While product quality is certainly important, many other e-commerce features contribute to the success of an e-commerce website.
An e-commerce website can benefit from several additions that make it simpler for users and store owners to navigate and maintain the site. However, it might be challenging to include all these necessary functionalities and aesthetic preferences in a website’s design for e-commerce. Fortunately, our e-commerce website development team specializes in creating e-commerce platforms and can assist you.
So, if you want your website to be successful, you need to decide what eCommerce website features are essential and what eCommerce platform would best serve your needs.
In this blog, we will provide you with 52 must-have eCommerce website features for a successful website and increase demand and customer satisfaction.
Top Features Of Ecommerce Website You Must Have
The following details the essential eCommerce website feature list that every successful online store must have. There’s a good possibility that these features will prove handy if you’re working on either the layout or functionality of an eCommerce site.
1. Responsive Web Design
Your website’s ability to provide a consistent experience across displays of varying sizes is a simple but one of the most crucial e-commerce website features. Customers today frequently switch between computers, tablets, and smartphones, so it’s crucial that each device provides a consistent surfing experience. And it’s important to build a mobile-friendly e-commerce website that helps to effortlessly get in touch with shoppers and increase sales.
2. Quick And Easy Browsing
Make it simple for customers to find the products they need and visit the site to find what they’re looking for. Customers won’t leave your site if it has a straightforward navigation bar, a sleek header, a clear and powerful call to action button examples, and a thorough footer with the site map.
3. Website Search
Adding a search box is a useful function for any website. It’s useful for experienced users who know exactly where they want to go and novices who have no idea where to start but want to get there quickly. When planning the layout of a search bar, keep these points in mind.
4. Features Centered Around The User Experience
Consumers who shop online or in physical stores are the intended beneficiaries of e-commerce. There is no such thing as a disposable consumer, and this is especially true in the realm of e-commerce, where a customer can easily click away from a purchase in the final moments of their browsing session. It is imperative that a company’s entire online storefront is designed to provide customers with unique, high-quality, and individualized shopping and buying experiences. User experience design can boost your brand awareness.
An effective e-commerce platform for business will let a company tailor its customers’ online shopping experiences across channels based on information gleaned from their customers’ previous purchases and other interactions with the company.
5. Connecting Online And Offline Shopping
Online shoppers need to be able to easily determine if a product is available in a nearby store. A top-notch e-commerce platform will allow you to connect your website’s search results with physical locations and stock levels.
Additionally, brands should be able to connect their e-commerce platform with brick-and-mortar stores, giving sales staff members the tools they need to reduce the number of lost sales due to walk-in customers by providing them with digital inventory, streamlined ordering, and rapid delivery.
6. Top-Notch Images And Videos
Photos and videos of your products are among, if not the most crucial aspects of your website. In addition to assisting in the purchase decision, high-quality photographs that show off all of the product’s qualities can cut down on returns. In order to assist the buyer in making decisions regarding color, variant, or size, make sure your photographs are adequately lit, well-styled, and highly detailed.
Showing off your product in its intended setting or providing helpful how-to guides are both excellent uses of video. Even though videos are a terrific way to show off your work, you need to make sure they are optimized for load time, it’ll help improve website performance.
7. Filtering And Sorting Options
Offer the shopper a well-organized list of sorting and filtering options so they may focus on making a purchase rather than exploring available options. Sort your filters by importance and organize them under the categories customers might use to narrow down your product offerings.
8. Ratings And Reviews Board
You must be aware of why online reviews are important. Customers rely extensively on reviews and ratings from other buyers to authenticate the information supplied by brands and help them make purchase decisions while shopping online due to the inability to touch and feel the products. This means that brands need to make it easy and rewarding to submit product reviews and prominently feature customer reviews and ratings on their websites.
9. The Frequently Asked Questions
Brands need to make their Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section easy to find and browse so that customers never have to leave the site searching for answers. This can be utilized to inform potential clients and answer their most pressing queries about the company’s offerings.
10. Details On Returns And Exchanges
Mentioning your store’s exchange and return policies prominently can help ease a customer’s mind before they make a purchase. Customers may relax about making a purchase, and companies can increase sales of things they know their target audience won’t attempt without these assurances.
It is crucial to make your exchange and return policies readily available on the website and develop a liberal policy that inspires customer trust without destroying profits. To reinforce the message, you can include them in the website’s header or footer, the frequently asked questions page, the product catalog page, and even the cart and checkout pages.
