The growth of eCommerce has been substantial in the past years. Consumers have redirected their spending for travel and entertainment to purchasing goods and services from eCommerce websites.
During the dawning of the pandemic in 2020, the U.S. Department of Commerce reported a 31.8 percent increase in eCommerce.
With more and more purchases accomplished exclusively online, many business owners took the opportunity to create an eCommerce website for their respective brands.
Although simply building an eCommerce store is enough for consumers to patronize your brand, there are certain eCommerce website features you should consider for revenue growth and acceleration.
In this blog, we cover the following topics:
• Business models that can create eCommerce websites
• How to optimize your eCommerce store
• Where to find the right eCommerce website design services provider
To start with, let us find out if you should create an eCommerce website for your business.
Business Models That Create an eCommerce Website
Knowing which category your business belongs to will help you build your overarching eCommerce marketing strategy, allowing you to determine your focus area, opportunities and threats.
Business to Consumer
Business-to-consumer (B2C) companies are those that sell their product or service to end-users. It is the most common business model eCommerce website builders work with.
Anything you purchase from an online shop — clothes, cleaning supplies, groceries or movie tickets — is a B2C transaction.
Business to Business
In the business-to-business (B2B) model, companies sell their products to another company. The buyer often acts as a middleman and resells the product or service to the consumer; in that case, the buyer is not the end-user.
This model often has a higher order value and more recurring transactions.
Consumer to Business
Consumer-to-business (C2B) is where individuals sell products or services to larger companies.
Today, we can see more and more individuals partake in this model, like freelancers and social media influencers. These individuals often offer more competitive pricing than businesses.
Consumer to Consumer
The model consumer-to-consumer (C2C) is where consumers connect with one another to trade goods and services.
Online platforms like Craigslist and eBay spearheaded this model. However, while this can be convenient for most consumers, it also offers some disadvantages like quality assurance.
And now, let us look into ways to power up your business’s eCommerce marketing strategy.
How To Optimize Your eCommerce Store
While you can work with an eCommerce web design services provider immediately, it would be helpful to know: What makes the best eCommerce sites?
1. User-Friendly eCommerce Website Design
Getting consumers to visit your store is never the end goal — giving them an overall smooth user experience is. Otherwise, they may end up abandoning their shopping cart and moving on to your competitor next door, or in this case, the next online store.
Undoubtedly, a user-friendly eCommerce website design is the most crucial feature you can give to prevent consumers from abandoning their shopping carts.
eCommerce website designers suggest having the following:
1. Straightforward homepage. Let your consumers know what your shop is all about from the outset.
2. Search bar. Enable consumers who know what they are exactly looking for to search if a product is available.
3. Product or service categories. Help your customers browse through your products and view their options.
Besides making sure your website is user-friendly, do not forget to implement the best eCommerce SEO strategy to make your content visible on the search engine results pages (SERPs).
2. Multiple and Flexible Payment Options
Another reason customers abandon their shopping carts is when they do not have options to settle the payment.
If you are often experiencing shopping cart abandonment, you should consider your current payment options. Then, let consumers finish the last leg of the purchase process by offering different payment options.
Let us take a look at Amazon’s accepted payment methods:
• Visa, MasterCard or American Express prepaid credit or gift cards
• Visa (including the Amazon Rewards Visa Signature Card)
• Discover Network
• American Express
• MasterCard/EuroCard
• China UnionPay (credit card only)
• Amazon Store Card
• Amazon Secured Card
• Diner’s Club (U.S. billing addresses only)
• JCB
• NYCE
• STAR
As you can see, it is quite exhaustive — this is why many consider Amazon one of the best eCommerce sites. If you own a small business, there are payment gateway providers like Stripe and Paypal that you can easily integrate with your online store.
These providers will enable you to accept cards, bank debits, bank transfers, vouchers, e-wallets and other payment options like “buy now, pay later” to accomplish a checkout.
eCommerce website builders tip: Include a feature that allows your consumers to securely set up and save their details for future payment.
3. Customer Service
A huge factor in increasing your eCommerce ROI, or return on investment, is providing your customer with accessible help. Per Microsoft, 90 percent of American consumers deem customer service a significant factor when making a purchase decision.
Integrating a chat plugin will allow you to engage your online store visitors and accommodate their questions in real time — all while reducing extra support costs.
Some of the best live chat plugins are:
• Zendesk
• Olark
• HubSpot
• Tidio
• LiveChat
And here are some benefits of using them:
• Automated ticketing system
• Canned responses
• Reporting and analytics
• AI chatbot for 24/7 customer support
• Web, mobile and social media messaging
• Omnichannel support
eCommerce website hosting expert tip: Ask your eCommerce website design services provider if they include chat plugin integration.
4. eCommerce Website Reviews and Feedback
Today, since consumers cannot view or test the product prior to purchasing, they rely on eCommerce website reviews when making online purchases. We, for one, frequent the reviews sections of Amazon and Facebook.
The best eCommerce sites have a section where customers can add and read genuine product reviews. That is also where you can demonstrate the quality of your product.
The right eCommerce website builders can also add another section, a question and answer (Q&A) section where your customers can engage with one another. Make sure, however, to weigh in when there are questions your customers will not be able to answer.
eCommerce website reviews expert tip: Do not leave reviews and feedback unanswered. If time and staff are an issue, hire an online reputation management company like Rize Reviews to help you manage this portion of your website.
5. Mobile-Friendly eCommerce Website Features
Consumers’ devices, particularly mobile phones, are the new “marketplace” where most transactions happen. Therefore, it would be a shame if your eCommerce website design is not responsive to mobile devices.
According to Statitsa, 72.9 percent of retail eCommerce sales were from mobile in 2021.
So on top of ensuring you have the best eCommerce platform for SEO and secured eCommerce website hosting, it is equally important that your website is mobile-friendly.
eCommerce website designers tip: Ask your eCommerce website design services provider to use a mobile-responsive template or theme.
6. Loyalty Program
Who does not want to get a good deal and or extra special treatment as a customer? Create a personalized experience by offering membership where loyal customers can enjoy special pricing, deals, offers and additional features.
eCommerce website designers strategically promote the loyalty program feature on your storefront. In addition, you can also promote your discounts through pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.
And then, in your eCommerce marketing strategy, you can decide if these loyal customers can be the first to know about new products and services to increase your eCommerce ROI.
eCommerce marketing tip: You can design vouchers to send your customers via newsletter.
7. Complete Product Information
Your product pages should include simple yet detailed product descriptions: material, color, measurement, ingredients, place of origin and so on.
Try to think about possible questions your consumers might ask and answer them in that section. For example, consumers often ask about the warranty, so make sure to consider that, too.
On top of that, include high-quality photos and videos of your product.
eCommerce SEO strategy expert tip: Add a “related products” or “customer also viewed” section on every product page. And consider using the best eCommerce platform for SEO.
Now that you know the vital eCommerce website features to consider, you are ready to take the next step in increasing your eCommerce ROI.
That is, finding a suitable eCommerce web design company.
Where To Find the Right eCommerce Web Design Company
It can be daunting to find the right eCommerce web design services provider. Still, just like we mentioned in this blog, reviews are reliable, or in this case, client testimonials — and Thrive has many success stories to share.
Thrive is a digital marketing agency specializing in eCommerce web design and marketing. From Amazon to Shopify, our tried-and-true eCommerce expertise allowed some of our clients to gain an 81 percent increase in year-over-year (YoY) transactions and a 72 percent increase in Google shopping conversions.
For inquiries, please send a message to our eCommerce specialists here, or for immediate assistance, you can call us at 866-908-4748.
