Things to Include in Your Ecommerce Website’s Development.

 

E-Commerce Web development is complicated. In any project, there are a multitude of aspects to consider, from user experience to performance. Development of any enterprise website is a large-scale, complex process, but an eCommerce site presents its own particular challenges. Since users will be coming to the site to learn about and purchase products, developers will want to do everything they can to make this process easy and intuitive. But alongside the considerations of usability, here are a few other aspects of an eCommerce site that developers will want to be sure to consider during the development process:

Support Guest Checkouts

Companies with eCommerce sites will often want to require users to create an account in order to make a purchase, since this allows for follow-up communication that encourages future sales, as well as tracking customers’ demographic information to analyze sales. However, it’s important to remember that not everybody wants to go through the process of creating an account in order to buy a product. Repeat customers will want to register and get the benefits of having an account, such as saving their information for future purchases and receiving notifications about upcoming sales, but it’s still a good idea to provide an option for people who just want to make a one-time order.
Pro tip: Since you’ll still want to try to encourage users to create an account, you might try to design the purchase process to allow users to complete a guest checkout, and upon completion, allow them to create an account using the information that they just entered.

Simplify the Navigation Bar

Your navigation bar could make a huge difference in the conversion rate and bounce rate of your website. And, the strength of a webpage depends on its simplicity. To decrease the bounce rate, make sure your header navigation bar is as straightforward as possible. You must focus on prioritizing the pages that matter the most to visitors.
Limit the navigation links to 7 as fewer items in the menu bar are good for search engines as well. Sites with too many navigation options may seem overcrowded and overwhelming, which increases the chance that visitors will be going the wrong way.
From example, in the above image, the website has too many navigation links, and it doesn’t end here. It has some more in the ‘More’ drop-down menu. A good practice is to prioritize your navigation links from left to right with the most important pages on the left. The right navigation bar will be:
With a limited number of navigation links, the visitor won’t get confused, which in turns, decrease the bounce rate. The number of items matters so does the place of the navigation bar. Place it at standard locations where visitors expect to find them. It could be vertically on the left or horizontally on the top. Just like the search bar, you can also make the navigation bar fixed.

Site Search Is Important

Statistics show that 30% of visitors to eCommerce sites use search to find the products they are looking for, so it’s important to make sure the search functionality is available and easy to use. In addition, it’s a good idea to utilize features like autocomplete to help users find popular products or items related to their searches.
Faceted search is another important way to help users find products. This functionality allows them to narrow their search in a variety of ways, including by department, size, price range, manufacturer, etc. Providing this functionality gives users more power to find what they need, letting them limit their searches to exactly what they are looking for.
Pro tip: In order to make sure searches return the best results, make sure product information is fully defined and well organized, which will allow for faceted search and better search results in general.

A Direct Call-To-Action Button

If a customer does not click, he does not make a purchase. This is true for ALL online stores.
The call-to-action buttons on your ecommerce site play a major role in converting window buyers into customers. Unfortunately, 70% of the small businesses do not have a Call to Action on their homepage. Also, according to a study, just changing the color of the CTA button can increase the sales by 21%.
So, the CTAs must be clear, convincing and guide the visitor towards the conclusion of a sale.
There are many variants of the CTAs that can be used in ecommerce website design depending on the size, phrase, style or button. It can be confusing to find out which works for your site, so it’s better to test and optimize the front page.
Moreover, there are many ways of creating an effective CTA such as adding different colors, adding a sense of urgency, keeping it “above-the-fold” and many more.
Here are the steps on how you can create an effective call to action:

• Make your CTA start with action words. It must read like a command.
• Use the first-person voice like ‘take me there’ or ‘count me in.’
• Highlight the value with your CTA such as ‘Get a Gift now!’

Furthermore, when buyers feel that an opportunity is limited, they may be more inclined to buy.
You see it in retail stores displays all the time. Often, you’ll come across an end-of-season sale that runs for over a week. Applying the same to your ecommerce store will give a boost to your sales.

Security Is Essential

All eCommerce sites should support SSL to encrypt information that needs to remain secure. This is especially true for credit card and payment information, but also any customer information like address, phone number, email, etc. Customers have an expectation that their personal information will remain secure when they make a purchase online, so ensuring that SSL is implemented is not just a good idea, but something that is absolutely essential for ensuring that your customers trust that their information will remain secure. In addition, security is required to meet PCI compliance for any business which accepts credit card payments.
Don’t store credit card numbers in your site’s database. While it might seem like a good idea to keep card information on file to make purchases easier for customers, keeping this information stored on your servers is a huge security risk, and if your database is compromised, you will be liable for that loss.

An Easily Accessible Shopping cart

A shopping cart is the most integral part of an ecommerce website. To make the navigation easier for visitors and customers, an easy-to-access shopping cart is a must.
A sticky shopping cart is a cart that is always available and present at the top-right corner of the screen and throughout the entire browsing experience.
For better user experience, you can even display the number of items in the cart. A bold notification by the cart with the number of items they’ve added reminds customers their purchase and encourages them to complete the checkout.

Social Proof to Gain Trust of Visitors 

Social proof is a great indicator of trust. The product you’re selling could be the best in the world, and it’s good to pretend, it’s just that people can’t believe if they have never heard about your brand before. And that’s exactly what social proof does. With social proof, you can leverage existing trust from your customers to gain the trust of new visitors.
For instance, Gucci talks about inspiring stories on their homepage and you can click on any story to read the whole story. Once the company communicates the value proposition, customer logos are displayed to establish credibility as you can see in the example. This is included in the footer of a website after stabilizing what a brand does.

Why Hire Daiyra?

Ecommerce has opened new opportunities for those wanting to claim their own stake in the digital space that is the internet. Do you want to get more conversions on your e-commerce website? Of course, who doesn’t want. We all know that building an e-commerce website is much easier than running it successfully. You can easily hire a web designer who can build your website at an affordable price. We’re happy to provide ecommerce solutions that give people the power to build fully functioning websites without code. Everything from creating designs packed with interactions and animations to adding in new products are all a part of what we offer. We’re happy to have leveled the entryway to ecommerce and want to empower you in creating an online business that’s everything you want it to be.