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Best Practices for E-Commerce Site Organization & Navigation
Millions worldwide use e-commerce sites to buy everything from groceries to cars. And while brick-and-mortar retailers will likely be around for a long time, more and more consumers are going online for their needs and wants. This is great news for e-commerce sites. But it also means that they’re up against way more competition than they would be if they had a location on the main street.
If you run an e-commerce site and want to stand out from the competition, you must implement the following best practices for your site’s development. So, read on to discover what you can do today to ensure an e-commerce site is set up for success…
Focus on UX First and Last
What’s the difference between a retail website that succeeds and one that fails? User experience. When users face a site that’s difficult or confusing to navigate, filled with broken links, or simply unattractive, they’re far more likely to move on to a competitor. This is why you must keep your customers’ user experience in mind from beginning to end.
Make sure that all menus and links work. Use images and copy that is consistent across your brand. And closely examine every step of your customer’s journey so you can ensure it’s smooth sailing from the time they arrive on your home page until they make a purchase. You may even want to get a few friends to test your site before you go live so you can adjust it based on objective feedback.
Craft Engaging e-Commerce Landing Pages.
Your landing pages should be attractive, engaging, and straightforward. Whether you’re developing your home page or creating unique landing pages for your products and services, you must ensure that all the critical information is accessible: featured products, categories, prices, images, etc. You’ll boost your bounce rate if your landing pages contain unnecessary text and unrelated photos.
Create Compelling Calls to Action
Every page on your site should include a clear call to action that fits your brand image and voice. Depending on the page in question, the call to action could focus on getting leads to subscribe to your newsletter, purchase a product, explore more of your offerings… the list could go on. Just be sure you’re only asking your customers to do one thing and ask for it clearly and confidently.
Build Product Pages that Stand Out
Today’s consumers expect more from product pages than a poorly taken photograph and a bare-bones description. The more images and videos you can include on your product pages, the better. And make sure that everything on your product pages is professional and designed to entice. If applicable, you may even want to include a comparison with competitors’ offerings so your customers can see how great of a deal they’re getting.
Strengthen Your e-Commerce Site’s SEO
SEO is the foundation of your site’s organic traffic strategy. So, as you’re building each page, be sure to…
- Use different relevant keywords for each page, including them naturally in the headlines and other text.
- Tailor each page’s metadata for its focus keyword, including the title, tags, and description.
- Include keywords in image alt data.
- Be careful not to go overboard with keywords in your text. Don’t worry about trying to game the system. Use your keywords naturally… but use them.
If you’re using WordPress, you can use one of the dozens of plugins designed to simplify SEO. Whether you go that route or not, ensure your SEO foundation is solid before going live with your e-commerce site.
Connect with e-Commerce Customers via Live Chat.
Live Chat is a great feature worth implementing for any e-commerce site. It adds a personal touch to your site while ensuring that customers can get their questions answered as quickly as possible. This makes it much more likely that they’ll stay on your site and follow through with a purchase.
Conclusion
If you implement these practices into your e-commerce site, you’ll immediately have a leg-up on the competition. You’d be amazed at how many online retailers fail to follow basic e-commerce best practices – and lose out on business because of it.
And if you’d like to learn how WowBix can help you develop a site that follows all of these best practices (and more), contact us today at Wowbixmarketing.com. We’d love to help you create an e-commerce site that stands out and succeeds!
