Over the years creating and managing Ecommerce sites for customers we have gathered together the top 14 tips that every eCommerce shop owner should be aware of to help make their online business a success.

1. Research The Target Market

The target market is the customers that will be buying from the website. Look into their buying behaviours and learn what it is they want to see that would encourage them to make a purchase from your website.

2. Super Easy Navigation

Potential customers need to be able to effectively navigate your website with as little effort as possible. Don’t make it hard for people to buy from you.

3. Have Good Search Functionality

Make sure customers can easily search for products directly from a search box on the site. Make sure the results that get brought back are accurate.

4. Track The Searches Made

Make sure your website reports the queries that get typed into your sites search box so that you can find out what your customers are searching for. Find out the most popular searches and place those products on the homepage or somewhere that stands out to increase sales.

5. High Quality Images For Products

Shoppers want to know exactly what they’re going to be buying, therefore it is important to display as much visual detail of a product as possible. Ensure that product images are high resolution, and also ideally multiple zoomable images from different angles.

6. Optimise Your Images

If you have more than 50 products its best to optimise all your product images. To avoid slow loading sites ensure your images are properly optimised for the web. That means no dpi over 72, use width / height dimensions around 800/1000px and preferably use a software program to optimise and render the images for web.

7. Informative Product Information

Not many people will buy a product without knowing exactly what it is. As much detail as possible should be given about a product in its description, however it’s also vital that the information is presented in an interesting and easy-to-read way, increasing the chances of viewers reading the product information and making them more likely to convert into a customer.

8. Use Videos On Product Pages

Shopping online has a major disadvantage versus retail stores when trying to sell a product – you can’t touch, feel or look at the product in person. On a website you can have the next best thing – videos. Product videos can assist with the product marketing by show off the product while explaining the benefits and applications of that product.

9. Clear And Visible Shopping Cart

Customers have a tendency to check over items in their cart at frequent intervals. Because of this, ensure that the shopping cart is always visible and easy accessible with a drop down menu displaying items in their cart.

10. Offer Free Delivery Where Possible

Postage costs can significantly harm conversion rates, so where possible free delivery should be offered. Granted that it may not make economic sense to offer free delivery on low value items, but it is recommended that you at least set an order value amount, with orders above this amount having free delivery.

11. Remove All Distractions

When a customer is going through the checkout process, there should be nothing else on the page that will grab their attention such as adverts, or links to elsewhere. They should be entirely focused on the checkout and nothing else; otherwise a potential order could be forgotten!

12. Display Your Contact Information

With many illegitimate websites out there with the sole purpose of scamming people, trust is a very relevant factor. Openly providing your contact information will show that you are a real business operating from a real location, and can provide that needed trust and security that convinces people to buy from your website.

13. Several Payment Options

Not all customers will be happy to share their card details with your website, and thus will not buy from you. It is an excellent idea to offer multiple alternative payment methods, such as PayPal, allowing those users to purchase from your website.

14. Test, and Keep Testing

Once you’ve tested your ecommerce site and checkout be sure to check back every now and again and re-test just in case something breaks. The last thing you want is to find out after months that there was a new problem with your checkout process!