9 Must-Have E-Commerce Website Features for a Successful Shop

Every e-commerce business owner always wants to run a hugely successful store. An e-commerce website is considered successful if it invites web visitors to the store, communicates your brand values and clearly showcases your products. It takes good website features to guarantee these services. You can therefore deliberately build these features to make your shop creative and intuitive enough to always give your customers a great shopping experience. What really matters though is to create a website that catches the attention of your ideal customer and gives them the confidence they need to make an informed purchase.

Following are some of the core e-commerce website features that can help you accomplish this noble goal:

1. Homepage: The homepage is usually the first point of call of most visitors to your e-commerce website. It is one place that can easily send visitors away if not well structured. If you want to make more sales, you must devise ways to encourage visitors to spend a bit more time on your homepage. Your chances of making sales are higher if visitors spend more time on the page. When visitors land on your homepage, chances are they’re going to make all kinds of assumptions about your products based on the information you present on the page. You must therefore ensure the page is designed to be attractive and informative enough to keep visitors on the page a bit longer anytime they hit the page.
 
2. About Page: The “About page” is another very important page your e-commerce website should have. This page provides the mission of your e-commerce business to visitors at a glance. Anytime visitors hit your “About page”, it signifies intent that they want to learn more about you and your business. To capture their attention further, it’s important to map out the page in a way that presents organized, bite-sized chunks of information easy to assimilate and digest. Give out information that will easily convince visitors that they are in the right place to do their desired business. Above all, leave all your contact addresses, telephones, social media handles and so on where visitors can easily make contact with you 24/7.

3. Functional Search Bar: If you want your e-commerce website attract shoppers online, make it searchable. These days, most online shoppers usually expect searchable e-commerce sites to do business with. A functional search bar makes that possible. It usually helps to keep visitors on your site longer and prevent them from resorting to an outside search engine to find what they’re looking for. If well designed, a functional search bar should be effective for predictive search that helps to enhance the site’s user experience. Anticipating what a customer is trying to type into the search bar is a common best feature of a functional search bar that helps improve your e-commerce website’s user experience (UX).

4. Good Navigation: Good navigation is also great for enhanced user experience. A good navigation design is therefore hugely essential. With good navigation, your website allows customers to find what they’re looking for within just a few clicks. Your website visitors can use different navigation elements—menus, collection pages, filters, and search to get what they want fairly easily. Even within something as simple as a site menu, you have lots of options for prioritizing product discovery. Visitors can easily use drop-down menus to find and purchase their ideal products as quickly as possible.

5. Mobile Site: Since more and more people (well over 70% of shoppers) are now shopping online, it is smart to design your e-commerce website to be mobile-friendly. For your e-commerce business to thrive, you can’t afford not to prioritize a mobile version of the site. With most shoppers now depending on mobile devices to shop and in most cases via apps, making your website mobile-friendly is a great way to cater to this huge numbers of shoppers.

6. Product Pages: When designing product pages, you must pay special attention to what’s going to help customers feel confident in their purchase. Do not attempt to overwhelm them with too much information. Give out the basic information that will help them to easily make their buy decisions. Prioritize a hierarchy of information. This way, what customers see first is the most important information followed by secondary and tertiary information within close reach. Information relating to clear product photos, description, prices, sizes, shapes, handling and shipping costs, discounts, and product return policies can help customers make their buy decisions.
 
7. Collection Pages: Typically, a collection page is a home for multiple product pages that have something in common, such as new arrivals or a product category. Collection pages are usually designed depending on the size and categorization of the e-commerce shop’s inventory. Whether it is a single product or multiple products you are selling, the collection page showcases them adequately for shoppers to access easily. With its in-house filtering feature, it ensures that when someone lands on the page, they can drill down and narrow the results so they can more efficiently find what they need.

8. Wish List: A wish list is usually an optional site feature that allows users to save their favorite products for a later date. A wish list feature is a great way to build brand loyalty because it encourages customers to buy a product they love when they’re ready, rather than pressuring them into purchasing. A wish list is best installed as a functional app in your e-commerce store.

