Five top tips for e-commerce sites

Entrepreneurs have realised the potential of e-commerce sites to reach a worldwide market; however, competition is fierce. To be successful, you must compete with other companies, which may be more established. Here are five top tips for your website.

Making your site easy to search

Add a search function to your website

People have busy lives, and one of the reasons they choose to buy online is to quickly buy the product they want. You can add filters so that people can search for colour and price. Search options improve the customer experience and take away the hassle of browsing through products.

Simple sign-up process and useful call to action buttons

Your site does not need to know too many details when customers sign up. Stick to the basics and ask for an email address and a password.

To improve the usability of the site, call to action buttons are necessary. They need to stand out from your website and attract customers. If you are setting up a worldwide business, it is important to consider all languages.

Speeding up the checkout process

Quick buying option

It is a great feeling when we find the product we have been searching for. We eagerly click ‘buy’, then we see a ridiculously long form. The best websites offer their customers the chance to buy without signing up. This increases sales, with the customers more likely to register afterwards. Software can help you to include this option.

Include visual content

Using visual content and trust signals

Visual content is a quicker way to engage customers, grabbing their attention and saving them from having to read through a description. You can show demonstrations of the items to encourage customers to buy.

It can be a long process to add engaging visual content, and confusing to know where to add it. Web design in Kent continues to grow, with companies such as http://www.eqmedia.co.uk/ offering solutions for e-commerce related websites.

Get certified

A website should make customers confident that their details will be secure, with certificates such as Verisign and Hacker Safe providing an additional element of security. Privacy is an important thing, with customers valuing your dedication to ensuring theirs is kept.

Conclusion

It may be an arduous process deciding what works best for your website, but it is a necessary one. A well-designed website will be the difference between making sales and losing customers.

Summary

This article gives five tips for improving an e-commerce site, including adding a search function with filters, keeping sign-up simple, and offering a quick buy option that doesn’t require registration first. It also recommends using visual content to engage customers and displaying security certificates such as Verisign to build trust in the site.

Questions this article raises

• Does removing the sign-up requirement really increase online sales?
• How much do security certificates like Verisign typically cost a small site?
• What kind of visual content works best for product pages?