In order to keep up with the ever changing demands of online shoppers, many businesses have had to improve their e-commerce platforms. What are some of the best methods that a business can employ to ensure they are on top of the online shopping world? Our latest blog post will provide several tips that will give your business a leg up when it comes to improving your e-commerce platforms!

Keep Up With The Competition And Improve Your E-Commerce Platform Now!

Keep Your Design Simple:

Much like a physical store, an online store should feel welcoming, easy to navigate, and simple to understand. Treat your online store design as you would your physical location and keep things simple and clean!

Imagine being a shopper and entering a store for the first time to see it cluttered, disorganized, and chaotic. You’d likely be scared away, never to return!

To begin, focus on the first page of your website and ensure that your design represents your brand and products while being easy on the eyes. Treat this page like you would your store front as it will always be the first point of contact for any new and returning customers. We recommend the following tips when it comes to designing your landing page:

• Pick on-brand colour schemes (1-3 colours)
• Use high quality images
• Use colours that help categorize, label, and identify elements on your page (i.e. carts, shopping categories, search, etc)
• Use empty space to your advantage

Make Your Site Easy To Navigate

Be mindful of how you design the flow of your website and ensure that navigation is a breeze. For example, don’t make your customers click through multiple pages just to get to the checkout stage. If you sell a large amount of items in your store, use categories to organize your stock for easier browsing. We also recommend using simple language so that if a customer were to search for your products, they can do so easily and without fuss.

Make Your Site Quick

While using high quality images can be incredibly beneficial for the design of your site, you should be wary of using large file sizes that may bog down the speed of your website. The more elements or unoptimized images you use, the slower your site will become. Customers who shop online expect speedy websites that don’t take forever to load. After all, it’s  a simple matter of convenience. Why wait for a page to load when they could simply close the window and search for another store with a faster site? We recommend monitoring your website’s pages and keeping their loading times below 10 seconds.

Keep Your Checkout Hassle Free

This goes hand-in-hand with keeping your website simple to use and easy to navigate. A long checkout process can be disheartening to many customers because it almost feels like waiting in a long line at a physical retail store. In fact, unlike a physical retail store, online shoppers are more likely to abandon their carts and look elsewhere if their checkout process takes far too long.

Make sure that your customers aren’t filling out a lot of information during checkout. In fact, you can always give your customers the option to check out as a guest, keeping them happier and allows them to re-engage with your business via email campaigns. You should also ensure that all information regarding pricing is as transparent as possible. Surprise costs can cause customers to abandon their carts, never to return.

Be Informative

Using high quality images is a great first step, but it’s often not enough for customers to purchase products online. You want to provide as much information as possible so that the customer is 100% informed, making up for the loss of an in-person shopping experience. You may want to consider using videos, text, and reviews as a means to improve the legitimacy of your products as well.

Create a Mobile Friendly Website.

A vast majority of online shoppers will often be shopping using their phones. As they go about their day, they may want to search for specific products on multiple e-commerce store fronts, so be sure to have a website that is mobile friendly. Online shoppers are more likely to never return to a site if their mobile experience was negative in any way. This also helps you design an easy-to-navigate website since most mobile platforms provide a vast array of tools that focus on usability and accessibility.

We hope these tips will help you build a better e-commerce platform and elevate your online presence. For more tips on how your business can save on costs, increase productivity, or expand efficiently, keep an eye out for more from Watchdog Management Services!