9. Filtering: If your e-commerce store is big and with a large inventory, product filters can be incredibly helpful. Product filters are great for sorting one-of-a-kind products by styles, sizes and even colors. Using these filters, shoppers can really drill down and filter by a particular style or size since some of such one-of-a-kind products may be available only in one size or style. Large e-commerce businesses like Shopify for instance have in-house Search & Discovery app which allows you to customize filters both within collection pages and search results from within the Shopify admin.

6 Exciting Ways to Discover Profitable Online Business Ideas

If you want to get involved in e-commerce business and you are observant enough, you can find inspiration almost everywhere. To get started however, you must have an open-minded spirit of curiosity. You can be inspired in many exciting ways to get great business ideas. Many of such ideas can come from unexpected moments of learning, connection, and discovery.

Here are some 6 of such ways aspiring business owners can discover profitable business ideas.

1. Attend Real-Life Networking Events

To get some inspiration to find business ideas, create time to attend local events. This you can do through your local chamber of commerce, business industry associations, or other business inclined events. That’s where you can really network to get good business ideas. Attending these events gives you the opportunity to meet and talk with people exclusively. That way, you can easily find out what your local community of business owners is excited about and exactly what they’re doing.

2. Read Business News and Blogs

One of the best ways to get inspiration as a small business owner is to diligently read business news. It is advisable therefore to subscribe to reputable business and financial news sources like Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal, and The Economist. In addition, you can carefully select some industry journalists and commentators that you like and follow them on social media. This way, you’ll be able to keep a keen eye on the latest trends in your industry. You can get big stories about your industry, and exactly which companies are struggling and those doing really great. You’ll get to know which stocks or sectors are seeing big changes in their fortunes and which are not. You’ll find out if there is a big trend in another city, region, or country that might be coming next to your local area which will present an opportunity you can exploit.

3. Think Hard About Nagging Problems

Running your own business is all about solving problems for others. You must be able to think hard about the biggest everyday problems affecting everyone. Try to locate the pain points causing the most friction in the lives of common folks. Think through what you can do as a business to help solve these problems. That way, your next great business idea might be just about to take shape.

4. Check Out Online Business Brokers

Do you know that you can actually buy a business and make good money from it? Sometimes buying a business might just be the right decision you need to get into business. But even if you're not ready to buy a business, you may find inspiration by looking at listings of businesses for sale. The reason you must endeavor to always check out online business brokers. Pay special attention to online business broker sites to see what businesses are available in your industry, area, or field of interest. If you do, you might find a great deal on an existing business you can acquire. At the very least, you could get really inspired to start your own business from the scratch. Reputable examples of business brokers that do help investors buy and sell online businesses are Ecommerce Brokers, Flippa, and Acquire.

5. Use Free Online Resources

Online resources are great avenues to find business ideas if you want to start a content marketing or e-commerce business. Specifically, there are great resources available on reputable sites like HubSpot and Shopify. Out there on these platforms, you can take advantage of the available free videos and guides to learn digital marketing skills. Suchlike important skills as search engine optimization (SEO), email marketing, social media marketing, how to create a successful website, how to do search engine marketing, and much more can be learned. By simply immersing yourself in the world of online business, it is possible for you to find inspiration to start your own online store or e-commerce business.

6. Travel

Travel is one of the greatest learning experiences there is. You can get your next bit of business inspiration by traveling to another country or going to an industry conference in another city different from yours. You can even get great business inspirations by way of vacation travels. Sometimes, the best way to get inspired for business ideas is to get out of the house, and get a change of scenery. You can get inspiration from new food trends, dressing, and fashion trends and so on. Billboards and advertising at airports, train stations and Bus stops can inspire business ideas. The sights and sounds of new places and reconnecting with the pulse of human life is always an inspiration any day. Travel can dislodge your mind from your usual comfortable routine and present you with new contexts, colors, flavors, and sounds to help you see the world in a creative and entrepreneurial new ways.

Wrapping Up

At times, developing new business ideas can be a great exercise in creativity and imagination. Business owners can use a variety of ways to learn and engage with life more deeply. This way, they can discover profitable business ideas by relying on their spirit of curiosity and problem-solving. The foregoing exciting ways are great ways to help you discover new business ideas through curiosity and inspiration.