11. Using Web Push Notifications
We’ve all seen and read alerts from food and grocery delivery apps, but notifications aren’t limited to mobile devices. In the same way that apps utilize push notifications to alert users about new features, websites may use them to inform customers about shipping status updates, cart abandonment reminders, etc. The simple addition of web push notifications might greatly expand how brands communicate with and profit from their target audiences.
12. Adopting A Social Media Approach
Connecting a brand’s social media accounts to its website is another wonderful method to earn consumers’ confidence and grow a dedicated following. Presenting those who have trusted the brand gives credibility, displays template consumers and how they use the product, and encourages new customers to share their experiences on social media. Social media marketing plays an important role in increasing your brand reach.
13. Shopping Cart And Checkout
Losing a consumer after making a purchase decision and placing the product in the cart is arguably the second most challenging thing to happen to online vendors after COD purchases that aren’t accepted on delivery.
Three main components should be present in any good shopping cart and checkout system.
- Please don’t surprise the customer with any new fees or details.
- Create a purchasing procedure that requires as little data as possible to fulfill orders and complete deals.
- Store sensitive data such as billing and shipping addresses, credit card numbers, and other details securely with the customer’s permission to make future purchases a breeze.
14. Choices In Methods Of Payment
Losing a sale because a consumer forgot a CVV or because the website for one bank went down sounded like a corporate crime in light of the escalating costs of customer acquisition.
15. Tracking Your Orders
Customers are more likely to be satisfied with their purchases if they are kept informed of their orders’ progress at every stage, from confirmation through packing, shipping, and delivery. Brands might upsell the customer on additional or complementary items during their visit to the website to track their order.
16. Technical Support
By being reachable at any time, for any type of engagement, and ready to help with any inquiry, brands can continue to forge better ties with their customers. With the advent of AI technology and the swift growth of e-commerce chatbots, businesses can guarantee that they are always responding to client discussions regardless of where they are or what time zone they are in, and for a fraction of the cost of live agents. This keeps the brand in front of the buyer at every stage, where it can answer questions and improve the ROI of its advertising. If you don’t know what chatbots are, here’s everything you need to know about eCommerce chatbots.
Additional Tips: What Are The Features Of E-Commerce
Are you enthusiastic to know what are the features of e-commerce apart from the feature list for the e-commerce websites outlined above? Here are some extra tips that can make your website stand out from the crowd.
17. Company Logo
Place the company logo in a visible position in the header, on the left side, if possible.
18. Wishlist
19. Customer Login
The ability to sign up and login is essential for customer retention. If you want quick access, this belongs on the very top bar.
20. Store Finder
A shop locator in the navigation bar can help clients find your brick-and-mortar locations if your e-commerce site offers them.
21. Choices In Languages
If your e-commerce platform includes numerous localized iterations, you should provide users with the option to select their preferred language and geographical locale.
22. Contact Number
Your consumers may need to contact you for a variety of reasons, such as if they have questions regarding an item or if they have any confusion about your operating hours. A phone number listed first will save them time.
23. Featured UVP
In what ways are your products or services superior to the competition? Highlight what sets your company apart by highlighting its unique value propositions (UVPs).
24. Loyalty Scheme
Introduce the concept of loyalty rewards and other perks for your most dedicated consumers. Provide a clickable link to a more comprehensive offer page.
25. Personalized Products
26. Text
From a search engine optimization point of view, text content that includes a description of your company is essential. This can also tell a potential new consumer everything they need to know about you in a short amount of time. It’s important to know how to write website content that sells.
27. To Subscribe To A Newsletter
You can’t be considered a cutting-edge e-commerce platform without a newsletter signup form to gather customer emails. You can send promotional emails to keep them up-to-date on sales and new arrivals.
28. A Constant Image Size
Product photos on a category page should all have the same size. It’s not enough to have the same pixel density; the borders should also be uniformly blank.
29. Product Title
To put it simply, this is the name of the product. Each product should have a distinct name, possibly reflecting variations in color or size.
30. Place For Adjusting Order Quantity
There ought to be a quantity selector button just beneath the product’s price. Customers will appreciate the convenience of being able to choose the exact quantity they need.
31. Similar Items
Toward the end of the page, you might list some complementary items. This may encourage the customer to search for the appropriate item.
32. Shipping And Billing Information
Two address fields are typical. Use one for your billing information and another for your shipment. Many buyers see a distinction between the two.
33. Put In A Box Where Customers Can Enter Discount Codes
At times, your company may offer discount vouchers to its clientele. Customers can enter their coupon codes here to receive special offers and discounts.
