Ecommerce Checklist: 30 Tips To Improve Your Online Store

Regardless of the type of ecommerce business, it is imperative to have a strong online presence. This is the ultimate list of eCommerce best practices for building a successful online shop and boosting your business.

1. Buy A Premium Web Hosting Service

Purchasing premium hosting can be scary at first, especially when you don’t have the budget. However, you must know how important efficiency and speed can be on your ecommerce website. Research has shown that a two to three-second delay on any website can turn away up to 16% of potential customers.

If your website exhibits issues like site crashing, glitches, or error reports, it's a big problem. If you decide not to spend money on premium hosting now, start with the best option.

2. Branding

Your company’s branding needs to be consistent throughout your site. You want to ensure your brand or logo is visible on your homepage and page title.

3. Prioritize SEO

Research shows that 46% of consumers buy through a search engine like Google. That’s why you should optimize your website for Google to reach the top of Google rankings related to searches of your niche market.

Read our guide on eCommerce SEO for more details.

4. Have A Blog

When it comes to having a business, consistency is key. That’s why running a blog related to your eCommerce site can be a great way to build a fanbase because it will bring people to check out your site daily or weekly.

This way, they can catch up with your doings and might even wander over to your products section and buy something!

5. Build an Email Subscriber List

Having an email subscriber list comes in very handy. It will enable you to contact your visitors and send them special offers and promotions to increase sales. A great way to do this is to collect email addresses during checkout.

Thus, if someone suddenly stops and turns away from the buying process, you can send them shopping cart abandonment emails to reactivate it.

Many ecommerce sites also collect emails via a pop-up when someone first enters the website. Emailing a coupon is a great way to convince people to give you their email.

6. Add A Search Bar

If you have a big and varied catalog of products, then adding a search bar on your home page is essential.

How big should the catalog be to add a search bar? If you have more than 20 products, a search option is highly recommended, as forcing users to scroll through product pages can be a big turn-off for buying anything from your website.

7. Accept as Many Payment Options as Possible

Apart from Visa and Mastercard, customers should have more payment methods available. Make it a priority for your website to be able to take as many credit and debit cards as possible, as well as accept less conventional payment options such as PayPal and Apple Pay.

8. Generate A Call to Action

In general, it is recommended to have three kinds of Calls to Action

• On the Page: The Add to Cart button on your product page starts the purchase.
• Overviews: Visitors can add that product to their cart fresh from the category or search result.
• Compelling: Your homepage needs to be able to promote different products like limited editions or seasonal promotions.

9. Write Informative Product Descriptions

When doing so, you must avoid large blocks of text -- these descriptions must be short. Bullet points can be quite helpful in highlighting keywords for both the product functions and the key benefits.

Essential product descriptions, such as the product name and SKU, must be visible. Pay attention to what keywords people use to search for each product and use those in the description.

10. Get Rid of Ads

You may think that having ads on your site will generate more income, yet on the contrary. Visitors will develop a lack of trust in you because of the fear of being redirected to some unsafe place. Your income should come from your sales, not your clicks.

11. Make It Easy to Contact You

It is good to have accessible and available customer service support through:

• phone
• email
• live chat

12. Optimize for Mobile

The numbers don’t lie, as 62% of smartphone owners used their devices to complete online purchases. Those numbers speak volumes about the importance of personalizing the consumer shopping experience.

Google also prioritizes optimized mobile sites, making this step even more important.

13. Go with Free Shipping

If you are considering adding extra costs to the purchase price, such as shipping costs, don’t. Research has shown that unexpected costs are the top reason for shopping cart abandonment.

If you want to leverage that, you should include the shipment cost in the product cost so customers don’t have to pay extra for what they want.

14. Pretty and Famous Faces Matters

Establishing credibility is essential when going online with your business. That’s why having your product recommendations come from a celebrity or someone with a strong social following will make your site more trustworthy.

A famous face can create that sensation of safety and trust in your site and brand. If you can’t afford a celebrity, that’s ok! Look into “influencers” -- these social media stars can significantly impact your brand.

