If you’re an owner of an e-commerce store in 2024, there are a few important things that you can easily implement on your website and make it even better than it already is. I’ve been working as a web developer for more than 15 years now, and those five things are crucial for most of my clients, and they proved they work great for their visitors too.
1. Provide all the necessary product information
I’ve been looking at many e-commerce stores that do not provide all the necessary information their visitors are looking for before purchasing a product. Thus, many of them may leave the website after a while to look for more information. You can avoid that by making sure that you have included everything that is crucial for each product, and yes, that may take more time, but it will be worth the [time] investment.
Let’s start from the basics; Colors and sizes aren’t the only attributes a product should have. There’s also weight, brand, materials, and other important information. Let’s take a bike shop as an example; A simple MTB Bike product would probably have sizes, colors, suspension types, wheel sizes, and maybe more, depending on the many different factors. It’s important to include them all, both for your visitor’s sake as much as for search engine optimization purposes.
Including an FAQs section in every product is also crucial, as it answers the most important questions a client may have before completing the order. And that’s not all, many of my e-commerce clients reported that they had fewer emails and messages with questions after we implemented an FAQ section in every product, specifically written for that same product, and their sales also increased.
2. Implement a Live Chat (with or without AI)
Every e-commerce store should have a live chat that lets visitors ask questions and quickly get the right answers. Having a human reply is always a better idea, but if you’re low on time or budget, then maybe implementing a Live Chat system that is based on AI may solve all your problems and increase your sales and visitor experience.
Take Tidio for example, which is a free WordPress Live Chat & AI Chatbot plugin that you can install with one click and configure within a few minutes. As the plugin’s description reads:
“It is a customer experience platform that enables online stores to provide excellent customer service and turn passive visitors into active buyers. Its pre-built chatbots for sales and support are readily available to boost sales and promptly address customers’ frequently asked questions.”
Those kinds of plugins can easily provide your visitors with a quick and easy way to get their questions answered, and artificial intelligence can take part in the support system whenever there’s no one active in customer support. Some e-commerce owners may even enable AI-generated replies only at night and disable them during the day.
Plugins such as Tidio can manage and resolve customers’ requests with a simple ticketing system, use the WooCommerce product cards that provide a better shopping experience, and even route every conversation to the right agent.
3. Improve product display with videos and 360° images
The last couple of days I thought it was time to buy a new pair of shoes. As a hardcore die-hard fan of MTB Biking, I’m always looking at shoes that are high-quality, great for biking, and won’t get destroyed within a year. This is where Five-Ten comes in place, a company that always made some of the best shoes for MTB bikers, has now been brought by Adidas.
Thankfully, Adidas was kind enough to keep those specific shoes as they always were; A damn good pair of shoes that fit great, they “stuck” on the bike’s pedals, they’ve been designed for extreme situations, and they’re also perfect for casual wearing. That’s all I need from a pair of shoes, and I have been a happy client since I grabbed my first pair of shoes from Five Ten a few years ago.
While I was surfing through different e-commerce stores, usually looking for the best price available, the only website that actually blew my mind was the last thing I expected; It was the official website of Adidas, and those guys did an amazing job creating a beautiful, modern, and well-informed website that makes buying products fast, easy, and fun.
Instead of keeping it traditional, Adidas has placed a video for a few selected products, just aside from the featured image, featuring the product in the best possible way. They don’t have those ugly pictures with white backgrounds that hurt your eyes, but a light gray color which makes browsing the website and looking at many different pictures easier than ever.
4. Give them a reason to join your newsletter
Here’s the thing; There are too many websites that people need to register, and stay updated with all the new products and services that they repeatedly launching. With different email accounts, a large number of social media platforms, forums such as Reddit, favorite bloggers and journalists, and all the e-commerce stores they have been signed up to receive whatever’s new, the internet has been nothing but total chaos lately.
So why people will even care about subscribing to your newsletter or even clicking on the emails that you send them? The answer is simple; Give them a reason to do so. Many e-commerce owners are providing free coupon codes for the first order when you sign up for their newsletter, while others may even give you free shipping.
If you’re low on budget, you can even start a bonus system that gives points to your clients after they complete an order. Points can then be used as a discount when purchasing through your e-commerce store. That way, clients can get cheaper products depending on the number of orders they made through your website, thus not providing free shipping, coupon codes, big offers, etc.
I won’t get into any more details about the importance of email marketing, as there are hundreds of articles available that you could learn more about this digital marketing strategy. Simply put, think about a newsletter list with over 5,000 subscribers. Every subscriber will receive a new email every week, 15 days, or every month (depending on the website’s strategy), which will include all your latest products, maybe your most popular products of the month, new product categories or pages that you may have been published recently, coupon codes or special offers, and many more.
This means that every now and then, you have a big chance of getting new sales just by sending one email to multiple people at once.
5. Display both product and company reviews
Product reviews are not just important, they are crucial for every e-commerce website out there. Most people will prefer to leave your website and search for another that has buyer’s reviews. I do that too all the time, as it has helped me avoid bad purchases countless times in the past. And even if you have a new e-commerce store that has few visitors, is still important for your visitors to know that your buyers have the choice to publish their own reviews.
But product reviews aren’t the only important reviews you can display on your website; Company reviews are also crucial, as they are proof that you have happy clients who had a great experience using your e-commerce store. There are many ways you could display those reviews, either by displaying the most recent you get on Google, or even having your own selected reviews featured in your homepage, footer, or any other place you think it’s worth placing.
If you’re a WooCommerce website owner, you can use free plugins such as Widgets for Google Reviews, which you can connect and they automatically get updated every few hours or days, depending on the number of reviews clients are leaving you.
In conclusion, many website owners sometimes forget to implement even the most basic features to their websites, not gaining as many subscribers as they would and not turning visitors into buyers. Thankfully, most of those implementations are pretty easy and straightforward for most websites, mostly for people using WordPress, which is as easy as installing a few plugins and enabling a couple of options.
Have missed any of the implementations maintained above? And if so, which ones haven’t you implemented as of this moment, and which do you think are the most important ones? I’d love to hear all about your experience and thoughts in the comment section below.
