Integrating the new eCommerce features make your online store unique and user friendly.
There are many trends in e-commerce website design like animation, 360-degree product previews, advanced filtering, and dynamic product search.
However, these trends don’t guarantee conversion rates or robust user experiences. There are many elements that each and every e-commerce site should have to stay quite relevant and competitive.
Here is a list of 10 must-have top eCommerce features that attract all online shoppers.
#1User-Friendly
Simplicity should be the biggest goal in good design and you don’t need to sacrifice elegance to achieve simplicity.
As a matter of fact, surveys show that 76% of consumers say that the most important characteristic of a website is the ease of use.
The objective is to help online shoppers get to what they want fast, easy and without running into unnecessary complexity that can block up the path to purchase of the product. Online sellers have a few minutes, if not seconds, to make a sale.
Focus on the user experience by providing different shopping categories, a variety of filters, and comparison capabilities.
#2 Auto-Complete Search
If you’ve been working on your online store for a while, you probably know how important it is to have a search bar highly visible i.e on top of the page on your website.
According to stats, 8 out of 10 shoppers have reported using the search box when they shop online either often or always.
This allows all the customers to search for the required products instead of browsing through dozens of pages in the online store.
#3 Real-time Filtering and Sorting Options
The real-time filtering and sorting options are one of the best features that can help your visitors to find out the products they want quite faster than simply browsing through every individual category or the complete store’s catalog.
The more products you will have in your store, the more important it is that you will need all these filters.
A well-designed e-commerce store that is optimized for converting the visitors into buyers will have a variety of filtering options, depending on the wide variety of items that are available in your store.
#4 Mini-Cart Animations
If you have ever made a purchase online, you would have probably noticed how the website fastly redirects you directly to the cart after adding an item to it.
While it can help to reduce your cart abandonment rate and it can also lead to potential revenue loss and frustration.
Instead of buying more products, they will complete the purchase then and there only.
They can also get frustrated if the purchase was incomplete because now they will have to go all the way back to the first page of the shop and then continue adding more items to the cart.
However, if you’re selling online only a single product, then immediately redirected to the shopping cart is far better for the conversion rates so keep this in mind if you have such a store.
#5 User-Generated Reviews
Shoppers often read reviews. About 95% of the shoppers do this in fact. And 57% of the consumers will only have a business if it has a good rating.
You may think that having many negative reviews is a sale killer. But, the opposite is actually true.
Having negative reviews can often be positive for selling. It has been shown that products without negative reviews are seen as censored ones and, in turn, shoppers will assume that the positive reviews reflected on the websites are fake.
Depending on the functionality of the website, e-commerce sites can use plugins from the most popular reviewing platforms which include Facebook e.t.c.
#6 Sticky Headers
If a potential customer comes to your e-commerce store, the first thing they will view is the header area.
Your header area is the place where your search bar and navigation should be along with the cart icon.
Consider implementing different types of sticky headers to make this area always available to potential customers.
A sticky header always stays visible on the page even if the visitor goes all the way down to the bottom.
The header allows them to search for the item no matter how far bottom the page they have scrolled and they have easy access to their cart to complete the purchase.
Sticky headers are very useful if you have quite long catalogs or when the user is using an infinite scroll.
#7 Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Complex purchases require more confidence with a seller and in-depth information when buying the products online as compared to face-to-face.
The company’s buyers need a confirmation of the authenticity of the product and detailed information to feel comfortable when they are making a purchase.
The additional information section which displays the details about frequently asked information establishes credibility and builds confidence within the buyer about the product.
#8 Category Pages Optimized for SEO
Getting more and more traffic to your online store is far more important and while digital marketing and even paid advertisement is a great way to make many potential shoppers aware of your online store, there is no denying the fact that these methods are very expensive and time-consuming.
As such, improving your SEO rank and getting more traffic is a great way to get more visitors to your online store without spending more hours on various social media platforms or paying for advertisements.
Organic traffic means that you can save both money and time and focus on creating more products.
#9 Flawless Mobile-Friendly Checkout
According to e-commerce, more and more people today are using their mobile devices to make a purchase and the experts predict that mobile sales will only go up.
The increase in mobile e-commerce sales is one of the biggest reasons to ensure that your online store is optimized and compatible with mobile devices.
The most obvious way to know that your store is mobile-friendly and uses a responsive e-commerce theme.
However, that is not the only thing you should be doing to make your website mobile-friendly.
Your complete checkout process needs to be optimized for small screens which means that the form fields and different buttons need to be quite big for visitors to comfortably type on smaller screens.
This should trigger the right type of keyboards and allow the visitors to quite easily adjust with the product quantity in the cart.
#10 Security Features
In the modern world, online transactions are an integral part of our lives. E-commerce websites can be an easy target for cybercriminals.
It is crucial that all online sellers protect their customer’s information and take proper steps to ensure privacy.
These things start with a secure e-commerce platform. With various sophisticated security features, it is no wonder that Magento and WordPress along with WooCommerce are amongst the top two platforms for the online sellers.
Other must-have e-commerce security features to consider are:
SSL certificate
SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer. It is a global standard security technology that allows encrypted communication between a web browser and a web server.
If you don’t know , it is utilized by millions of online businesses and individuals to decrease the risk of sensitive information (e.g., credit card numbers, usernames, passwords, emails, etc.) from being stolen by hackers and identity thieves.
In essence, SSL helps for a private “conversation” just between the two intended parties.
To create a secure connection, an SSL certificate which is also referred to as a “digital certificate is installed on a web server and serves two functions:
- It authenticates the identity of the website which guarantees visitors that they’re not on an unsecured site.
- It encrypts the data that’s being transmitted.
Two-factor authentication
- Two-factor authentication (2FA), referred to as two-step verification or dual-factor authentication, is a security process in which the users provide two different authentication factors to verify themselves.
- Also it adds an additional layer of security to all the authentication process by making it harder for attackers to gain access to a person’s devices or online accounts because after knowing the victim’s password alone is not enough to pass the authentication check.
- The Two-factor authentication is being used to control access to sensitive systems and data, and online service providers are increasingly using 2FA to protect their customer’s credentials from being used by hackers who steal a password database or used different campaigns to obtain user passwords.
Use a firewall
A firewall is an important system designed to prevent any type of unauthorized access to or from a private network. You can implement a firewall in either hardware or software form, or a combination of both.
Firewalls help to prevent unauthorized Internet users from accessing private networks connected to the internet, especially intranets.
Wrapping up,
There are many other features you can integrate in your eCommerce store to get results.
If you are planning to design an Ecommerce site or to fix your existing eCommerce site, these must have top eCommerce features is the best practice irrespective of your eCommerce store category.
So Use these top features and start getting results.