Nowadays, eCommerce businesses are going through a rough patch due to the global pandemic. Even though the demand is still high, online stores have difficulties managing their supply chains. Hopefully, that will all be over soon, and eCommerce stores can resume operations as they did before.
However, the highly competitive environment is most likely to remain for some time. Online businesses that wish to achieve success in 2021 will have to step up their game. That means that they’ll have to polish their websites and focus on the best online practices they can manage.
That includes more than just digital marketing. In fact, they’ll have to work on web design and user experience as well. With that in mind, here are some of the best web-related eCommerce best practices for 2021 and how to achieve them.
Polishing the web design
It’s no secret that web design often plays a much larger role than it seems at first. Consumers who land on your site only need about 50 milliseconds to form a first impression based on the design alone.
These first impressions determine whether or not a website visitor will stay to explore further or bounce right off. As we all know, every customer counts in the online world, so it’s of vital importance to encourage as many of them to stay as you can. If you think it’s too late or too problematic to redesign your website now, don’t worry, it’s actually much easier than it may seem.
Therefore, try to think of a design that will welcome both new and existing customers. You can choose the right color scheme for your store that will encourage visitors to remain instead of chasing them away. Moreover, make sure your store is well-organized and categorized so that consumers can browse seamlessly through your products until they find what they’re looking for.
Work on the user experience
Web design is more than just how your website looks. It’s also about how it performs or functions. These factors impact user experience in more ways than one, and that’s a crucial factor these days. If consumers face obstacles and inconveniences at your online store, they will simply leave and go elsewhere.
Whether you have a custom website or a WordPress-powered one, you have to eliminate such inconveniences so that you can provide an exceptional user experience. WP hosted websites are easier to handle since there are a lot of tools and plug-ins that can help you modify your website as you please. For other websites, you might have to hire a developer and a designer to help you out. In any case, here are a few things you should consider:
- Improve website speed and page loading time
- Ensure seamless navigation
- Mobile-friendly and a responsive design are a must
- Enhance online security
- Structure your website content and optimize it
- Eliminate pop-up ads and other annoying advertisements, especially for mobile users
- Create detailed product descriptions and categories
Nowadays, consumers are more concerned about the level of experience online stores can provide than the quality or quantity of their products in stock.
Monitor your efforts
Whatever you do in terms of marketing or improving web design has to be monitored. The main reason is that you cannot know for sure if your efforts are effective or not. If you’re making a mistake, you won’t know until it’s too late if you’re not keeping an eye on things.
For example, if a lot of visitors are bouncing off when they land on your page means that something is wrong with your landing page. Monitoring various relevant metrics and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) is one of the best practices in 2021 you could opt for. Of course, monitoring all these things manually would simply take too much time and resources.
That’s why you should find a trustworthy reporting software that can easily integrate with other systems you have, such as the WooCommerce plug-in for WP, for instance. That way, you can generate reports on any metric you wish to monitor and be up to date with every ongoing activity you currently have. If things don’t look promising, you can quickly make adjustments and improvements to remedy any issue.
Improve your checkout process
Cart abandonment rate has been plaguing eCommerce businesses for some time now. 2021 is the perfect year to tackle this issue head-on. In 2020, the global cart abandonment rate for retail was a stunning 84.51%. That means that eCommerce stores tend to lose a lot of business at the checkout process. Believe it or not, the most common issues have something to do with your web design.
For example, consumers find out that shipping fees are way too high at the checkout. This can easily be solved by making your policies transparent and easily available at your store. A lot of eCommerce businesses implement a self-service model through an FAQ page or a knowledgebase.
Moreover, your discount codes may not work, so consumers will abandon their cart and move on. Again, this is probably a minor glitch in your website design that can easily be fixed. To improve the checkout process, you’ll have to pay more attention to it. Here are a few things you should do:
- Eliminate any inconvenience in the checkout process
- Send a follow-up email to consumers who abandon their carts to determine the reason behind their decision
- Include multiple payment options to enhance convenience
- Strengthen the security on the checkout page
- Offer free shipping and discounts
By improving the checkout process, which is an integral part of your web design, you can ensure more sales and improve customer satisfaction.
Web design is an essential factor for stores that operate online. Both the looks and the technical aspects are required to have an amazing eCommerce store. That way, you can rest assured that you’ll be able to meet consumer expectations and needs with ease.
