Launching an ecommerce store is a momentous occasion that may fill you with a mix of excitement and apprehension. If you’re like other ecommerce entrepreneurs, you may wonder if you’ve covered all of your bases to deliver an excellent visitor experience.
You might also ask yourself if your web store is optimized to promote a higher conversion rate to get customers for your ecommerce business. These are only some of the factors that are impacted by your website design.
Why checklist creation is important
The reality is that there are numerous factors that require your attention to produce the best results for your business and the best customer experience. A detailed checklist gives you a comprehensive list of areas to review to give your store a better chance of success.
What’s more, you’ll be able to see how you’ll need to manage your ecommerce site for maximum efficiency!
Checklist for your ecommerce website
You may think that your website is perfect, but you can’t take any chances with something this important. Your ecommerce website is loaded with product descriptions, a shopping cart experience, branding elements, and more that all must come together perfectly.
Cover all of the essential areas and ecommerce features required for success by walking through this checklist today.
1. Ensure that your site loads quickly
Slow page loading has several negative consequences. The most obvious consequence is a bad user experience.
Many consumers will grow frustrated by pages that load slowly. Rather than waiting or refreshing, the visitors may click away and never return.
Page load speed also affects Google rankings. How can you know if your page load times are suitable for Google’s requirements? Use the Google PageSpeed Insights resource to identify areas that require improvement before you launch your ecommerce site.
Fortunately, if you opt to create your online store with WiziShop, your website will automatically feature the AMP format for speedy loading times!
2. Add multiple sales channels to your store
Why would you limit your store’s exposure to one channel when there are so many lucrative channels that you can access at the same time? Adding multiple sales channels to your store can potentially bolster revenue and expand your reach.
You can always add sales channels after you launch your business. However, you may enjoy the benefits of a more successful launch when you tap into all intended sales channels from your website’s first day online.
3. Verify that your site is mobile friendly
Your ecommerce store’s website should be optimized and fully functional across all devices. Today’s online shoppers often take advantage of the convenience of shopping through their smartphones.
The last thing that you want is for your customers to have trouble executing their purchase or reviewing product details on a mobile device.
When they’re unable to make a purchase immediately, the likelihood that they’ll return on a desktop device to finalize their purchase is probably pretty low.
How can you verify that your site’s content displays well across the many models of tablets and smartphones in use today? The Google Search Console has a convenient mobile-friendly test that can reveal deficiencies or issues.
4. Use consistent branding
What image do you want to convey to your customers? An ecommerce store’s brand is established and reinforced by everything from the color scheme and images to its product photos, product descriptions, and other content.
The branding that’s used on the home page or landing pages must flow through all other pages.
Keep in mind that consistent branding extends to all other touch points, including all aspects of your ecommerce marketing checklist. This means that your social media profiles, email marketing, and other off-site marketing must all be aligned with the branding on your website.
5. Make your website easy to navigate
Just as slow page load times will cause users to get frustrated and click away, the same holds true for confusing navigation paths and unclear links. The home page or landing pages should ideally have clear links and a search function.
This assists consumers with finding the products that they’re looking for in a shorter amount of time. While some shoppers enjoy browsing, many simply want to know if your website has what they want.
Likewise, the shopping cart process for your business must be straightforward and hassle-free.
Some processes require the shopper to click through multiple pages. At each step, there’s a possibility of a slow page load time or other issues. To combat this, minimize the number of pages that your customers have to click through to finalize their purchase.
6. Review your settings for email notifications
You might ask your site’s visitors to sign up for your email newsletter and promotions as soon as they arrive at your site.
However, the purchase transaction is the time when you can directly obtain their email address as a requirement for the purchase. This means that your purchase transaction page should include an opt-in field for promotions, newsletters, and more.
To maximize your reach to your consumers through emails, offer several levels of subscriptions. For example, you may have separate boxes for receiving no communications, only emails for promotions and discounts, or all of your updates on new merchandise.
7. Provide clear calls to action
There’s no disputing the fact that calls to action work. You must invite your customers to take clear steps throughout your website.
On your home page, for example, you can invite your visitors to click on a link to see clearance items or new inventory.
With your main product pages, you can have links to view best-selling items or new items. On individual product pages, an “Order Now” link and motivational content in the product description can work wonders for conversion rates.
Each page of your site should clearly direct the visitor to take one additional step. When visitors think that your website has nothing more for them to explore, they’re likely going to leave.
On the other hand, visitors who spend a longer amount of time clicking through your site’s pages might add more items to their shopping carts and lock in their purchases.
8. Review product descriptions
Now’s the moment to carefully review each product description on your website. Depending on the size of your online store, this could take a considerable amount of time and effort.
However, you must ensure that each product description is both detailed and accurate. Incorrect information can lead to a poor customer experience and missed opportunities to create conversions.
Your product descriptions, just like the rest of your site’s content, should be directed to your audience using a voice that appeals to that niche. Concise product descriptions that can be skimmed quickly are preferred in many cases.
