4 Vital Elements of an Effective E-commerce Website

Every website on the internet has an agenda behind it. Sometimes, people are using their domains to spread knowledge, raise awareness or altruistically entertain others but more often than not, the purpose of a website is to generate profit for its owner.

Now, the way this happens in e-commerce is quite straightforward and it doesn’t even stray that far from the way it’s done in traditional retail. Still, making an e-commerce website is definitely not the same thing as designing a store layout, which is why people interested in this industry need to be aware of the four vital elements that every e-store needs to have.

1. Simple checkout system

One of the taboo notions in the world of e-commerce is definitely cart abandonment. What this means is that a person who originally planned to purchase a product on your website gave up on the decision somewhere along the way. Sure, some may argue that this person is not that much different from anyone else who hasn’t bought from you, but they are usually missing a huge point.

You see, this particular buyer (or would-be-buyer) is a huge missed opportunity, seeing as how they were actually seconds away from making a purchase. In a lot of cases (28 percent of the time), the main reason for cart abandonment is a complicated or time-consuming checkout system. By coming up with a way to simplify and speed up your own checkout system, you can easily give your profits a significant boost.

2. Functional website

The next major reason why people refuse to buy from you might lie in the very design of your website. First of all, it may seem unprofessional, which might make people question their willingness to leave their credit card information. Apart from this, they are highly unlikely to work with a website that is constantly crashing, since they are afraid that this occurrence might ruin their transaction.

In order to avoid this, you need a professional e-commerce website development. This starts with advanced shopping cart features (which also help you out with the issue we addressed in the first section) and ends with an extremely user-friendly platform.

3. Transparency of cost

Avoiding to include the price of shipping or taxes, and display a full price is a shady tactic that a lot of companies use in order to persuade people to buy from them. Keep in mind that these extra costs are responsible for about 60 percent of the cart abandonment rate, while 23 percent of them outright hated the fact that they couldn’t see the total order cost up front.
Think about it this way, even if you do manage to persuade a person to buy from you, once they realize that the full cost of the product is not what they were willing to pay, they will never come back. This is quite problematic, seeing as how return customers are incredibly profitable. In fact, less than 10 percent of them make about 40 percent of your entire profit.

4. Adequate visual content

In the end, one of the greatest advantages that the traditional retail still holds over e-commerce is the fact that the customer can actually see and even touch the product before purchasing it. The only way in which this issue can be remedied in e-commerce is through adequate images for each category, product and content piece. Furthermore, it is vital that these images load instantaneously, which is why you might want to optimize them first. While doing this, remember that you need it to look good on various devices, due to the fact that mobile users are quickly becoming the driving force of e-commerce.

Conclusion

By paying attention to these four simple elements, you can easily unleash the true power of your e-commerce website and help your platform reach its full potential. Of course, there are some other things you can do for maximum efficiency, like paying special attention to your CTA (call-to-action) button, making great customer testimonials and even asking people for their reviews. At the end of the day, the key to succeeding in the world of e-commerce lies in two things: having something fresh to offer and having a platform that is simple to use. Any strategy you opt for needs to revolve around these two features.

Guest article written by: Dan Radak is a marketing professional with eleven years of experience. He is currently working with a number of companies in the field of digital marketing, closely collaborating with a couple of e-commerce companies. He is also a coauthor on several technology websites and regular contributor to Technivorz.