There are many aspects that should be included in ecommerce best practices. Building an ecommerce site that customers love primarily comes down to three things: sweating (and testing) the small stuff, maintaining top notch tagging and categorization and understanding human psychology.
In spite of providing quality products, numerous ecommerce businesses are failing to find sustainability in the market because they aren’t following ecommerce best practices. This is why if you want to survive in the market you always have to stay on top of things.
Be sure to take notes to make sure you are not missing any significant criteria –
1. Build Trust With Reviews & Rating
Encouraging customer to put honest reviews is a major one among ecommerce best practices. With all the new business you’ll be getting from these changes, it makes sense to begin taking customer reviews for your products!
Almost a quarter of online shoppers (23%) are influenced by social media recommendations.
69% of online shoppers want more reviews from ecommerce sites
“Customer reviews” is one of the most persuasive ways to demonstrate the quality of your product. Prospective shoppers will find it valuable to see the feedback of others and you can also use the evidence provided in reviews to help from your FAQ section.
Yotpo is a good choice for presenting your reviews since it’s easy to assimilate and will automatically follow up with clients via email, asking for a review and feedback after each order.
2. Keep Checkout Page Clean
Putting unnecessary buttons and links doesn’t help your conversion and it is not among ecommerce best practices either. Often times customers get confused while checking out and it will reduce the user satisfaction. A confusing interface will ultimately hurt your conversion rate.
3. Keep Low Shipping Charge
66% of online shoppers have decided not to buy an item because of shipping costs
If you do need to charge for shipping make sure to use a flat rate fee and let buyers know the cost upfront. Make sure your price is justifiable; put a box near the ‘buy’ button that clarifies your pricing scheme. If you provide any type of free shipping, show this in the site header.
Nothing will hurt your sales volume more than surprise costs at the last minute.
4. Highlight Recent Discounts
Seniors are less influenced by discount offers than other generations: 47% to 74%
Discounts will always increase your sales and conversion volume if used properly of course. When you already have been giving great deals, why not showcase it properly. You can do heat mapping on your website to find out (hot points) where visitors mostly point their mouse. Then you can put your “discount deal” at that corner to get the maximum exposure and maintain ecommerce best practices.
5. Provide 360 Degree View of The Product
Generally, we like to see clearly what we are buying online. For example, a camcorder is an item that we would typically research by ourselves ahead of time and then perhaps order it online if the price was lower than in a local shop, in these cases clear view of any product can help your sales. The 360-degree view is not a deal-maker, but rather, a deal facilitator.
However, the ability to see a 360-degree view of a product is much more significant with online purchases which are not extensively researched ahead of time. Through this ecommerce best practice potential customer gain an added dimension of familiarity with the purchase that is simply not possible with static images.
6. Keep Good Balance Between (Images, Text and White Space)
Ensure that the structure of your website is organized in such a way that it is easy for visitors to browse and for search engines to understand. The point of having a website that is organized neatly is to make sure it is always clear where your visitors are on the website, it is easy for visitors to find what they are looking for and that it is easy to see what their other options are for related products or services. Make sure visitors have the option of taking many different actions with the persuasion of a strong call to action.
This is important in terms of visibility since usability is one of the many factors the major search engines take into consideration when ranking a website.
Manage the design so that the space allotted to pictures and product descriptions is in harmony. One of them should not overwhelm the other. Your site needs to have the right mix.
7. Use The Power of Social Media
20% of online shoppers would be likely to make a purchase from Facebook
17% of online shoppers would be likely to make a purchase from Pinterest
14% of online shoppers would be likely to make a purchase from Instagram
12% of online shoppers would be likely to make a purchase from Twitter
10% of online shoppers would be likely to make a purchase from Snapchat
Social media is the heartbeat of your business, as it gives you an uninterrupted glance into the lives of your customers. Using social media marketing along with rich & useful content increases your chance of selling products.
8. Make Your About Page More Interesting
Smaller businesses can gain the most benefit from a good about page; usually they can also be more honest and transparent than corporate brands.
Things you need to remember –
- Include photography of your team and your premises
- Be yourself
- Show any awards you’ve won
- Mention any interesting facts
- Tell your story
It’s also worth including an FAQ and sometimes even a ‘Why shop with us’ section.
In general, it’s best to include an ‘About’ link in your footer, reserving the top navigation for your main product categories. However, sometimes it’s worth including an about page in the main navigation.
9. Ensure Your Images Have Alt Text
Image ‘alt’ text allows Google to index your images so that they can be searched.
People often use Google image search when looking for an item where the look is more important, so putting ‘alt’ text in your picture could earn you a sale if you come up top in Google Image search. ‘Alt’ text will also rub off on your general page SEO. These sorts of ecommerce best practices will increase your technical efficiency.
Over To You
Every business has its own charm and opportunity, not every ecommerce best practices will fit your business perfectly. It is always wiser to test some of the major changes before you fully dive into practice.
- Be imaginative.
- Use ‘You’ more than ‘We’.
- Explain why you’re different.
- Include a strong call to action.
- Combine powerful photography or video for maximum effect.
Along with online ecommerce best practics you also have to follow offline best practices to get the ultimate sales.
What sort of business you are running and what is your secret sauce for winning the market?
For more information head over to OrbitInformatics.com.
