It’s Almost Thanksgiving. Do you know where your eCommerce Site is?
So, November 25, 2021, Thursday. Your face is full of stuffings, the family has devoured the turkey to the bone, the dishwasher is complaining about the plates. You sit down on your couch and you ready yourself for tomorrow’s big rush– Black Friday. Knee pads, elbow pads… shopping helmet?
Or, are you part of the “others” who just wait for the Friday to breeze through, don’t want the battle of the lines, afraid of getting elbowed, stepped on, and pushed away, or just smart about Co-vid 19 and crowds? A Cyber Monday aficionado!
Maybe, you’re a merchant hoping to turn a profit on Black Friday. Better yet, you are one of the more innovative ones and have both a physical store and your own online store or eCommerce site!
If you have your own eCommerce site, make sure that your online store has all these features so that your customers will be shopping in a frenzy!
Here are 8 Features Every eCommerce Site Needs
1. Speed.Before anything else, your site needs to be lightning fast. Shoppers are fickle creatures and if your site doesn’t load in a blink of an eye, they’d probably go somewhere else quick. To make your site load faster:
- Make sure that thumbnails are visible, clear, colorful, and small. Keep the big versions for when the customer clicks the pics. Use the WebP format, which is about 25-35% smaller than JPG or PNG files but has the same quality.
- Combine your HTML, CSS, JavaScript files. If you have multiple of these on a single page, they are loaded one at a time, so combine them if you can. If possible, change the load from one at a time to asynchronous. JavaScripts can also be loaded last to make everything faster.
- Try hosting your videos someplace else, if your site hosts the video, it will drag some of the pages to a crawl.
2. Multiple Platform Ready.Your eCommerce site needs to be ready for a desktop, a laptop, a TV, a smartphone, a tablet, a mac, or even a Linux box! If you can, provide device-specific apps for your customers so that they are one click away.
3. Easy to Use.The site should not have a steep learning curve, enough pics when needed, text when necessary. Coordinate your design so that the important buttons (Checkout!) are visible to the eye.
4. A Shopping Cart.Yes, there are clickers out there who cart like crazy, make sure you have that ready. It should be easy to add, take out, increase quantity, and see a subtotal.
5. Payment Method Selections.Don’t limit your customers to one single payment method, give them debit cards, credit cards, prepaid cards, Paypal, e-Money, checks, vouchers, coupons, and even cash!
6. Shipping methods.From USPS to UPS and every other method in between, allow your users to have them shipped the way they want. Ensure that the shipping is detailed and they have a way to track their boxes.
7. A rating section on every item. Reviews and links to social posts if needed. People will promote your product for free if they really like it.
8. A way to contact you.The customer will feel very secure if they can reach you all the time. A chatbox, ticketing, or email support, if you’re old school– phone support!
Get your physical store ready for Black Friday and your eCommerce store for Cyber Monday. Thanksgiving is just the start, the Holidays are coming too. Be vigilant and stay on top of your eCommerce store with our tips. If you feel a bit worried about your eCommerce site or just want to be 100% sure, drop us a line at Boom Logic and we’ll get you ready.
