Even the most successful ecommerce businesses continually strive to optimize their websites and drive conversions. From reevaluating your product pages to revamping your site’s design, taking steps to improve your ecommerce store is critical to growing your business, increasing your sales, and reaching higher profit margins.
If you’re looking for ways to increase conversions, you may need to add some features during your next phase of ecommerce development. With this in mind, here are 7 ecommerce website features that could boost your bottom line.
1. Advanced search feature.
Did you know that on-site searchers are more likely to convert than those who are not? In fact, as of 2017, Moz states that the average ecommerce conversion rate was 2.77%, while that conversion rate was nearly double for on-site searchers (4.63%). Think about it: The more user-friendly the search feature, the more likely your customers will be to find what they’re looking for.
To offer the greatest amount of visibility, your search tool should be as static as your navigation. That way, no matter where your customers are on your site, they’ll be able to get where they need to be.
Simplifying that process even further may mean including predictive search as well, which essentially ‘predicts’ what a customer is searching for as they type it. Likewise, you may wish to include product filtering and sorting, so your customers can eliminate the products they aren’t interested in from their search results.
2. Real-time personalization.
Similar to a search feature, real-time personalization helps your customers to find what they’re looking for through personalized product recommendations and advertisements. Even better, this feature is not limited to your ecommerce site alone, as it can work in conjunction with other features, like e-mail marketing, as well.
Here’s one example of how it works: A customer has been browsing products on your site. She can’t seem to find exactly what she’s looking for. But thanks to machine learning, your site has offered recommendations similar to the other products she has viewed, and now she has found the product she would like to buy and, finally, converted.
Another example: A customer has put several items in his shopping cart but realizes he can’t place his order today. A few days later, your personalized e-mail marketing tool (which we will talk more about later) sends him a reminder of his abandoned shopping cart. With this email, he’s reminded to complete his purchase. In this way, real-time personalization helped to capture these two leads, which otherwise may’ve been lost.
3. Wish/shopping lists.
Maybe you’ve put the right products in front of your customer, but they have decided they don’t want to make a purchase right away. That’s okay—they can come back later. Just like the personalized e-mail in the last example, another way you can bring a customer back in the future is by allowing them to create a ‘wish’ or ‘shopping list.’
If you’re familiar with Amazon, you know exactly what this is: It’s a feature that allows customers to save a product they liked for later. So, maybe your customer decides they can’t purchase the product now—no problem. By allowing them to keep a running list of items they’re interested in, you can increase their likelihood of ordering those products in the future.
4. Automated customer support.
Not every business can offer 24/7 phone or e-mail support. In addition to being expensive, it’s not always cost effective. However, there always seems to be customers that want answers right here and right now, and the more quickly you can get back such customers, the happier they’ll be. But how can you do that without offering 24/7 human support?
While nothing is quite like human support, chatbots can take some of the workload off of your employees and help customers after (or during) business hours. Using AI (artificial intelligence), your chatbot can be programmed to answer your customers’ FAQs. With the help of machine learning, they can also be designed to conduct more human-like conversations as well.
By providing your customers with accessible support, even when none of your employees are available, you’ll increase your customers' chances of remaining satisfied and working with your business in the future.
5. Mobile responsive design.
According to Statista, an estimated 67.2% of ecommerce sales will be mobile by the end of this year, and by 2021, that percentage is expected to increase to 72.9%. With this in mind, while some of your customers will view your site on a computer, there’s a strong likelihood that a majority of them will use a mobile device instead.
In today’s market, of the features mentioned, mobile responsive design is possibly the most important. Without a mobile-friendly design, customers using a mobile device may disappear from your site altogether. However, by building a site that accommodates all platforms, your site will be accessible to every customer who finds it.
6. Built-in SEO and marketing tools.
Bringing your customers to your site plays a crucial role in ensuring that your ecommerce business thrives. Even if you have a great marketing team, there’s no better way to improve your SEO (search engine optimization) than by having SEO and marketing tools integrated directly into your ecommerce site.
Integrating your SEO and marketing tools into your site will not only make them accessible from one centralized location, but it will allow you to more easily launch landing pages and publish blog posts that align with your customers’ needs. For instance, by integrating these tools with your on-site analytics, you can feel more confident that you’re delivering the right content, at the right time, to your customers.
Added Bonus: Consider implementing social media integration to your site as well. Social media may not have a direct impact on your SEO. However, providing tools that allow users to share your content can increase your content’s visibility, increase your chances of acquiring backlinks, and more, thereby indirectly affecting your SEO.
7. Email marketing integration.
Even when your customers are not on your site, you may still want to remind them of your latest products and discounts. Previously mentioned alongside real-time personalization, e-mail marketing integration is can help you to stay in touch with your customers, even after they’ve left the page.
Integrating e-mail marketing into your site will take it to the next level by ensuring that you can quickly reach out to customers, and with the right content. HubSpot notes that responding within an hour increases your conversion rate by 7x. So not only will it be accessible in one CMS (content management system), but you will be more likely to follow up with and capture leads.
Conclusion
If you haven’t already tried using some of these features, consider giving it a shot. Be sure to measure and analyze any changes in your site’s performance in order to verify if implementing these features is offering a ROI (return on your investment).
To implement some of these features or migrate your site to a better ecommerce platform altogether, you may need the help of a software development team. That’s where we come in: ClikFocus delivers excellent tailor-made solutions that will help you reach your business goals. If you can think it, we can build it.
