Building an online store has been a must over the last few years, and with many people finding their feet in business once again, more and more Ecommerce sites are opening their virtual doors.
Many of those entrepreneurs will be dipping their toes in for the very first time and on the lookout for top tips and website templates like these to get them started.
Templates are always a perfect starting point for the less tech-savvy, allowing anyone to put together an effective website in minutes. But as we say, it’s just the starting point.
Once the template is in place, it’s all about understanding the key features you need in place or adding to it. So, what are they?
High Res Images & Videos
This is an absolute. You cannot build a website selling products and not have high resolution images of them. Find a business that does, and it’s likely that business is not doing very well.
Multiple images displaying different angles should always be added to your Ecommerce website, while more and more sites are now integrating video to offer maximum exposure and a truer picture of the product. Again, videos should be high resolution.
Of course, some are going that one step further these days and using the likes of VR and AR to really immerse potential customers in their products, which has been significantly boosting sales.
User Generated Reviews
Reviews generated by people that have actually purchased your products will undoubtedly increase sales of your product.
It’s been statistically proven that the majority of people will only use businesses if they have four star reviews or higher on their products. Therefore, having no reviews isn’t going to get you very far.
Naturally, people will read your product descriptions but at the same time know that’s ultimately a sales pitch. That’s why it’s so important to understand what “real people” think.
That doesn’t mean all product reviews need to be positive, far from it. Of course, they shouldn’t all be negative either but the odd bad one is only going to make the reviews feel more authentic. After all, nobody can please everyone.
Wish Lists
Online shopping is just as much of an experience as in a store. People will browse, even look for better deals elsewhere, and often leave shopping in their cart.
A good way to encourage the sale is by adding wish lists to your website. This will allow users to ultimately create a shopping list that they can go back to and make purchases from either at the end of that particular session, or at a later date such as on payday.
Related Items
Many Ecommerce website templates will have sections where you can add related items, so it’s important that you categorize and tag your items correctly. This will make sure the related items are related and could push further sales.
This can often also be a “people also bought” feature which pulls through items that people bought alongside the product a customer is browsing, again adding related products and ones that suggest they know what you’re looking for. It all adds to the shopping experience and adding a personalized element to it.