10 Essential Features to Include in Your New eCommerce Website
When we think about eCommerce, what comes to mind is a website which is simple to use, and of course the products listed there. But to make that notion in a user’s mind, you will need to have a lot on your website, and yet make it look minimalistic. eCommerce isn’t a tricky business from afar, but as you get closer to it, you will learn it is one of the most complicated businesses that exist, and to make a website for it remains as complicated.
To get the website perfect depends on the target customers, and the niche of your eCommerce business, the strategy would largely depend on it. But today we will be covering a general scenario, for features which are essential no matter the niche or unless explicitly mentioned. No one has a perfect recipe for success, as it does not only depend on the product you create but is affected by real-world scenarios.
Must Have Features In Your eCommerce Website
Let’s now get started with the ten essential features to include in your new eCommerce website.
1. Custom Navigation
From our experience in eCommerce website development, we can assure you that easy and custom navigation is one of the most important features to include in your eCommerce website. From custom navigation, we mean the placement of complementary goods on the golden click area of your website, so that the probability of buying both products increases. These small features can help you increase your website product visibility and enable a higher revenue and sale.
2. Voice Search
Voice search for products and integration to voice assistants like Alexa can open up new possibilities for your eCommerce business. This feature allows users to directly purchase products through voice commands, and even though requires intricate planning, can be worth your investment depending on target user groups.
The marketing strategy needs to be revamped in this case, as the users usually search for long-tail keywords when using voice search. When searching through voice, the users know exactly what they are looking for, and will speak the brand, quantity, rather than common terms. It is lucrative as not a lot of people have been in this space right now, and it still has a lot of users to target.
3. Filters
This is one of the most important features in an eCommerce website, it is highly necessary to get it right if you want to build a name in users’ mind. If the user has to move an inch to find what they are looking for, they would rather choose another eCommerce website for purchase, as simple as that. The filters and sorting are the greatest means to break or make your eCommerce business, use these features wisely if you want a loyal customer base.
4. Personalised Recommendations
Create personalised recommendations for your users. This feature will help you map everything, the users’ likings, their fittings, their shopping habits, almost everything a user would do when they come on your website and beyond.
Add this to filter, sorting, recommendations, products, and more to achieve the maximum potential of what personalized product mapping has on offer. But be assured you will need to do a lot of data mining and apply AI for it, as doing it manually remains impossible. Hire expert data science companies to make the most of the data, and provide users with a personalised experience.
5. Payment Options
New payment options are being added on the daily to the list of available ones, you can for instance start accepting payments through cryptocurrencies, which has been widely popular these days. You can also integrate the bank’s OTP system to your website like Amazon has, and let users leverage the simplicity of payment.
Apart from the above mentioned, try adding as many payment options as you can, as it will improve flexibility for the user to make a purchase, improving chances of them actually going ahead with it. Use personalized recommendation to list up top payment options, and uncluttered, as much as possible.
6. Return Options
Many people with eCommerce websites skip on return options within the website, it can be very crucial in case things go wrong and the user wants to return a product. If you choose to go with a professional eCommerce website development company for development, it will be the first thing they would catch missing from your plan. While you would have to invest a bit extra to get a return feature on the website, it will be beneficial as ever in retaining customers.
Gone are the days when customers would go to the email option for returning an item, and if you miss on the return option, you would never be chosen by the same customer again. Along with an option to return, try integration of tracking information by accessing the APIs of your delivery partner, as it will help build a trusting relationship between the user and your website.
7. Support Chatbot
People are off browsing pages and pages for the product they want to find, they would rather ask the chatbot directly. Invest in hiring a good chatbot development company for the same, as most would only limit it to minimal options. Make sure all the essential information is available right in the chatbot, along with an easy escalation option to the human support staff.
The chatbot is the future of browsing websites, and for something as large as an eCommerce website, becomes more of a need than a want. You should focus on it to enable better user experience, and better shopping experience, as chatbots are easy to operate and make sure yours has NLP. Integrate the chatbot to the whole website, and it can work wonders for improving purchases.
8. Cart
You might not believe it but many websites vouch for not having a cart, well we, vouch for the opposite. A cart is a world of opportunity when it comes to promoting complementary products, and will help with multiple purchases for the user. All the essential information can be provided before purchase, but a cart serves its purpose as a place where you can access wishlist, and order multiple products at once.
9. Product Descriptions
The product descriptions don’t suffice anymore, you need elaborate imaging, and in some cases video descriptions to leave a mark on the user. It will add up major costs of photography, but without it would anyone want to make a purchase anyway? Add videos to it and the increased cost would be marginal, and you will have a high probability of purchase. You can also integrate features like AR in case you want to portray the product in lifesize, and it might add up on the cost a bit more, but could yield results unthought of by the competition.
9. Social Integration
Maybe it would be the women trying to avoid the same product purchase as their friends, or the men buying the same items just because they like it, social interaction would enable both flawlessly. It would also include influencers the people follow on social media, so the users can easily see the products they are using, and make them theirs’ then and there. We might as well see this as a trend with improving influencer marketing, and with the growing social media trend, it would be an investable option to add this feature to your eCommerce website.
Conclusion
People may tell you this and that, but what works depends on your user target and the product type. We won’t recommend blindly following the list above, but choose the one you seem fit had you been the user, buying from your own eCommerce website. You can also take help from professional eCommerce website creators in case you are confused about what to expect and where to invest when building your new eCommerce website
We at Matellio have enormous experience in developing eCommerce websites using various different technologies and have deep knowledge of how to implement all the possible features and those mentioned above. Our team of analysts will help you with which feature would suit your business needs, and would help you skyrocket your eCommerce website to the top. If you are interested in getting a feature-rich eCommerce website developed, get in touch, and we would be happy to help.
