How to Build an Engaging Ecommerce Website That Attracts Customers

While ecommerce marketplaces like Amazon and eBay come with significant downsides for vendors, they also provide a neutral interface that makes it easy for customers to find what they’re looking for.

 

On the other hand, vendors who sell through their own website have full control over nearly every aspect of their store. Although this flexibility can be an advantage, it also involves substantially more work than simply listing your products on an existing site. Furthermore, even seemingly small oversights can negatively impact the customer experience and lead to decreased sales.

 

In this article, we’ll cover a few of the most effective ways to make your website more engaging. These tips will help you to reduce friction on your online store and convert more leads into loyal customers.

 

Streamline the Checkout Process

Checkout isn’t the most exciting area of your online store, but it can have a surprising effect on revenue. Brands that fail to consistently audit their checkout processes often miss glitches, slowdown, and other issues that make it unnecessarily difficult for customers to complete their orders.

 

Consumers expect a seamless and transparent checkout, so it’s never been more important to optimize this aspect of the customer experience. Some of the most common problems include unexpected shipping costs, unnecessary steps, and a lack of support for popular payment methods.

 

The simplest way to make sure your site has an easy checkout is to visit the store and go through it yourself on a variety of devices. Take note of any issues or aspects of the process that could be improved. Make sure to avoid introducing new shipping costs or other fees during checkout—unexpected costs are one of the most common reasons why online shoppers abandon carts.

 

Similarly, supporting additional payment methods will make your store accessible to more customers and help you reduce abandoned carts. Failing to accept a common payment option will lead customers to look elsewhere for the product they’re interested in.

 

Optimize Product Pages

Product pages are the last stop for customers before they complete a purchase, so they should be one of your top priorities. There are a number of simple ways to make your product pages more engaging and increase your conversion rate.

 

First, it’s crucial to use high-resolution images for all products. Blurry images will make it more difficult for customers to visualize the item, and you can also add a zoom feature to sufficiently clear pictures. Notice how the image below clearly shows the product’s texture and other details.

 

Don’t forget to include separate pictures for different colors or other product variants. You can quickly set up product variants using one of the top platforms for ecommerce.

 

Visualization is one of the most common barriers for ecommerce vendors. Videos can demonstrate how a product works or show it in action. While they can’t replace the experience of a physical store, they’ll still go a long way toward improving the online shopping experience for your customers.

 

Along with clear images and videos, the product page above also includes an option for users to share the item via Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or email. Social shares are an excellent way to increase your brand’s visibility and reach out to new leads.

 

Finally, product pages should clearly display customer reviews and ratings in order to provide more credibility. Most consumers trust customer reviews as much as personal recommendations. You can easily generate more reviews by offering buyers discounts or other perks in exchange for their feedback.

 

Improve Your “About Us” Page

An About Us page is the perfect opportunity to demonstrate what makes your brand unique. Far too many ecommerce vendors create generic, boring About Us pages that only offer contact information and other basics.

 

Of course, this doesn’t mean that you should fill the page with paragraphs of text about your company’s mission. It’s important to strike the right balance between engaging your audience and adding too much clutter.

 

If you do want to go above and beyond in this area of the site, use visual design elements to avoid making the page appear one-dimensional. In the example above, note how the text is sufficiently spaced and only takes up a small portion of the screen. It’s a simple design with a concise story about how the business was started.

 

Make sure to include links to your social media profiles along with your email address, phone number, and physical location. You can also link to pages that cover your mission in more detail, especially if your brand is involved in political activism or other charitable causes.

 

Start a Blog

 

Your About Us and Product pages are great places to talk about what makes your brand unique, but a blog gives you the opportunity to cover these and other topics in more detail. Blogs offer a variety of benefits for ecommerce vendors including increased traffic, better search engine performance, and other opportunities for monetization. Simple Facebook ads can boost your traffic to new blog.

 

When you’re getting started with a new blog, do some research to identify common keywords and phrases related to your niche. For example, clothing vendors could attract more readers to their site by covering topics such as getting your own measurements and building a better wardrobe.

 

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As in other areas of ecommerce marketing, it’s critical to consistently evaluate past blog performance in order to optimize future performance. Some of the most important metrics for ecommerce bloggers include click-through rate, cost per click, cost per 1000 impressions, and cost per engagement. Of course, you’ll also want to track how often blog readers turn into customers.

 

Ecommerce marketing is highly unpredictable, but you can often significantly improve performance by making a few simple adjustments. These tips will help you optimize your site and attract more customers to your online store.