The idea of selling online has become so prevalent that most businesses treat their digital storefronts as a routine matter. Yet, with so many choices your customers have, rest assured they’ll leave your site as soon as they come across any reason not to trust your brand. It may not even lead to distrust in general, but they might lose patience or interest due to slow-loading pages, too much complex information, or no way to navigate your store properly. In a sea of online vendors, they have the luxury not to stick around, and your brand might suffer for it.
Still, we’ve had quite some time to explore what ecommerce is all about and learn the best practices of creating online stores that will easily win over the hearts and minds of your customers. In addition to your brand’s visual identity and your voice, you have the power to use every single page of your website and turn them into the key reasons your site’s bounce rate plummets and your customers come back for more. To start designing a storefront that will dazzle your visitors, there are several pages that are must-haves for a modern ecommerce store that you need to have today.
A Well-designed Homepage
Think of it as your digital window, the very first glance at what your brand represents, and a quick, delicious summary of what your website visitors will find throughout the site. Too much information can overwhelm a visitor to leave the website without really getting to the bottom of your brand, whereas too little and too vague information can achieve a similar effect – they’ll likely lose interest. This is the page to inspire that “wow” effect, to cause your customers to feel different emotions, to get them to click further through your site to learn more.
First off, make sure that your unique selling point is clear from the moment they visit the home page. Whether you achieve this by posting a compelling image of how your product fits into their lives, or by coming up with a clever slogan that sends the perfect message, or a combination of both – it’s entirely up to you. Furthermore, make sure that your brand’s key values are obvious on the homepage, and that they can immediately reach all key parts of your website directly from your homepage through easy navigation. Work together with your designers to make your homepage visually appealing as well as highly functional.
A Dedicated Testimonials Page
Too many companies still firmly believe that it’s more than enough to pay for sponsored posts and regularly post ads on a variety of sites and social media to gain enough traction. While there are certain perks of paying for presence, you need to know that the numbers go in favor of building your reputation organically. If almost 70% of customers rely on reviews before making a purchase, you can rest assured that posting this type of user-generated content on your website can make a meaningful impact on your conversion rates.
However, these pages can be very data-heavy and slow to load, leaving many potential customers annoyed and ready to leave. To make full use of such pages, you need reliable web hosting for your website in order to make sure such issues are prevented and all of your pages can load with no issues or delays. That way, adding photos of your customers using your product and posting their reviews in a visually appealing manner won’t burden your site and slow your loading speed.
Speedy Product Pages
Another relevant page cluster that is related to the loading speed of your site is the one dealing with your products. For companies that sell many different product categories and all sorts of individual items, it can be very difficult to create the right page design that loads quickly and serves the purpose without burdening your servers when many people head to your site. So, first things first, start by clustering all of your products into relevant categories to make them easier to find for your website visitors. That way, even if they’re just perusing, they’ll have an easier time finding what they prefer.
Secondly, make sure that every product has an equally alluring page of its own, together with a clear description to help your customers make up their mind and give them many shortcuts to the checkout page. As descriptive as these pages can get, and no matter how many images you use to give your customers a clear view of your products, make sure they are clean and easy to load so that they can enjoy your site even on their mobile phones.
Your Blog Page
Even though the main purpose of many ecommerce websites is to sell, the benefits of regularly posting original, thought-provoking content are endless. Not only will you impress the search engines and help your website rank higher with authoritative content pieces that actually provide value, but you’ll build up a reputation of purpose in the eyes of your customers as well. This page needs to be engaging above all, to inspire your visitors to read, leave comments, ask questions, and join relevant discussions.
They are brilliant tools for inspiring customer loyalty and not just one-time buyers. That is why consistency, clarity, and ease of navigation are vital in how you design your blog page. Your content strategy should be based on relevant trends in your industry, and you need to build a unique voice so that your customers can relate to your brand. Retailers in every industry use their blog pages as an outlet for their vision, and a way to position themselves as leaders in the niche.
There are many more website pages your ecommerce store needs in order to succeed, but consider these essential for your growth as well as survival. Never underestimate the power a page can have on building trust and loyalty, and use these tips to stay relevant for your audience.