When you start running an ecommerce site, you have to realize that it is not all going to be sunshine and roses. It is hard work to get a business up and running today, and it can be even more difficult to make sure the business is actually a success. One of the most important elements to your business, and one that will help to improve your chance of succeeding, is to have a quality ecommerce site that gives your customers what they actually need and want. When creating the site or having a developer create the site, it is very important that you look at it from a customer’s point of view.
The Overall Design
What do you expect when you are shopping on another site? You want the site to be uncluttered and simple to understand and use. You require that the site has good navigation and that it is easy to find the things that you want. That’s exactly what your customers will be thinking when they come to your site. You have to have good navigation and placement of elements in your site such as the photos and the ecommerce shopping cart. Look at other sites to see how they set up their site. You will find that most of the successful sites have a very similar layout, even though the appearance might be different.
This similar and familiar layout is something that customers come to expect, so it is a good idea to provide that. You don’t want them to have to think about how they need to use the site. You need it to be intuitive for them.
Along the same lines, you have to think about your product pages. Even though each page will have a different product, the layout needs to be identical. The images – which always need to be high quality – need to go in the same locations. The descriptions need to be in the same locations, and they need to have just enough SEO friendliness to help rank without ever seeming as though you are stuffing keywords. The customers will know if you are, because the text becomes nearly unreadable from a human perspective.
Your ecommerce site needs to do more than just look good and have good navigation though.
Make it Fast
Consider just how fast your pages are working. If they are taking too long to load, this could be causing some lost sales. People today do not like waiting for anything, and that certainly includes websites. If your site doesn’t load quickly, they will go to another site. This can result in a substantial amount of lost business, which is the last thing you need.
A Good Shopping Cart
Your shopping cart needs to be available on each page of your ecommerce site, and it needs to show the user how many items they have in the cart. Some carts will even list those items on each page. When you have a good cart, and when you are open with the fees that you are charging for shipping, it helps to reduce shopping cart abandonment, which is a huge problem for sites.
Customer Service
Always make sure you have your contact information and customer service information easily available on the site, and offer several different options for customer service. You may want to add onsite chat functionality. You should also have a phone number and email address that people can use to contact you when they need.
Take the time to work on your ecommerce site to create one that makes your customers happy and that offers just what they need.
Resource: http://blog.kissmetrics.com/what-ecommerce-customers-want/