8 Must-Have Features For eCommerce Website

To stay competitive and relevant in the eCommerce industry it’s necessary to add certain elements to attract and engage your online visitors.

Every website is unique in its own way and we agree to this. Numerous trends emerge in eCommerce site design including, 360–degree product reviews, dynamic product searching, animations, and advanced filtering. 

However, you should know these trends cannot bring in sales or improve user-experience. There are certain elements that we believe every eCommerce site should include. 

To help you out, in this article we’ll discuss 8 must-have features to attract online customers.

1. Develop and design a user-friendly site

This approach emerged from the old K.I.S.S principle. There must be simplicity and minimalism in a great design and you achieve elegance without any sacrifices. 

Your primary objective should be to help users to navigate your site easily. Avoiding clogging up your site and making things complicated. Keep everything as simple as you can.

Online merchants only have a few minutes to attract a customer because their attention span is very short. If you really want to make sales, we suggest to merely focus on improving user-experience by offering comparison capabilities, filters and shopping categories.

If you wish to make your site user-friendly, checkout a few eCommerce examples we’ve mentioned below.

You can add autocomplete option on your site just like Under Armour

Or if you want to create powerful visual navigation, checkout Stanley

eCommerce websites must be simple and easy instead of offering troublesome experiences.

2. Your website should be mobile-responsive

Around 50% of shoppers use mobile phones for shopping. Therefore it’s essential that your website must be mobile-responsive. To be astound to know, Walmart sales increased by 98% once they optimized their site.

Another popular eCommerce store, Intelligentsia improves user-experience by optimizing their site by creating a better shopping experience which improves their conversion rate by 16%.

No matter if thousands of products are listed on your site. To improve your search ranking and improve your conversion rate, creating a mobile optimized version of your site is essential.

3. Add high resolution media files

Gone are the days when one product picture along with product description in bullet points along with a price tag was enough. 

Since technology is booming, shoppers expectations have also increased massively. Today when everything has shifted to the digital market, it becomes difficult to determine what’s fiction and what’s genuine. 

Customers these days want to view products from various angles. Since they can’t feel or touch the product, they want to examine it deeply. 

Therefore it’s necessary to use high-resolution media files on your eCommerce site. Add multiple high-quality images of products from multiple angles. Make sure to compress and optimize images before uploading them, big size images take too long to load which might frustrate your customers.

If your products are complex, we suggest you to add high-quality video tutorials on your site. 

4. Offer discounts and limited time coupons

Customers wait for months to avail discounts, they stand in long queues on Christmas to avail discount offers.

The eCommerce market is no different from the brick-and-mortar market so the customers. They look for good discount offers and coupons on eCommerce websites too.

You can send them special offers via standard marketing practices including email, sms, social, etc. 

Also if you’re offering discounts make sure to promote them in the header section. When customers get to know that they’re getting discounts, it drives urgency in them and they’re more likely to purchase from your store without getting distracted. 

5. Add social proof on your website

To build advocacy and trust in your customers, it’s essential for brands to connect with their customers and develop an emotional understanding level with them. 

When it comes to social connections, it’s highly essential for brands to develop a bond with their customers. In this age of technology, connecting with people has become much easier now.

Adding social proof and user-generated content on your website is necessary if you want to stay relevant in this competitive market. 

Being available on social media communities increases trust and loyalty among customers and they’re able to connect with brands on an emotional level as well. 

6. Integrate advanced payment methods

In the world of PayPal and Apple Pay, integrating advanced shipping methods is a must-have feature.

Using advanced payment methods help shoppers to complete their purchase journey with just one click.. The key to success is to understand the demands of your customers and determine which payment option is the most effective solution. 

If your site has limited payment options you better start adding more. 

Various eCommerce sites usually do not offer Bitcoin as a payment method because most people think it’s not reliable. However your customers are tech-savvy who prefer this payment method, you need to explain to them why you’re not offering this particular payment method.

7. Add security features

eCommerce sites are vulnerable to cyberattacks. Since a lot is at stake you need to ensure that you take necessary steps to protect your customer’s information. You better start with securing your eCommerce platform.

You need to add some important security features on your site to ensure your site’s security.

Some must-have eCommerce features are,

• Adding an SSL certificate on your site.
• To add an additional security layer use two-factor authentication.
• Build a firewall boundary between networks.
• Do add privacy policy links on your site like in footer to inform your customers this data will not be shared with any third-party.

8. Give out detailed shipping info

Unexpected shipping charges that pop-up at the end of checkout often discourage customers to abandon your site which increase cart abandonment rates.

Therefore, at the early stage of checkout, ask for all relevant information that can affect shipping charges. Also it will be really helpful for customers if you can mention delivery date and time. Also you should mention those countries that are outside shipping zones.

If you offer free shipping that will be great because customers are more likely to make a purchase when they get free shipping.

Conclusion

All the features we have discussed in this article are must-have features. We suggest you if you don’t offer any of them you better start doing it right away if you want to grab your customers’ attention and generate sales.