Meeting the customers’ expectations has always been challenging, especially in such a dynamic and competitive field as eCommerce. However, there are some life-proven eCommerce design and development practices that you are safe to follow. The basic features of eCommerce website design have not changed much in recent years, so this article shares a list of must-have eCommerce functionality for seamless user experience and high conversion rate.
- Quick registration
Sign up and sign-in are the features your customers use to begin the interaction with your website. When creating these seemingly simple functions, keep in mind that their main goal is to let the user proceed with the shopping process as quickly as possible.
95% of purchasing decisions are emotional so the shorter your registration form, the higher chances that the user will complete the target action, being influenced by the instant desire to buy a certain item as quickly as possible. What’s more, a too-long registration process and the necessity to create an account is the second-ranked reason why modern users abandon a purchase, especially when intended to make a one-time order.
That’s why the registration process on the eCommerce website should be instant with the help of Google or Facebook profiles. Take a look at the example below to find out how not to develop a registration form.
- User-friendly navigation
Getting lost in the abyss of product offers is easy for the users, especially those dealing with a brand for the first time. That’s why clear and user-friendly navigation that lets the user quickly browse the categories is one of the most important eCommerce website features.
Usually, eCommerce websites list the most popular product categories for quick jumping to the necessary section – take a look at the example below to get an idea of the laconic and user-friendly navigation Pandora has on its website.
- Smart search with filters
According to statistics, the search feature on the eCommerce website is used by only 30% of customers. While this figure is pretty low, it is better not to skip this function if your store has more than one product offer. The eCommerce search feature is especially important for marketplaces with thousands of product offers.
For such projects, creating a simple yet effective search system is a must, and adding different filters is one of the best practices to let the users quickly find what they need and help them avoid the choice overload effect. The latter by the way, is the reason why 46% of modern users abandon a purchase, lowering your conversion rate.
So, think about the search filters to perfectly tailor the item to the customer’s expectation – filtering the products by size, color, availability, free shipping option, customer rating, technical characteristics, brand, the country of origin are just some of the ideas you can grab.
Do you need more technical support to develop must-have eCommerce store features? Our certified developers are here to help!
- Well-designed and meaningful product descriptions
Clear and detailed product pages are at the core of eCommerce functionality. 87% of modern shoppers consider product description content extremely important when making a purchase decision. They also agree that a detailed product description with characteristics and specifications, plus user ratings are essential sections of a product page.
That’s why you have to find such a design solution to balance visuals, text content, reviews, and CTAs within the limited space of the product page. For example, here is what Nike’s product page looks like – it is developed according to the best eCommerce design practices.
- Seamless checkout
The user experience in an eCommerce store should be holistic and seamless – starting from the first landing on the brand’s website and ending with paying for an order. The stage of checkout is a “risky” one since, at this stage, the users are about to separate their hard-earned money.
That’s why the process of checkout should be as seamless as possible. Nothing should irritate the customers. Instead, the eCommerce store should provide as enjoyable a checkout experience as possible. Several payment options, the opportunity to save a card number to use for the next order, and personal data protection are the must-have eCommerce website features for the final stage of online shopping.
By the way, almost half of the customers abandon a shopping cart because of the additional fees appearing at the checkout stage so it is better not to lower your conversion rate in this way.
Bonus! Additional eCommerce Functionality for Shopping Experience Boost
We have already listed five must-have eCommerce features that are pretty enough for creating a powerful and validatable Minimum Viable Product (MVP). Now, let’s dwell on more advanced eCommerce functionality to deliver the highest-end shopping experience to your users.
- Recommendation engine
Embedding an AI-driven recommendation engine promises up to a 30% conversion boost. It is a perfect upselling tool that works automatically and accurately matches the recommended products with customer expectations, being guided by their shopping behavior and personalizing the experience during each of the shopping sessions.
Here is a simple example of what a recommendation section may look like. What’s more, integrating your eCommerce store with an AI algorithm is easy with the help of a dedicated API – just ask our developers about it.
- Video descriptions
Product descriptions are important for making a purchasing decision. However, writing a converting product description along with making it SEO-optimized can be a great challenge. That’s why engaging the users with the content they are used to is a winning idea for your eCommerce store, so consider adding a product video to your description.
A professionally shooted product video helps the users develop a better impression of the product specifics, see it in action and make sure it matches their expectations. So, create such a product page design to have some room for product videos or add them to the photo section.
- Seamless mobile optimization
Delivering a seamless mobile experience is one of the best practices for an eCommerce conversion boost. That’s why it is better to keep the mobile experience in mind from the very beginning of your eCommerce store development, creating intuitive design prototypes and ensuring perfect usability across the browsers and devices.
In our recent article, we have already dwelled on the way to make your website frontend more flexible, improve page loading speed and improve the conversion rate by migrating to Progressive Web App technologies. The latter can be a good choice for eCommerce businesses, especially if your website is created on the top of Magento. Moving to PWA allows for making your frontend independent while leaving the backend Magento-powered.
Meet our Magento developers now to find out more benefits of Magento PWA development!
- Customer behavior analysis tool integration
Understanding your customers’ behavior patterns is the top way to find the UI/UX gaps and pitfalls to suggest more winning design and development strategies. What’s more, your customer data is a treasure for your marketers so the main thing to do is to gather and analyze it, gaining valuable insights for your business growth.
For example, with the help of Hotjar AI, you can track how your customers interact with your website in real-time, making sure they are either following a user journey you have created or there are some stumbling blocks along their path.
- Chatbots and virtual assistants
Chatbots and virtual assistants are other innovative tools your eCommerce store can have. Chatbots are perfect for decreasing your support team workload, helping the customers navigate the website, find out their order’s status, and much more, depending on the chatbot’s smartness level.
Virtual assistants, in turn, are experience-boosting innovations since they allow the users to hunt for the products using voice commands, and their market share is expected to grow.
Conclusion
eCommerce development is as fascinating as challenging. On the one side, you have to follow the best programming practices to make a website technically powerful but lightweight and secure. On the other side, there is a need to reasonably match the eCommerce design trends with usability, intuitiveness, and step-by-step user journey. Lastly, you have to leave room for marketing and salesy elements, and all of these features have to be embedded into a single solution.
