7 things your ecommerce site must have

Have you considered branching out into the world of e-commerce and selling online?

Many retailers can be found exclusively online, with others leveraging an online presence alongside a physical store.

One of the first hurdles for entrepreneurs starting up in retail is launching a website that can function as their online shop.

To make things easier, we've written a checklist of 7 things your e-commerce site or online store must have.

7 Things Your Ecommerce Site Must Have

Security

Your retail website must be able to take payments securely, otherwise you'll lose out on your customers' trust - which means losing out on sales!

If you're collecting information like payment details and personal addresses, make sure your website has an SSL certificate. You can also display badges on your site like secure payment logos and customer review scores.

Make sure your website is mobile friendly

How many times a day do you check a web page or app on your phone? In terms of web traffic, mobiles are taking the lead as our preferred way to browse and shop online. So you need to make sure that your website will look its best whether it's viewed on mobile, tablet, or computer.

Give prospective customers all of the information they need

This means detailed product descriptions and high quality images. People aren't going to buy a product if they don't have enough information, so include as much (relevant) detail as you can. Think about what your customers need to know before they purchase - things like ingredients, dimensions, shelf life...

If you give customers the option to leave reviews, you'll soon find out what's important to them. And you'll build trust and credibility by allowing them to share their opinions.

A streamlined browsing and checkout process

Make sure your products are easy to find by incorporating a search function and the ability to browse products by category, price or colour for example.

You can give customers the option to make an account on your site. This means you can save data like their shipping information, allowing them to 'auto-fill' their address each time they make a purchase, which will speed up the checkout process for them!

Speed

Make sure your site loads quickly and that product images are not too large as they may slow the site down. Fast loading times will stop people abandoning your site out of frustration, which in turn will help your site's ranking with search engines.

Make sure your contact information is available across all of your site's pages

This makes it easy for customers to send questions and queries. Having a registered business address also builds trust, as will visible contact information like a landline phone number.

Your terms of purchase, return policy and delivery information should be clearly stated, as should any product guarantees.

Marketing

Site pages should be easy to share via social media channels and make sure there is an easy way on your homepage for customers to sign up to receive emails from you. Having an offer attached to this is a great way to prompt customers to sign up.

Why use Shopify?

If you want an ecommerce system that you can manage yourself and not have to outlay thousands of pounds, then Shopify could be a good option for you.

Here are just some of the benefits of using Shopify to start your retail business:

• Build and customise your online store with no design or coding skills

• Choose from over 100 professional store templates (just because it's easy you don't have to have a store that looks like everyone else's!)

• Accept orders in seconds with email and mobile notifications when a new sale comes in

• Fulfil orders with just one click, making order management a breeze

• Integrate shipping with every major carrier (FedEx, UPS etc.) and provide your customers with tracking information for their orders

• Monitor the performance of your website using analytics so that you can make the right business choices

• The ability to integrate over 1,000 applications that can help you to automate your accounting, send promotional emails or even expand your business seamlessly into new marketplaces such as Amazon

• Complete mobile integration between Shopify and both you and your customers means that you can manage your business and orders even while away from your desk.