For any business to thrive in the market, online presence has become mandatory. For online presence, it is necessary to have a website. The more advanced the business, the more elegant should be the website for it to attract the traffic. The website for any business should be bespoke, fast, and performance oriented to keep the visitors on the site for long enough to convert them into customers. To get a professional site, hiring a qualified and experienced web developer makes sense instead of doing it yourself or getting it done by an amateur to save some money.
Web development is a complicated process and consists of a multitude of aspects which affect the result. From user experience to performance; everything needs to be considered. Professional sites for e-commerce business are large scale and have their own challenges which included many products and purchase processes. They are also required to be up every time as the traffic continuous. Therefore, the developers should make it intuitive and process- oriented along with flexible and user-friendly.
Here are some of the tips that developers should consider ensuring the development is up to the mark and successful for e-commerce business:
RESPONSIVE DESIGN
Any e-commerce website should be responsive for its customers to get the best experience while browsing and shopping for the products. The use of mobile devices to access websites has also affected the development of websites. Shopping on mobile devices has facilitated the growth of eCommerce sales and it brings in a large portion of the traffic. Statistics show that by 2017, over one-fourth of eCommerce sales will be generated by mobile devices and application.
Therefore, it is imperative to make your e-commerce site mobile friendly and upgrade it with an application as well for all types of users. This means you care about your consumers and want to give them the best user-experience while they shop on your site.
Implementing a Responsive Design to make your website accessible and usable on every device is a wise business decision and will pay off big time by increasing your sales and generating traffic even after working hours. Use a powerful CMS platform to ensure your mobile consumers are well served from basic navigation to check out and payment since this ever-growing group of users can’t be ignored.
SUPPORT GUEST CHECKOUTS
Most of the companies and sites require you to create an account to continue shopping on their site. Companies with eCommerce sites do this as it allows for follow-up communication that encourages future sales, as well as tracking customers’ demographic information to analyse sales. Sometimes, this lengthy process often distracts the consumers and they find it tedious to do so. However, it’s important to note that not every site is similar and wants its consumer to go through this process. Allow your customers to make a purchase without creating an account and use quick gust checkout to complete their purchase as quickly as possible.
Repeat customers, however, may want to register and get the benefits of saving their information for future purchases along with receiving Reward points and notifications about upcoming sales.
SITE SEARCH FUNCTIONALITY
An e-commerce site has numerous products and categories and sometimes searching the right product takes time. Statistics show that 30% of visitors use search option to find the products they are looking for. Therefore, creating a search functionality on your site is important if you have an endless list of products like eBay and Amazon. In addition, implementing the autocomplete feature also makes it easy for users to find the products on your site.
Faceted search or navigation is another way to help users to narrow their search as per the filters to find the right products. This functionality allows them to filter the products in the variety of ways including department, size, price range, manufacturer, brand, type etc. Providing this functionality gives users more authority and options to find what they need, facilitating them to search exactly what they are looking for.
Pro tip: to improve the user experience and their search results, make sure product information is fully defined and well organized
SECURITY IS ESSENTIAL
Since all e-commerce sites have payment process enabled, they should support SSL to encrypt information that needs to remain secure. This is especially applicable for credit card and payment information. However, any customer information like address, phone number, email, etc. should also be covered under security. Customers expect to have their personal information secure and not be shared with any third-party applications without their permission. Therefore, ensuring that SSL is implemented correctly is not just a good idea, but essential to gain customers trust towards your business. They should feel secure while shopping on your site. In addition, security is also required to meet PCI compliance for any business which accepts credit card payments.
Pro tip: Keeping credit card information stored on your servers is a huge security risk in case your database is compromised due to an unforeseen incident. While it might look like a good idea to keep the information file saved to make purchases easier for your customers, you will be liable for that loss.
OPTIMIZE SITE PERFORMANCE
The easiest way to lose customers for an e-commerce business is to have a slow website. If your site is slow, your customers will look elsewhere for the same products. Statistics show that 40% of users abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load. This behaviour gets aggravated with mobile users, who are often multi-tasking while browsing websites. They are more likely to move on quickly to something else if a site is too slow.
Optimize your site to load faster and perform reasonably to give your users an experience to remember. Here are a few ways to help your site run more smoothly:
- Combine a site’s JavaScript or CSS resource files into single files to speed up their interaction with the site.
- Compress images to allow them to provide the best visuals at the smallest possible size, reducing download times.
- Use caching to reduce the time spent sending data between the web server and the database server.
Keep these aspects in mind when you get your e-commerce site developed to ensure that you are providing the best shopping experience to your customers. There are many more elements to consider when developing your site which you can understand in detail with consultation with WebBee Global. Experts at WebBee will not only develop your site but also optimize it to suit your competition and market base. They provide you with a complete package that can grow your business and increase your sales. Contact us for a free consultation and advise on your e-commerce business and its growth strategy.
