Visualize a typical shopping scenario. A customer walks into your store, browses through your neatly organized products and shelves, picks up some items, inspects those items, considers your prices, chooses a product, and takes it to the cash register to pay. Like brick-and-mortar stores, business websites must be set up to allow for products and services to be sold in an e-commerce store. Today, there are an estimated 12 to 24 million e-commerce sites around the world. That is a lot of online shopping real estate! To ensure that your customers have a positive, enjoyable shopping experience, your e-commerce site needs the following features:

  • You need to provide plenty of content and product descriptions, such as sizes, dimensions, colors, and comparisons with other similar products. Use high-quality images to help your products stand out. Your site should allow customers to choose a product, get clear pricing and shipping costs on the product, and complete the transaction. After purchasing a product or service, customers should receive an order number and/or invoice confirmation via their email. Allow your customer to choose a shipping method that meets their needs.
  • You must tell the customer if the item is in stock or delivered against order. Ideally, you should have an email contact or live help to answer customers’ questions. Most importantly, you must respond immediately! If you want to provide your own live chat and help desk services on your website, specialized software is available for purchase. Excellent customer service is essential.
  • Ensure your customer service links are large and clearly marked, so your client does not have to dig around to find information.
  • Provide an About Us section or a section about your policies. If you have privacy statements and customer satisfaction policies, your customers will feel better and more confident about shopping from your store.
  • You probably want to have customer quotes and references on the storefront page, to let your prospective client know that others are happy with your service.
  • Provide an FAQ page with information about your return, exchange, and refund policies, as well as any guarantees, shipping prices, and insurance charges.
  • If you are so inclined, you can offer a print catalogue if the customer prefers to order one from your storefront and shop in the privacy of their homes.
  • Do not annoy your customers by presenting products that are marked sold or pages that say under construction or coming soon.
  • Add new content frequently, so your returning customers will not be bored by seeing the same products they saw four months ago.
  • If your site has a date tag or current references, change these references frequently. This will avoid giving the impression that no one is maintaining or reading your site.

If you want to build your own e-commerce site, check out these helpful tips for setting up your site on WordPress. Alternatively, you can hire WordPress experts to build you an awesome e-commerce site that meets your needs perfectly.