimization is a key determining factor for your website sales. Users choose to stay on those sites that load faster and run smoothly on all types of devices like desktops, laptops, tablets, and mobiles.

To make your online store a huge success, page speed optimization is a necessary criterion. A clean and crisp design with simple navigation, an organized layout, and good-quality images will optimize your website performance and simultaneously, increases the page loading speed.

Making it SEO friendly:

A solid SEO strategy for your eCommerce website is imperative to drive genuine traffic to your website. Also, it helps search engine spiders and bots crawl better and sees whether the products and information on your site match the users’ intent and their search queries.

You can also take the help of an established SEO company to optimize your website as per the latest SEO algorithms in the eCommerce space. They will help you target relevant and popular keywords that your potential audience usually searches on the internet while looking for your products and services.

Customers’ Information Security:

The security and privacy protection of your user’s information is integral to building a successful ecommerce website. The best solution to secure your site is an SSL certificate. Having an SSL certificate makes sure that all the customers’ information is protected from any kind of cyber threats or attacks.

An SSL-certified site shows https:// and not http://, implying that the information is encrypted end-to-end. This boosts the customer’s confidence and increases your website’s credibility. On the other hand, when anyone visits an eCommerce site without an SSL certificate, a message appears as a warning showing – “You are entering into an unprotected site.” Visitors are immediately turned off as they feel their information is unsafe and hence, they prefer not to access the site.

The absence of an SSL certificate can highly impact your sales negatively. It can also lower your site’s rank on search engines because Google cares about user security and privacy protection while visiting a site.

Read Also: Shopify vs. Magento: Choose the Best eCommerce Platform for Your Business

Personalized Shopping Experiences:

Customer satisfaction is your ultimate goal. Besides making the shopping experiences of your new customers smooth, it is also important to make sure that your repeat customers are also happy and continue to shop from your site in the future.

You can personalize your customers’ journey on the site by integrating AI and providing them with product recommendations, attractive seasonal deals, and birthday discounts. This will make them feel special and help you to build better customer relationships.

Multilingual Support:

Integrating multilingual support into your site will help you to expand your business in the global market. When the website content is displayed in various languages, customers can access information in whichever language they are comfortable with.

In simple words, a multilingual website helps you to expand your customer reach and build meaningful connections with a wider range of audience.

Voice-Search feature:

In this era of voice assistants like Alexa, and Siri, incorporating a voice-search option in your eCommerce store can turn out to be an incredible way to enhance your customer’s browsing experience. It’s a hands-free way of shopping by buyers while they are on the go or are busy with other tasks.

Providing your users with a voice-enabled search on your online shopping platform will allow them to speak directly about what they want and find suitable product suggestions accordingly. Voice search is one of the latest trends in the eCommerce field, so if you haven’t thought of it yet, then it’s time to take the leap.

Easy checkout Process:

The entire journey of a customer from searching for products, adding them to the cart, placing orders to making payment should be smooth as a cakewalk. The complicated and lengthy checkout process will disappoint the customers and probably they won’t come to your page next.

Your checkout process should be neat and confined to one page only. Also, providing them with easy save list buttons like “Add to Cart” or “Wishlist Item” will also the checkout process effortless.

We believe that these above 13 key factors will make your eCommerce website gain all the attention and earn a distinctive edge over your competitors. However, outsourcing your eCommerce project to a reliable and popular web development company can bring guaranteed results.

Read Also: How To Develop a Voice Assistance Application Like Alexa?

How To Pick The Right Ecommerce Website Development Company

Here is an exclusive checklist for you before you select an outsourcing partner for your eCommerce project. Make sure you tick marks all the boxes before closing the deal.

• Years of experience – The company must have many years of experience working in this domain. The more the experience, the better the quality of their service.
• Team Strength – A bigger team strength is an important factor to consider while hiring an agency. They have greater capabilities to deal with complex challenges that may come during the course of development. Also, the diverse knowledge and skills of the team members result in the best outcomes.
• Past portfolio – You must check out their portfolio section to review the eCommerce sites created for previous clients. This will help you better understand the quality of the work and the type of projects they have done till now.
• Technology and frameworks used – It is equally important to see whether the company you are deciding to hire has access to the updated technology stack. To keep up with the current trends, eCommerce developers must have the expertise in using cutting-edge frameworks and tools.
• Support and maintenance – Post-development support is an essential part of every online website and eCommerce is no exception. You should see whether your hired firm includes site maintenance service.