Before we start digging into the best practices, here are some facts that you ought to know:
• Online shoppers using a high-speed internet connection waits to only up to 4 seconds in order for a page to load. Online shoppers using lower connections wait up to 6 seconds.
• Online shoppers who decide to continue shopping in a website they have known and have shopped before, according to Jupiter Research, appreciate an easy and user-friendly site interface and navigation.
• Online shoppers need to know if your website is secured to do a transaction most especially that payments are made in your website.
Top 5 Best Practices for Ecommerce Websites
1. Put your Best Effort in Rendering your Website Pages Quicker Than 4 Seconds
Online shoppers today are always concerned about getting things in an instant. In online shopping websites, shoppers are looking for quick transactions and that begins with page loads. According to research, online shoppers today wait only up to 4 seconds for a page to load. When you don't pay attention as to how your website loads, you might be missing potential customers and that is the last thing that you need.
2. Easy Checkout Process
The online shopping checkout process is the same as following a queue in a grocery store. We don't want to follow a long queue, and most of all, we don't want to be tempted with the products displayed in the queue section because we might be spending on something we don't really need. Some online shopping websites have a confusing checkout process. Checkout buttons or links are not placed in the most visible part of the checkout process or customers are being lead to buy other things before arriving to the main item to be checked out. Pay attention to the quality of your checkout process if it's too long or distracting.
Also, some online shopping websites require account registration to be able to finally purchase an item. Although this is a good way for website owners to get registered members, this is considered to be a major turn off to those who actually want to buy a product right away but as a guest user.
3. Flexible Payment Methods
One thing that hinders shoppers into finally purchasing goods is the way they can pay for those goods. If you only accept cash on delivery for payments, then, those using credit cards and PayPal credits will find other suppliers to get the products from because even if they have the capacity to pay, but still unable to do it because of limitations. Lift the possible limitations and get a merchant account from PayPal because most of the payment terms are fine with PayPal-whether debit, credit, cash, and PayPal credits. Lastly, PayPal provides a good amount of security to transactions as well and payment disputes can be made in case of transaction failures.
4. Online Shopping Cart
Selecting the best kind of online shopping cart that fits your e-commerce website is very important as it will aid online shoppers in heading for the checkout easily. This means that when you successfully lead customers into the checkout process, chances are good in capturing a sale. What makes an online shopping cart "the best"? There are only a few things that you would like to see in a shopping cart:
• Landing page/Products' Shelf should have pictures of the product with its corresponding Product Name, Product Code, and Price.
• When a product is selected by shoppers, more information of the product should be read by customers such as colors available, texture, weight, dimensions, and product care. The price to be displayed should already contain values for the additional shipping fees, taxes (if applicable), and other fees.
• A good shopping cart lets you add an item to the cart and still enables you to shop for other items before finally checking out.
• It lets you see choose how many of the products selected you would want to buy and how many items are already in the cart and as well as the total amount all the items with the necessary fees being presented accurately.
• It lets you check out using different payment options.
• Online shoppers would like to make transactions without having to log-in or register but to purchase easily as a guest. Hassle-free check out leads to a successful sale.
5. Search Bar
One of the online shopping facts is more than half of the online shoppers prefer searching for items using the search bar of an e-commerce website rather than use the navigation button in looking for the exact item they're trying to purchase. This only means that adding a search bar in one of the most prominent parts of the website is essential for an e-commerce shopping cart. However, this leads to a web designer creating an effective 404 page to still capture the lead and not shoo it away just because he gets lost in the site because the search bar cannot find what he's looking for.
These are only a few of the essentials and best practices of creating an online shopping website, but one e-commerce website can already use these methods as a jump start to success.
Glen is a part of the NetiDnow.com team that provides individuals or businesses with online shopping cart software and e-commerce website builder services.
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