34. Save For Later Items
Backend Functionality: Which Of The Following Is An E Commerce Feature?
Apart from every front-end eCommerce feature mentioned above, taking care of the backend is also important. You would be surprised if you thought only what’s visible to the users in the front matters. This is where you must definitely think of eCommerce development services. Keep reading to know more.
35. Monitoring And Reporting Interfaces
The dashboard’s primary purpose is to provide a consolidated view of key e-commerce indicators (KPIs) for e-commerce. Adjustments can be made so it works for your company.
36. Administrator Management
A website will typically have more than one administrator. As the owner, you should have the final say over who has access to what.
37. Customer Management
It is essential to be able to track orders and maintain client records. Keep track of customers’ search histories as well. It could be useful if you used it to send special discounts to repeat customers.
38. Store Management
The categories, colors, descriptions, sizes, etc., of your products, should be modifiable without the help of a developer from the site’s backend. Featured items should also be selectable by you.
39. Managing Content
Your site’s pages, layouts, blog, and other material should all be editable in the backend without needing to touch the code.
40. Order And Shipping Management
There will be many orders in various states of processing on an online store at any given time. And it has to deal with a variety of shipping procedures. The backend should be able to handle all of these with relative ease.
41. Payment, Taxes, And Location Management
Your website’s backend infrastructure should have no trouble handling several payment methods, determining and applying taxes, or adjusting prices based on geographic region.
42. SEO Management
E-commerce back-end platforms typically provide SEO features, such as URL editing, title tag, meta description maintenance, etc.
43. Incorporating Email Marketing Into Your Strategy
By using email marketing best practices, you can enhance conversions by sorting and keeping customer emails and sending personalized emails.
44. Management Of Sales Discounts And Promotions
If your backend can apply different discounts and introduce new promotional offers, your work will be significantly simplified.
45. Transfer Of A File With Administrative Privileges
It may be necessary to upload files straight to the root of your site occasionally. The process should be easy to navigate, thanks to your backend.
46. Monitoring The Integration Of Source Code
Without the assistance of a programmer, you should be able to upload files like robots.txt, tracking codes, and other third-party verification codes.
47. Responsive Design
Your eCommerce website development should be fluid enough to accommodate a wide range of screen sizes.
48. Browser Compatibility
Check how your site looks in the most popular browsers to make sure it’s accessible to everyone.
49. It’s Quick To Load
As important as other SEO and UX factors are, page loading time is vital for both users and search engines. Visitors will likely give up waiting and go elsewhere if a website takes too long to load.
50. Describe The Process For Receiving Things Via Digital Download
Digital downloads are a common form of online product sale; if you provide these, be sure to let clients know how they will receive their purchase.
51. Safety On Several Different Levels
Security is a major concern for every online store. In addition to SSL certificates and PCI compliance, your site should have a robust firewall and multiple layers of protection on its login and contact forms.
52. Automatic Backup
In the event that something were to happen to your site, you would have a recent backup to restore. An online store must never go down for business.
Conclusion
So, basically, these are the eCommerce features that make an online store successful. It goes without saying that you may alter these features or introduce new ones based on the nature of your company and the goods and services you offer.
Your site’s organic traffic and overall success will be significantly impacted by the eCommerce features you have included. But this guide will give you a quick rundown of the basics any e-commerce site needs to succeed.
So, what are you waiting for? Start integrating the aforementioned feature list for e-commerce websites right away. If you still have any doubts, you can reach out to the e-commerce website development services experts at Digifos Digital Design anytime!
FAQs
1. How can I add features to my eCommerce website?
Sometimes, it’s necessary to bring in a professional e-commerce development company to implement new functionality on a website. Some eCommerce systems use plugins to assist webmasters in extending the functionality of their online stores; nonetheless, it is still recommended that professional e-commerce development services install and test all plugins used on an online store.
2. How much does it cost for custom eCommerce website development?
The success of a custom eCommerce project relies on the expertise of hiring web developers who are familiar with the specifics of the eCommerce market and the best practices currently in use. E-commerce website cost starts at $50/hour and goes up to $500/hour and beyond.
3. Should I hire an eCommerce website development firm if I want to improve the capabilities of my online store?
When updating your eCommerce site with new features and capabilities, it is recommended that you engage with a professional eCommerce website development company. Talk to our expert eCommerce website developers at Digifos Digital Design if you want to add eCommerce features to your website.