9. Use high-quality product images
Because your visitors can’t personally see and touch the products before making a purchase, they’ll rely heavily on the product descriptions and images. Images can speak volumes about a product’s quality, functionality, features, fit, and other relevant factors.
Each product should have multiple images. In addition, the ability for a customer to zoom in on images is preferable.
High-quality images can impact page load times. However, because they’re essential to the visitors’ experiences, you must find a balance in this area.
There are several steps that you can take to improve page load times for high-quality images, such as resizing and compressing the images.
10. Highlight best-selling products
Your website’s best-selling products have appealed to many of your other visitors, so there’s a solid chance that new visitors will also be excited about them.
Best-selling products can be highlighted on the home page and on product category pages. When your customers click on a specific product, you can make suggestions through a “Customers Also Purchased These Items” section.
11. Display accurate stock availability
Your ecommerce store’s inventory should always be accurate to create the best customer experience. If visitors see that a product isn’t available when looking at the product page, they might be disappointed but may order the item anyway.
They might alternatively request to be put on a waitlist. However, if they aren’t notified that the product is unavailable until arriving at the checkout, they’ll likely be annoyed and may cancel the order entirely.
If this happens too often, customers may start to complain about your business on social media. You’ll then have to step up your marketing efforts to counteract the negative publicity.
12. Include product demonstration videos
Depending on the types of products you sell through your ecommerce store, product demonstration videos can be powerful selling tools on the web. For example, they can highlight how specific features work.
If the product improves or simplifies some aspect of the customer’s life, you can showcase this in a video.
Not all videos must come from you. As part of the post-purchase follow-up review request, you can ask customers to upload a video showing their experience with the product.
This can save you time, and it may be particularly effective at showing new customers what their real-life experience with the product may be like.
13. Make contact info easy to find
Most of your customers probably won’t reach out to you at any stage in the process of purchasing from your website. However, if they have questions about a product or need help with an order, they must be able to find your contact information easily.
There are a few ways to accomplish this. A chatbot or online messaging feature can provide immediate access to your customer service department from any page.
You also should include a customer service phone number and email address in a visible area on every page. If this isn’t suitable for your website’s design, a direct link to your store’s contact information should be included in the header or sidebar.
14. Show customer reviews
Today’s online shoppers rely on feedback from other shoppers to help make their buying decisions. Customer reviews on your website could come from something as simple as a star rating system.
Giving your customers the opportunity to leave detailed reviews and to read other shoppers’ reviews can improve your website’s conversion rate.
If your website uses a star rating system, consider taking the additional step of showcasing the stars on each thumbnail. You may also include a search field so that customers can conveniently narrow down their choices to top-rated products.
15. Boost consumer confidence with security info
Online security is at the front of many online shoppers’ minds. Their focus may initially land on the padlock icon near the URL as soon as they arrive at your site.
If this icon indicates that the website isn’t secured, they may quickly click away and may never return. You can protect your website with SSL data encryption and secure transaction processing.
When you go through the steps to safeguard your website, make sure that your customers can clearly see your efforts. Display security icons in the footers of all of your pages.
Highlight them again on the shopping cart pages. This helps create a sense of safety that allows shoppers to feel more at ease when visiting your web store.
16. Be upfront about shipping fees
Shipping fees are simply a part of online purchases, but information regarding who pays for them and how much they cost is important to customers.
If you pay for shipping, this is a hot selling point that should be highlighted on the home page and on all product pages. On the other hand, if the customers pay shipping, be upfront about the cost of each shipping option.
Remember that expensive and unexpected shipping fees can directly inflate your website’s shopping cart abandonment rate. More than that, they can lead to a poor visitor experience and may give the impression that your store is intentionally misleading its customers.
17. Provide an easy checkout experience
Shopping cart abandonment is a serious issue for ecommerce businesses. You therefore don’t want to give your customers any extra reasons to walk away from items that they are interested in.
The entire checkout experience should be free of hassles. Customers should be able to review and edit their cart selections on one page and without having to click back and forth to various pages.
18. Have multiple payment options available
While many online shoppers use a credit or debit card to make purchases, others enjoy the convenience of accessing PayPal or other payment processing services.
After all, customers may find it inconvenient to get up and search for their wallet and credit cards. If you don’t offer the payment option that they want to use, customers may abandon their carts.
19. Make sure that discount codes work
The allure of saving money through discount codes can drive customers to your website and may influence their merchandise selection. Customers should be able to input a discount code early in the shopping cart purchase process, and the savings should be immediately visible.
If you offer any type of discount codes, always ensure that the codes work properly within your system. Most customers won’t reach out to you to finalize their purchase if the codes don’t work. Instead, they’ll simply click off the website.
Conclusion
You can see that many aspects of your ecommerce website can influence a shopper’s experience with your business. These factors may also impact conversion rates, search engine optimization (SEO), and more.
For this reason, each of these points must receive proper attention before your site’s launch. It’s also a great idea to periodically review these factors again to ensure that your site continues to operate optimally!
