What makes a good ecommerce site

An incredibly important factor to consider for any ecommerce website is mobile responsiveness. More and more people are shopping online from their phones and mobile devices, so ecommerce websites must be optimized for mobile formats.

Product images, navigation menus, and checkout should all be just as easy on a mobile device as they are on a desktop. Providing ample product information is a great way to make your ecommerce website better than the rest. Instead, all that online shoppers have to go off of is the product image and description.

A good ecommerce website will have lots of high-quality product images. It can even be a good idea to have multiple pictures for each product that can be enlarged or zoomed in. Some websites will even offer degree views of products. Similarly, good ecommerce websites should have well built-out product descriptions that include any kind of information about the product that a shopper would want to know. Product descriptions should be as descriptive as possible and try to answer every question about the product.

That means including information about size, materials, colors, special features, and anything else that is specific to the product. Since people can see or touch the product, you have to describe every aspect of it for them.

Reviews are a great way to give shoppers unbiased product information. Good ecommerce websites have customer reviews displayed for each product so shoppers can see if other people who bought the product like it or not.

Reviews help to facilitate sales in many cases when the reviews are positive. Good websites will include as much product information as possible to increase sales. After a visitor chooses the product or products they want to purchase based on the product information, the website can still drop the ball if the checkout experience is lacking.

The cart and checkout experience will literally make or break your sales and therefore will make or break your ecommerce site. A good checkout experience is one that is fast, easy, and trustworthy. The cart should be accessible from every page of the site. On the cart page, shoppers should have the ability to see all of the products in their cart with images and quantities as well as prices.

From the shopping cart, shoppers should be able to add products remove items, and edit quantities. Price and any other fees such as tax and shipping should be prominently displayed along with a total. When it comes to entering credit card and shipping information, the process should be as streamlined as possible.

Only ask for the information you absolutely need. You should also give people the option to make an account that will save their information for future purchases or the option to checkout as a guest. After the shopper has placed their order, a good ecommerce website will provide an order confirmation usually followed by a confirmation email.

Are you able to fulfill orders in a timely way? Conversely, are you unable to display accurate product availability to shoppers because of a delay in posting accurate inventory data on the site? Bear in mind that slow or broken processes along with inadequate apps or features or an absence of them altogether that reflect your business model and rules not only present an operational challenge to you but will usually show up as performance hurdles to your potential customers by way of delayed delivery, or merchandise availability surprises, and so on, leading to a disappointing experience for the shopper.

Again, of course, you should be satisfied the site represents your brand vision. Ultimately, the shopper is going to perceive the site with respect to how its performance meets their expectations. What are those expectations? Not much different from expectations for any other site. Practices have become standardized and commoditized. For better or worse, the big marketplaces Amazon, Wal-Mart, etc.

The most likely things shoppers will judge include:. In short, site quality will likely be judged by site performance. Recognizing the performance expectations of your shoppers will usually support your efforts in meeting the expectations you have for your site and business overall and lead to those conversions and revenue. We are here to help brands and retailers understand the gaps in your ecommerce sites and how to best solve them. Whether their site needs a rebuild, platform migration, design changes, custom development, or optimizations, we have a wealth of expertise in all aspects.

Reach out to see how we can help your reach your e-commerce goals! Topics: ecommerce , customer experience , platform updates , search , site experience , site performance , Site search , website audit. Blog - Virid: People-Powered eCommerce.

What is meant by performance? Performance can be viewed from two different points of view: 1 How do you, the seller, regard the performance of your site.

The most likely things shoppers will judge include: Is the site fast? Studies have shown that each perceived delay in site or page load time increases site abandonment per tenth of a second. Can the shopper find items quickly enough? Do you have appealing imagery, and is content like product descriptions appealing and informative? How does the search feature return results?

How does it look on mobile?