Not able to retain your web traffic? Are your visitors having a bad experience on your website? Is your web design not on the point? Are you wondering how to ensure the success of E-commerce websites? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then you need to read this article! The website is central to the presence of an E-commerce organization. In fact, the success of your online business greatly depends upon the success of your website. Your website is your primary representative and salesperson.
If the visitors have a good experience on your website, they might like to engage with your business further and convert eventually. However, a poor website results in poor UX. This eventually leads to lower rankings, decreased web traffic, and poor conversion rates.
Therefore, the success of a good website is reflected in a great user experience and high SEO rankings. Hence, it is important to ensure the success of your E-commerce website.
Ways to Ensure Success of E-commerce Websites
✏ Choose the right Content Management System
What Content Management System (CMS) you use plays a big role in the success of your website. It is best advised to go for a system that allows easy creation and management of content without requiring much technical knowledge.
Moreover, a good CMS should be user-friendly and extensible. You’d also need to make sure that it’s under your budget so that you can go a long way with it.
WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla!, are some of the best Content Management Systems for E-commerce websites.
✏ Get the right domain name
Deciding on a domain name is another very important decision for a website. Apparently, it is your website’s address. There are certain things to keep in mind when deciding on a domain name for your website:
#keep it short
#make it easy to spell
#it should be easy remember
#avoid special characters
#make sure it adequately reflects your brand
#research your domain name, make sure no one has it already
#use the right domain extension
#make it SEO friendly
Taking care of the things mentioned above is important to help you come up with the right domain name.
✏ Be careful with your hosting decision
Which hosting service are you going to opt for? A website hosting company is the one that helps provides technology and services necessary for a website to be viewed on the internet. Thus, this is another extremely important decision to make.
There is an option of ‘shared server’ but it is generally advised against since it makes the performance of the website suffer. However, as a small business with little budget, this is all you can afford.
But in the long run, when your business expands, you should go for a dedicated server. Indeed, it is quite a bit expensive than a share one but nonetheless crucial for a successful E-commerce website.
Moreover, make sure that your hosting service provides chat and/or phone support. It should also have easy to use server interface and provide adequate web security.
✏ Keep a responsive web design
Before anything else, it is important to work on the basics first. A good website has to have a responsive web design.
A responsive web design is a website development practice that helps ensure that your users have a great experience on the website regardless of the device they use. This means that a mobile or a tablet user should have as good an experience on your website as a desktop user would.
Hence, a responsive web design takes care that the display elements on your website adjust automatically to give an optimal viewing experience to all the device users—be it desktop, tablet, or mobile phone.
Therefore, you need to make sure that your images, videos, and written texts are responsive and automatically resize on desktop, tablet, and mobile screens.
✏ Watch website loading and page speed
How fast your website and webpages load plays a great role in determining the success of E-commerce websites. A website taking too long to load and open will lead to a bad user experience. Hence, it will make your bouncer rate rise.
On the other hand, a quick loading page will ensure that your visit at least checks out your website. It also increases the chances of the audience’s engagement with your business in a more meaningful manner. Therefore, for a good UX and high SEO ranking, it is important to have a fast-loading website.
✏ Ensure mobile optimization
Mobile phones see the most traffic of online shoppers. This is important data for E-commerce entities to know. Hence, it is important to make sure that your website is mobile-friendly.
But what does it mean for a website to be mobile-friendly?
This implies that it is easy to access the website through mobile phones. Mobile users can easily navigate your website. Your CTA buttons are easy to click for mobile phone users. Moreover, your website should be quick to load and have a responsive web design.
So, make sure to keep a mobile-friendly website.
✏ Avoid distracting designs
Have you ever been to those tacky websites that have too much going on? There’d be too many images, animations, and videos. Moreover, some music might be playing in the background (or even worse, more than one).
However, no one would want to have a bad website on purpose. Therefore, such disasters are done unintentionally.
So, if you think that adding those extra images will make your website more engaging. Or if you think that adding that background music will be a great touch—think again. This is so since it can also end up doing just the opposite. All this can distract your visitor from the main point and she/he might leave without engaging with your website in a meaningful manner.
Hence, for the success of an E-commerce website, it is best advised to do stay away from distracting web design.
Ideally, you should practice minimalism and have a simple yet attractive web design.
Conclusion
The success of the website greatly determines the success of an E-commerce organization. Therefore, you need to make sure that your users have a great experience on your website. By keeping in mind the things mentioned above, you’ll be able to achieve a successful website for your business.
Looking for more on website development? We have plenty of posts in our blog!