7 Key Features Every Online Store Should Have

When you put a lot of your heart and soul into establishing your business, there’s nothing more rewarding than watching it flourish and succeed. However, if you do not lay down a strong foundation, then the cracks will ultimately start to show; whether your store is brick-and-mortar or has an online presence in the form of a website.

These days, with eCommerce on the rise, no business, especially retail, can survive without a website. So, when we speak about placing a strong foundation of your business – for an online store, we talk about the right features that will help boost your online business in terms of traffic and conversions.

Let’s take a small detour to the statistics of 2020 and see what they have to say about the future of eCommerce.

• According to experts, retail eCommerce sales will reach $4.13 trillion in 2020.
• It is expected that nearly or more than 95% of all purchases will be conducted through eCommerce by the year 2040.
• Mobile commerce, on the other hand, is expected to have a market share of 72.9% by 2021.
• 75% of the interviewed participants informed about Amazon purchasing, while 13% of the participants had their items shipped to Amazon locker.
• Competitive pricing and free shipping are the two most important factors for online shoppers.
• eCommerce websites saw an increase of 35.26% in conversion rate because of a good check out design.
• Slow loading eCommerce websites that load slowly see a shopping cart abandonment of 75%.

A point to note is that it is not just the features your website offers that determine your business’s success but also the products you are selling and the way you are selling them. Still, the first step towards acquiring an online sale is through a well-built website. Whether a customer is looking to buy gadgets online or clothes, regardless of the product, there are some key features that every online store should offer. Now how can you make sure your online store is serving your audience with what you need? By making sure you have the following features incorporated within your website.

Must-have Features for a Successful Online Store

1. Mobile Friendly Website

Smartphones and other hand-held devices have become an essential part of our lives, and using them to shop online is no exception. With nearly 50% of online transactions to mobile commerce’s name, you cannot skip on making your online store mobile responsive. What does it mean for a website to be ‘responsive’? It means that your site automatically adapts to various screens of the devices, providing a better user experience. Moreover, by optimizing for mobile regardless of your website’s size, you are looking towards increasing your sales by 98%.

2. High-Quality Multi-Media Content

Considering that you are running an online store, you are required to showcase your items through pictures or videos and need to be of high-definition to persuade the customer to make the purchase. In fact, consumer demand has increased, placing the online stores more accommodating in zooming in on the product. Such technical considerations will elevate the virtual shopping experience and your chances of scoring a sale.

The same goes for the videos on your site. Every visual content should be of high definition. However, at the same time, your images shouldn’t take too long to load. Otherwise, according to Adobe, your consumer drop-off rate will reach a whopping 39%.

3. User-Generated Reviews

As a retail store, you need to have real-user reviews to instill confidence about a product or your service. On the buyer’s end, even you read reviews first to decide whether to trust this online store or not. In fact, 57% of the consumers will only make an order if they have four or more ratings.

Unfortunately, many stores fall prey to generating fake paid reviews to earn a 4 star or more rating or hide the negative thoughts that make the authentic good ones completely fake. On the other hand, smart eCommerce site owners highlight and encourage user-generated content to solidify their social platforms’ reputation.

4. Easy Checkout

The shopping cart is where everything gets serious. Your customers make the critical decision of either going through with buying the product or abandoning the cart. You can’t decide for your customers, but you can eliminate the reasons for abandonment that are linked to your online store. Now, what can you improve? The first thing you should do is to make sure the checkout process is a breeze for every customer. Apart from making sure the checkout is secure and safe.

Here’s what you should implement:

• Make sure your web host is secure.
• Next, implement SSL/HTTP protocols.
• Ask for important information, and nothing more, that usually includes Name, Address, and payment details.
• Make sure you have secure checkout badges or logos on your checkout page.

Pro Tip: Do not make it compulsory for your customers first to register and then proceed with the checkout but, in fact, give them the option to do so as a guest and then ping them to make a profile. Remember, it is about their convenience first.

5. Multiple Payment Gateways

After the shopping cart, providing multiple payment options is the most crucial factor of any eCommerce site. Consider this. Providing your credit card details is quite horrific, with possibilities of identity fraud running through our minds. This is why many customers would instead opt for a different payment option. This is where you play a significant role in making sure you are placing more than two payment options on the table; they include: cash on delivery, digital wallet payments, bank transfer, and others.

In case you are confused as to which group of options to provide, then do the market research and find the ones popular within your target market’s location.

6. Exit Intent Pop-ups

Exit-intent pop-ups are programmed to appear when the user is about to leave the page. They are a popular way to lure the customer back in as the message on these pop-ups is usually an enticing discount code or a coupon that compels the customer to complete the purchase.

7. Reporting and Analytics Tools

User experience is an integral part of your online store that makes online shopping on your site a rewarding experience if applied the right way. However, we need the right tools in the back that will help us understand our business and our customers’ behavior to make our entire business prosper.

For this, Google Analytics is an excellent recommendation. Not only does it collect and process your store’s performance data, but it converts it into useful sections within a report that you can analyze. From customer session data, their demographics, cart abandonment rate, to sales percentage, and more – you’ll quickly find this data on Google Analytics. Then, you can use this data to further improve user engagement and conversions.

Bottom Line?

eCommerce is the present and the future of shopping. With better and smarter technology being implemented and perfected, the retail industry is being transformed entirely. This is why businesses that do not have an online presence will have a more challenging time to generate revenue through sales. As more and more consumers prefer online stores over brick and mortar ones, sites with the above-mentioned features will have greater chances of excelling within a competitive market.