Ultimate Characteristics of a Good Ecommerce Website

Good ecommerce website have a distinct characteristics that are observable and measurable to the trained eye.

Observable and measurable ecommerce website characteristics follows the same path as that of transferring knowledge from one medium to the other. And these measurable characteristics are measured in terms of the following:

Key measurables to check for

The condition under which the visitors or your customers will perform the desired behavior(action expected) while in your online store. The behavior of the customer itself and the degree by which the desired level of acceptable action indicates(how deep he is into the expected completed action).

There are customer behaviors that every website owners wants to see their visitors do while visiting. One of these are scrolling which indicates reading of contents. Another is clicking on links, like buy-now button, or subscribe button. Closing the browser or clicking the back button is another behavioral indication that must be taken into consideration. Why is that important? Simply because it determines your websites bounce rate, which is directly correlates to the amount of time a person spends on  your website.

These behaviors are directly affected by the following charateristics of a good ecommerce website.

#1.  Design look and feel of homepage.

We have dealt with typical client conversation that looks like this:

Client: Does it really matter what my website looks like?
Me: Yes, it definitely does.
Client: Why?
Me: Because people will judge your company based on the quality of your website, whether that’s fair or not.

There was a study by Derek Halpern in 2018 regarding Social Triggers. It was titled Trust and Mistrust of Online Health Sites. It provide insights about how web design affects user actions and behavior.

Your design can TRIGGER immediate DISTRUST.

Source

The funny thing with this is that, people didn’t just cite aesthetic problems like “that site is ugly” or “the choice of font is terrible”. They cite more importantly about TRUST issue! Trust is a game changer! When people cannot or does not trust your ecommerce website with their purchase, that is a real issue!

Cluttered and busy ecommerce website layouts confuse your customers where to go and what to do. The simplest your presentation is, the less option they have, the better the chance they decide to do something.

#2.  Fast and efficient page load speed

Did you know a staggering 70% of consumers admit that the speed pages load on a website affects their buying decisions?

According to the research made by Unbounce’s 2019 Page Speed Report, which surveyed 750 consumers and 395 marketers. The survey also found that the majority of marketers aren’t making page speed a priority, despite knowing it is important.

Here are their key findings:

  • When it comes to waiting for pages to load, most consumers think they’re more patient than they actually are.
  • Nearly 70% of consumers admit that page speed impacts their willingness to buy from an online retailer.

Source

According to Google, the average time it takes for a page to load on mobile devices is 15 seconds. Given that more than half of consumers leave a page if they have to wait more than 3 seconds for it to load, marketers and businesses need to wise up to page loading speeds.

Our goal is always to deliver  a page load of under 3 seconds!

Load time

What is interesting about the findings is that, although website owners and marketers know it’s important, the majority of marketers aren’t making page speed a priority. Which is totally ridiculous, right?

Fast and efficient page load speed is one of the key characteristics of a good ecommerce website!

Source

Check out the following graph below:

page load

Why is page load speed important to us?

Page load speed matters to us because it matters to your ecommerce business! We want you to make sales and leave the development worry to us. That is our mantra! We offer everything you need to run your ecommerce website, so that you can focus your energy on making more sales!

#3. Clean and straight-forward product page

Your product page is the most important page on your site. Build your product page effectively and both your traffic and conversions will skyrocket. Fail to do so, and almost all your marketing and advertising efforts will fall short of goal.

Check this information regarding the effect of good product packaging on buyers decision.

According to the infographic, 52 % of online consumers say they would likely return to a business for another purchase if they receive products in premium packaging. And 90 % of consumers reuse product packaging boxes and bags after purchase. But the costumer can even become another marketing channel: 40 % would share a photo of packaging if it is interesting. With that action they recommend it to friends who then might become costumers as well.

Source

As far as ecommerce website product page, here are some things to include in a good ecommerce website product page:

  • A good feature image
  • Gallery or product photos
  • Product overview, including title, price, features, CTA and customization options.
  • Product description.
  • Social proof, including review and ratings.
  • Similar product suggestions (upsell and cross sell).

#4. Website blog for customer interaction

Blogging is one of the easiest and most powerful ways to boost your eCommerce site search engine optimization. Consider the following data from daily infographic.

61 percent of U.S. online consumers make purchases based on recommendations from a blog

60 percent of consumers feel more connected to a company after reading unique content on its site

47 percent of buyers viewed three to five pieces of content before engaging with the company

51 percent of blog readers shop online

Source

What role does blogging do for your ecommerce website?

Blogging boost your website ranking  because you are feeding google with regular fresh content and google love it. And as you go farther into your blogging, you provide insightful information and contribute value to searchers, readers, customers, partners, peers and anyone else associated with the industry. That is how important blogging is to ecommerce website.

Another important role of blogging to ecommerce website is that, it gives your customers  a place to interact with you, engaging you, and in turn creates user generated contents – a valuable resource that Google puts premium on.

#5. One-page and Easy Checkout process

An easy payment process makes or breaks a sales conversion. It is the final stage of every customer journey that began on product searching. But without them completing the purchase is the ecommerce website developer’s fault as much as the website owner.

A lot of cart are being abandoned because the payment processing wasn’t easy and do not offer much, or the options presented does not match the buyers’ available payment capability.

The payment processing could make or break a conversion. Make it easy and a smooth process for your customers, it should offer variety of options for international customers as well as local payment options, – and see your conversion rate sky-rocket, and your abandoned cart plummet.

#6. Great Customer Support

Great customer service will not only serve the customer, it will serve your business.

Source

Customer support programs is one of the more excellent characteristics of a good ecommerce website. Great customer support provides value to your customers. Great customer service programs should focus on treating customers well, answering questions, and exceeding their expectations. This approach helps businesses engage customers and build strong relationships.  Great customer support keeps loyal customers and the best and inexpensive way of increasing business revenues.

#7. Easy to reach support pages

I included this one because I just encounter a website in my research for content ideas that totally prevents me from knowing who they are. There was no contact information in the footer as well as in the contact us form. The first thing I feel was, is this website legit or a scam? I am not going to mention the name of the website. But suffice it to say that, there are ecommerce website that are built like they don’t want people to find them.

Support pages like contact us page, or information of the business like about us page, should be easily accessible to your users. What this does is to provide a symbol of credibility for your business.

It is one of the most valuable pages on your website and sometimes it is usually an afterthought.

It’s one of those things that has to be there, but often enough, you throw the necessary information on and leave it at that.

What a waste!

Easy to access support pages is one of the characteristics that makes a good ecommerce website.

Additional resource:

3 Biggest Ecommerce Business Growth Factor Every Merchant Should Learn

P.S. If you have a second, sharing this article with your twitter followers would be a huge help.

I know, I’m shamelessly asking you to tweet my article, but it’s easy. Thank you ?

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