Killer Content
If your content is mediocre you will have wasted all that money getting an SEO expert to give your site a high Google ranking. Once the traffic arrives at your site you not only have to keep them there but transform a visitor into a customer. This is your one chance to allow those visitors to feel your brand and learn what it can do for them. Content is the current king of e-commerce so make sure yours is professional, engaging and makes people want to buy your product.
User Friendliness
Smooth navigation and UX, user experience, is vital if your e-commerce website is going to succeed where so many have failed. It is vital that when developing your website you satisfy your customers by giving them the best possible experience. Whether you do this by using an intuitive concept, or by developing a highly functional design, is up to you but bear in mind they will determine their experience within the first few seconds and there are plenty of other sites they can head off to.
Simple Check Out
Forget what has gone on behind the scenes to give your customers the optimum choice of payment methods, up front it has to be as simple as possible. Today`s online customers expect to be able to complete their check out process within seconds rather than minutes, and rightly so. Streamline your check out to make it as user friendly as possible. This is the last part of the buying process and the one all customers remember.
Excellent Customer Support
If you try to pack everything into an e-commerce website it can come across as cluttered and less than aesthetically pleasing. Even if you have high fived yourself for covering all bases yet managed to keep your site clean you can guarantee your customers will still have questions. By giving your customer support a strong presence on your website you are giving them the peace of mind that you are there should they need you. This goes a long way to building a relationship with your customers as they know you care.
Mobile Accessibility
If you have ever tried to access your favourite website on a mobile device to find the whole experience disappointing you will know exactly what we are talking about. With mobile sales set to overtake those made on desktop computers and laptops, not ensuring your e-commerce site is fully compatible with all mobile devices is commercial suicide. Your mobile online store needs to offer your customers every bit as great an experience as your main one and sluggish navigation and incomplete pages just won`t cut it.
By getting these right at the development stage you will eliminate the hassle further down the line when you try to analyse why your website isn`t performing as you hoped it would. It`s a cut throat world out there in the e-commerce market and you must give yourself the best chance from the outset. These 5 basic essentials do exactly that.