5 Things Your E-Commerce Site MUST Have

Sometimes, it’s so easy to get caught up in all the things you wish your online shop could have, and accidentally let some things slide that you really MUST have implemented. To give your shop the best foundation possible, keep these 5 things in mind and make sure your e-commerce site has them sorted.

1. Search & Login Box with the Shopping Cart

This first point illustrates one of the times where it’s absolutely fine to completely copy your competitors and peers in the quest for usability for your visitors. So many e-commerce sites have these 3 items grouped together nowadays that you’d be silly to do it any other way – your visitors will only curse you for making them look for something that should be instantly visible. I suggest you put everything top right, just like Amazon and M&S - it’s an obvious and well used place to keep the most essential parts of your site in the place that your potential customers will expect them.

2. Deals & USPs – PROMINENCE

Check out Victorias Secret (yea, I know, any excuse… I apologise!) and what do you notice on the homepage? Deals, deals and more deals. DFS are well known for this sort of thing in-store on on their more traditional marketing, and their website is no exception either. It’s not just about money off either, ASOS shout heavily about their free delivery – another sort of USP that customers absolutely love. Notice the title of the ASOS page to see just how heavily they value that USP. You’ll also notice that the fact they value ‘free delivery’ means they rank both 1st and 2nd on Google for that term…

But why? It all comes back to something you already know – you have next to no time to convince a visitor that your site is worth exploring. Deals and super clear USPs can give you the edge over your competition and get the sales you might otherwise have lost.

3. Most Popular Products

Assuming that you use some analytics software to track which of your products are you most popular, you’ve got a very powerful stat. Your most popular products are that way for a reason – either you’ve got the best deals on them, or they’re just in high demand. Either way, you’re doing something right. Putting those same products right in the face of new visitors gives you a good chance of making them even more popular, a la Amazon once more.

4. Social Network Links

This is especially important if you’re not quite the biggest player in your market. If that’s the case, there’s a good chance that visitors to your site won’t know very much about you at all and as such another good chance they’ll want to check you out on social networks. Make it easy for them!

As well as links to your social network presences themselves, you’ll also want to implement buttons for visitors to like, tweet or +1 individual products that they like. There are many benefits to this in terms of potential long term rankings, but the main thing is that you’re encouraging your visitors to tell their friends that they like your product. I Want One Of Those is the best example of that I’ve got off the top of my head – which works because I do want one of those!

5. Visible Phone Number

If one of your customers has got a query, you’ve got a choice: You can either frustrate them, or you can deal with their query as quickly as possible. So, why do so many e-commerce sites hide their phone number somewhere deeeeeeeep in the navigation? By the time your customer finds that number to get the answer they need, they’ll be so frustrated that you’ve already put your business on the back foot. That recommendation they could have written in a Facebook status about how great your customer service? Forget it if they couldn’t even get in touch with you. Put your number on your homepage, now!

Simple, implement those 5 things and you can be sure you’re on your way to having a site that will perform as well as you imagine it should! I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments, let’s get chatting