For anyone looking out on developing and launching their E-commerce website should make sure to focus on making E-commerce more engaging, giving it more user-friendly interface and offering regular feedback. In order to capture your audience, and make the sales, an E-commerce website needs to implement several key elements; which will be discussed in this blog.
What is E-commerce Website?
The term “E-commerce” simply refers to buying goods or services via the internet, while an “E-commerce website” serves as a platform that allows people to purchase and sell products and services over the internet. Through an e-commerce website, a business can process orders, accept payments, manage shipping and logistics, and provide customer service.
Types of products sold via e-commerce website
The goods that e-commerce businesses sell can be broken down into three basic categories:
- Physical Goods: Items such as clothing, furniture, food, or supplies that are tangible products can be sold on an e-commerce website, where consumers can like, save, or purchase them.
- Services: Services such as consultations, maintenance, tutoring, and more are popular examples of services that can be sold on an e-commerce website.
- Digital Products: Digital Products like online courses, software, podcasts, e-books, music, etc. are good examples that are increasingly sold on an e-commerce website. The rise in the sale of digital products online has opened up new avenues to freelancers and entrepreneurs all around the world.
Benefits of E-commerce website over traditional commerce
Quick buying
E-commerce websites help the customers or users to easily navigate and browse multiple products until they find the desired product. They can also filter the products and the prices accordingly. This makes them easy to buy the products at their convenience in less time.
Spend Less money
E-commerce websites unlike physical stores can be created without spending much money. Only for the initial set up of the website and maintenance, you will need to spend some money.
Reach more customers
In the case of physical stores, only the people nearby can be reached and will be able to visit the store. But here on an E-commerce website anyone in the world can be reached and use the website.
Product listings and description
In an e-commerce website, the product information is clearly displayed which makes it easy for the user to compare the feature and the cost of the products. You can also add images of the products for a clear understanding of the product.
Many payments options
An e-commerce website also allows listing down the various payment options for the customers to choose from according to their convenience. Various payment modes include UPI, cash on delivery, card on delivery, net banking, EMIs on credit or debit card, and pay-later credit facility.
Track customers insights
This is the most important benefit of using an e-commerce website. The customer’s information, their actions, and which products are frequently browsed can be measured. Thus, these insights will help to improve the overall customer experience and increase sales.
Basic functions of an E-commerce website
The elements used to build an e-commerce website and its functionality is quite similar all across. These are few basic functions every e-commerce site should include;
Product images and Descriptions
Shopping via e-commerce sites can have its drawbacks because one cannot physically see or touch it before making the purchase. Hence, it is important to have professional quality images of products as well as images from multiple angles wherever applicable and thoroughly describe the items in detail covering all aspects including size, uses, benefits, colours, etc. This allows customers to feel confident about the products they will be purchasing.
Accepting orders
An e-commerce website must be able to accept orders from the customers. For each order, the e-commerce site needs to record customer information, generate and process orders and tracking numbers, share delivery details, process billing information, provide access to a payment gateway etc.
Calls-to -action (CTA)
E-commerce website needs to have appropriate call to action buttons (CTA) throughout the site that leads customers to take specific actions that you want them to take.
Payment gateway
An e-commerce website needs to have an integrated payment gateway in order to allow customers select a payment option, provide details such as credit card numbers and other related information and make secure payments.
Shipping and logistics
As a seller, the ecommerce website needs to have a process in place to ensure customers receive the right product on time and in perfect condition using either third party shipping and logistics service providers or handling it yourself. No matter which method is being used, the site should be able to initiate the process accurately and consistently.
Security and Privacy
Its important to have the SSL certificate installed to encrypt data received and sent by the browser. The SSL certificate keeps your website secure for financial transactions. Also, its extremely important to lay down privacy policy to clearly communicate to the customers how their information is used on your site.
User Friendly and mobile compatibility
An ecommerce website should be easy to navigate, thereby increasing the chances of making sale. The homepage of the website needs to be inviting and encourage visitors to click on products or categories of items they are looking to purchase. Presently, mobile visits have outranked desktop use with almost 80% of adults using smartphone devices for making purchases online. Therefore, ecommerce site needs to be designed and built for all devices, focusing mainly on mobile devices.
Features of an E-commerce website
An E-commerce website should have essential features which will persuade visitors to buy the products from your portal. Few of the essential features are listed below;
Product Recommendations
Product recommendation system are basically algorithms that suggest products to individual customers. This feature allows to show and suggest products to the customers relevant to their interest based on their actions taken on the website. Product recommendations can boost sales and enhance customer satisfaction.
Product search and filter
Product filter and search allows customers to shop by attributes like price, colour, size, rating and more. It can make a huge impact in ease of use and conversion by allowing customers to quickly find the products they want. This feature is essential to make buying process easy to the customers.
Product Wishlist
A product Wishlist is an opportunity for a customer to put products that they’re interested in buying on a save list within the ecommerce website. This feature in e-commerce website must be added as it allows the customers to save the products, they have liked in order to avoid them from losing the opportunity to buy the product. When this option is incorporated into the website it helps the user to purchase the products of interest and buy them during their convenient time.
Customer Logins
Customer login feature provides a username and password which customer will use when purchasing products or services on your ecommerce website. Customer logins enable the creation of accounts for the user/customers and give data that will be used to make personalized recommendations. This feature is very important to be added, as in absence of this feature, the customer won’t be able to access the features like product search, filtering, recommendations, etc.
