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1. Features An E-commerce Website Should Have
from:From start to finish, your site must look to close the deal.
Take a good look at the template offered by your website designers. Do the color scheme and the design blend well with the product or service you offer? Are you hell-bent on a favorite crimson background even though you sell baby products? Desist. Again, soothing swirls or floral motifs will win over geometric patterns for the same site. What if you sell a bouquet of products? Keep the background light and clear rather than dark and over cluttered. Add one telling graphic that does not obscure the text. A good thumb rule to follow is that text is better than graphics – less room for confusion!
Next comes your home page. Everything you have, or at least the flagship products must be showcased to the advantage of the potential consumer. Let them see what the product will do for them. Let them see the reasons they should buy your baby shampoo over any other. When you write ‘about us’, there is the unspoken part ‘what about us is good for you’ - the benefit to the customer must always be highlighted. In the internal pages, you could have short, snappy videos; only one per page, please, to drive the point home.
Display your back links clearly. A single click should transport him into the desired page. Ease of navigation is a definite advantage for the browser comparing sites and products. Consider the physical counterpart; where you prefer a store not too far from home or work, with easy parking, easy access to the merchandise and a quick checkout counter. Create this in the e-commerce site as well. Organize the page logically. Featured products to the left, shopping cart in the top right or the bottom right corner, where it is easiest to see and click and so on. A savvy site would, in addition, have provisions for the visually challenged. See if you can incorporate this in your site.
Delight the customers by making it very easy for them to place the order. Display the shopping cart prominently on all pages to tempt them into making a purchase. An attractive uncluttered dialogue box with unambiguous text will work wonders. E.g. Choose a neutral beige background with an easy to read font, even if you have a fondness for flourish. Use the word ‘number’ over ‘units’. The customer is not a moron, but he definitely does not want challenging, time consuming forms. He’s at your site for a hassle-free shopping experience, remember? So do what you would do at a physical store to ease the shopping experience and make the customer come back for more. Make a visit to your site a premium want-to-repeat shopping experience.
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