15. Make It as Visual as Possible

A big disadvantage of eCommerce is that customers don’t experience trying the products as they would in a physical store. That’s why having a website with high-quality photos matters.

When taking photos, you must zoom in from various product angles and highlight all the top features and benefits. It is also beneficial to include a video.

It is proven that up to 90% of consumers find videos way more helpful when deciding about purchasing a product, as it illuminates the product for prospective customers.

16. Ask for Feedback

Having customer reviews is a fundamental point that builds trust in the site and the brand, so send them a follow-up email asking them to genuinely review the item they bought.

As tempting as it might be, don’t delete the negative reviews; Google pays attention to things like that, and manipulating reviews will damage your rankings on search pages.

It is highly recommended that your website have some favorable user product reviews highlighted near your call to action to achieve the best results.

17. Feature Products

You need to make room for your main products. Reserve a prominent spot on your homepage for those products so they can become a potential trigger for visitors.

18. About Us Page

Nowadays, people want to be more engaged with the company and not only the products. That’s why having an “About us” section matters a lot. People knowing about the company will help build a stronger bond between your company and your customers.

19. Be Clear and Transparent

Make your intentions crystal clear from the beginning. Being clear about what you are trying to sell and the name of your categories allows the clients to understand the business better.

Be sure you don’t hide any extra costs, as doing so can lead to a devastating drop in sales and customers.

20. Set Up Categories

Having your products categorized allows visitors to reach out to different groups of products as quickly as possible, especially those visitors who are more hesitant about which products to buy.

21. Describe Your Products

Adding a nice introduction to your category pages can help the customers better navigate through your site, as they will better understand the classifications in which all the products are separated, saving them time and effort as they try to find what they need.

22. Don’t Lie About Pricing and Availability

When setting up prices, make sure you include every necessary cost. If adding an extra cost becomes necessary, ensure you have it established in a way that is not confusing for the customers.

By that same token, you also want to be sure of the number of products available, as there is nothing more upsetting than having a customer asking for an item that is sold out without having that specified on the website.

23. Build Up Trust

Even though many tips concern being trustworthy, nothing ignites more trust as a customer than feeling safe on a website.

An SSL certificate can help you with that, as your site will have a green padlock in your visitors’ browser address bar, letting them know they are shopping in a safe environment.

24. Don’t Be Pushy

Newsletters and social media are the more organic ways to incentivize visits. In contrast, forcing customers to buy only when they’ve created an account is a terrible strategy that can backfire. You should play it safe and not make them do things they might not want.

25. Make It Fast

With most people suffering from short attention spans, customers are used to getting everything immediately. That is why fast website speed is essential. Moreover, Google tends to rank websites faster than the ones that do not measure up in speed.

26. Have A Meta Description

Even though Google may come up with a proper and keyword-related invitation to your website for its information pages, those are often oddly worded, so it is beneficial to create your own content. If your product page lacks product information or details about your customer service or warranty, other competitors will knock you out of the top places on the search.

27. Keep an Eye on Cookie Expiration Times

Using longer cookie expiration times for your shopping cart is better so customers can stay around longer, surf the site, and watch relevant products in your catalog.

28. Make Your Content Understandable

Don’t be too formal! Make your content relatable and transparent, as if you were speaking to a friend. Don’t always try to force sales because people will notice that immediately, and they might turn away from you.

29. Know What People Do with Your Content

Adding OpenGraph or making Twitter Cards available can help you and your fanbase share content or products on social media in an attractive way that will bring in more organic traffic.

30. Create Product Thumbnails

Visuals overcome words, so it’s in your best interest to design good thumbnail images that make it easier for visitors to choose from various products in both categories or search result pages.

Conclusion

Even though having an eCommerce website can look intimidating, you can implement many tips to improve your chances of driving sales and keeping customers engaged.

That said, the best thing you can do is to gradually identify the changes that need to be made and prioritize the ones you think are most important.

Make your SEO as efficient and attractive as possible to enjoy increased web traffic and the additional income that will bring with it.