Customer Reviews
Customer reviews are pieces of information (content) that the customers of your products and services share based on their experiences, ideas, and opinions. Customer reviews serve as free advertising for your business on your ecommerce website. This can also act as a very important feature for the customers before buying a product as they prefer to glance through the reviews of that product before making a purchase. So, customer review feature for all the products must be added to the e-commerce website in the product description section to generate sales.
Contact details
The buyers of your products and services need to be able to reach you in order to communicate their queries and concerns about their orders and purchases. Hence, contact details must be added to the e-commerce website as this information will let the customers directly contact you. The contact details can be in the form of a chatbot, online form, or a toll-free phone calling.
E-commerce site using WooCommerce in WordPress
WooCommerce is a software plugin that adds E-commerce functionality to WordPress. WooCommerce offers all the tools that one could ever need to build a high-quality eCommerce website with WordPress as the backbone and foundation. One can add more functionality to the eCommerce site by easily installing various WooCommerce plugins like “WooCommerce Advanced Free Shipping”, “Razor pay for WooCommerce”, etc.
Benefits of using WooCommerce Plugin in WordPress
- Fully customizable with features that can extend its functionality
- Flexible and open-source
- Hundreds of payments gateway integrations to choose from
- Supports physical products, digital products and subscriptions
- Fully scalable
- Developer friendly.
To start building your eCommerce website, one needs to have an existing WordPress site and install WooCommerce plugin.
Types of Products in WooCommerce
Adding products is the basic action in WooCommerce and products can be added, modified and deleted anytime and for whatever reason. In order to create a proper e-commerce shop, it is vital to have good knowledge of product types, product categories, and attributes.
The image below points at the Product Menu in the WooCommerce plugin.
When adding a product, the first thing to decide is what type of product it is. WooCommerce plugin offers a set of product types that you can add to your e-commerce site.
The image below points at the Product types in the WooCommerce plugin.
Simple Product: Simple products covers the vast majority of any products one may sell.
Grouped Product: Grouped products are a collection of related products that can be purchased individually and only consists of simple products.
Virtual Product: Virtual products don’t require shipping. These products are in the form of services. Adding a virtual product disables all the shipping related fields.
Downloadable Product: Adding a downloadable product in WooCommerce activates additional fields where you can provide a downloadable file. After a successful purchase, a customer is given the product as a link in the order notification email from where the customer can download the file and access it. This is suitable in case of PDF magazine or E-books.
External or Affiliate: Such type of products are ones that you list and describe on your website but are sold elsewhere
Variable Product: Variable product is a product with variations, each of which may have different colour, size, price, stock option, etc. For example, a t-shirt available in different colours and/or sizes.
Other types of products are often added by using extensions in WooCommerce.
Product Categories in WooCommerce
WooCommerce product categories are useful way to group products with similar features. Customers highly use product categories to find specific products they’re looking for when browsing your online store. They are also incredibly useful for store owners to section, promote and streamline their products for better customer experience. Product categories not only help save time but make more sales too. Product categories and work in the same way as normal categories you have when writing posts in WordPress.
An efficient method to display products by category is to add the product categories to your website’s navigation.
The image below points at the product Categories in the WooCommerce plugin.
Product Attributes in WooCommerce
WooCommerce product attributes refer to the different characteristics of each item you sell in your online store. Customers can then use the filtering function in WooCommerce to sort by product attribute. So, adding product attribute information to your products is very useful for customers
The image below points at the Product Attributes option in the WooCommerce plugin.
Best WooCommerce Plugins for WordPress
These WooCommerce plugins are user friendly, have free versions one can work with and work effectively on any type of WooCommerce website regardless of the type product being sold and thus can be referred to as universal plugins.
- WooCommerce Advanced Free Shipping: With this plugin, you can easily setup your own advanced rules to determine when a free shipping rate should be available for the customer. This plugin will give you full control over your free WooCommerce shipping rates.
- Razorpay Payment Gateway: This plugin offers seamless integration, allowing the customer to pay on your website without being redirected. This allows the plugin to work across all browsers and ensures compatibility with the latest version of WooCommerce.
- Essential Addons for Elementor: This plugin offers 80+ elements and extensions to add more power and functionality to your website. It offers many elements beneficial for your ecommerce website like product slider, product grid, product carousel, and many more.
- WooCommerce Cart Abandonment Recovery: This plugin captures the email address of users on the checkout page. If the purchase is not completed within 15 minutes, it starts sending an automated series of follow up emails that you can customize to match your brand. Through these follow up email series, you can remind the customers to complete the purchase, ask for feedback or offer custom discount that will entice potential buyers to complete the purchase.
- Checkout Field Editor: This plugin lets you add different types of custom fields to your Checkout page, blended with a simple and user-friendly interface. It enables you to edit the default checkout fields of your WooCommerce platform. This plugin really comes in handy to make the checkout process easy.
- YITH WooCommerce Catalog Mode: YITH WooCommerce Catalog Mode comes with a bundle of indispensable tools to make your eCommerce site look more professional and user-friendly. This plugin is an easy and quick solution to turn your online shop into catalogue, by removing all Add to Cart buttons and any access to check-out pages. A catalogue gives you the opportunity to leave your products online and to let your customers contact you anyway for whatever question they might have or to ask a custom quote.
