By 2040, as much as 95% of shopping will be facilitated by eCommerce. This means good news to eCommerce owners like yourself, who will be in high demand. But it’s also bad news for you because it means the competition in eCommerce is going to be even more fierce than ever.
So it should be your goal to ensure that your eCommerce store is in tip-top shape to meet all your customers’ needs.
With thousands of apps and tips from marketers, it can be hard to know what’s essential and what’s not, instead take a look at these must-have eCommerce features to help you increase sales.
With the right marketing strategy and eCommerce features/tools, you can effortlessly grow your online store.
We’ll be taking a look at features as simple as the copy you use on your website to the tools you should consider on the backend of handling inventory and more! Plus, we have a FREE eCommerce Checklist you can use to ensure that your online store is ready to attract and generate sales.
1. Proper Branding on All Your Online Platforms
Your eCommerce store branding does affect your store’s sales. A consistent brand look and message gives your brand credibility and presents it as trustworthy and legitimate.
Overlooking your branding could be turning new customers away from your site. Ensure that you have proper branding across all your online platforms like social media and eCommerce stores. Customers can find your eCommerce store by any means, so make a positive first impression wherever that may be.
eCommerce Feature Example: SuperGoop
SuperGoop is a beauty product that prides itself on selling amazing sunscreen products. They’ve ensured that their online branding and value proposition is consistent no matter where customers find their products.
Super Goop Website:
Super Goop Instagram:
3 Simple Tips for eCommerce Store Branding
Here are some eCommerce store branding tips that should help to point your branding in the right direction:
Showcase Your Value Proposition: A value proposition is your promise to a consumer that you’re going to deliver something they want. You’ll use this to showcase your brand in your online copy, CTA’s, and tagline that represents that value as well as your brand identity.
Use Colors and Fonts to Make Your Brand Identifiable: Have a solid use of colors and font for your brand so customers can easily identify you amongst your competition. Create a brand mood board to help guide you when creating content, graphics, or using a specific color scheme on your eCommerce store.
Create a Stunning eCommerce Store: The way your eCommerce store looks impacts if customers are going to buy from you. Design Resource found that around 94% of all first impressions on a website are design-related. Consumers that have about 15 minutes or less to spend online would rather hang out on beautifully designed websites, instead of plain and simple ones.
2. Create Stunning Lead Generating Pop-Ups
Whether your website visitor is looking around or making purchases capturing them as potential leads is a must. Start by adding an entry and exit pop-ups to your eCommerce store.
At Wishpond, we helped increase conversions by up to 33% with the help of a welcome pop-up that’s triggered when a new website visitor lands on your website, it fills the entire page with a specific CTA.
Exit pop-ups instantly grab your new visitor’s interest, whether they decide to accidentally or intentionally leave your website. This allows you to keep them on your eCommerce site with an irresistible offer or freebie.
eCommerce Feature Example: Revolve
3 Tips Create a Lead Generating Pop-Up
Add an eye-catching image: It’s not a must, but pop-ups with images do tend to do better than those without. After all, humans are visual creatures, so add a stunning image of your product or freebie to draw their attention to your offer.
Use Action-oriented CTA: Don’t make the rookie mistake of putting “Click here!”, instead use action-oriented CTAs. For example, “Grab My Code,” “Get My Free Guide,” what this does on a psychological level is tempting your website visitor with ownership of their deal. This feels more personalized and inviting, thus encouraging more clicks and sign-ups.
Use Color Psychology: The way we use colors on our pop-up can draw more attention to some areas, as it would with others. Making sure that your CTA is contrasted, so it’s more prominent and easy to click helps. Using bold colors to show attention to details also helps. For more on color psychology check out Coschedule’s Know It All Guide To Color Psychology In Marketing + The Best Hex Chart.
With Wishpond’s pop-up builder, we have a wide variety of pop-ups that already follow these rules and more! Create beautiful and practical opt-in bars, welcome mats, and slide in pop up in seconds (literally seconds, we timed it!)
Wishpond Pop-Up Example
Wishpond’s simple drag-and-drop editor makes it easy for any marketer to create amazing pop-ups, without the need for design or programming knowledge. Plus, use Wishpond’s Shopify integration to add pop-ups to your eCommerce store. To get started click here
3. Integrate Upselling eCommerce Apps to Push Sales
Integrating eCommerce or Shopify Apps that will help you to upsell your products is another must-have eCommerce feature you shouldn’t ignore.
Upselling apps act like instore sales reps that allow customers to leave with much more than they expected. This also allows seamless integration with what’s being sold on the storefront to organizing order forms being shipped out to retail sales. Retaining sales opens up space for you to attract more sales.
eCommerce Feature Example: MissGuided
This page has so many upselling features, let’s break it down:
- A website banner to push purchases to gain access to discounts and savings.
- Upselling standard shipping for customers not to be deterred by shipping costs in check out.
- Showcase products that other shoppers have viewed and are also considering to purchase.
- Upselling products that can be paired with the current product being displayed.
5 Best Upselling Shopify Apps
Finding the right upselling app is just as important as the action itself. We search through 150+ Shopify apps and found some of the best upselling apps:
1. Personalized Recommendations
2. Boost Sales
3. PushOwl
4. Cross-Sell
5. SiteKit
4. Create an Optimized Landing Page
Next to a beautifully designed eCommerce store is having an optimized landing page, whether it’s for educating or selling to customers on your behalf.
What is an optimized landing page?
Landing page optimization (LPO is the process of improving elements on a website to increase conversions. Landing page optimization is a subset of conversion rate optimization (CRO) and involves using methods such as A/B testing to improve the conversion goals of a given landing page.
3 Easy Tips to Optimize Your Landing Page
When it comes to optimization, it’s based on user experience, meaning how easy it is for visitors to move around your page or from one landing page to the other.
Avoid the Clutter and Keep it Clean:
Less is always more; try to keep your website free from unnecessary information. Keep your landing page clear and concise.
Add All the Relevant Information
Information is a part of navigation. Providing your customers with all the information they need is a skill worth mastering. This helps them to know where and what they can expect from your eCommerce store.
Improve Your Website Speed: The average load speed for top ranking sites is 1.9 seconds. Slow websites have lower conversions. Online shoppers want fast-paced websites to check your website speed and make improvements where necessary.
Try the Most Powerful Landing Page Builder on Planet Earth
Our mission is to give marketers and business owners the easiest experience creating the highest quality landing pages on the market. With amazing features like:
- A true drag-and-drop campaign builder
- One-click mobile optimization
- Quickly group objects for fast changes
- Detailed analytics every step of the way
- 100+ fonts to match your brand
- Easy Publishing Options
If you’ve ever dabbled in creating your own pages in the past, this is one editor you won’t want to miss.
So what are you waiting for, experience design like never before with Canvas? Click here to get started!
Ready to start using these eCommerce Features?
Download Your FREE eCommerce Checklist
To get started today!
5. Connect Your eCommerce Store to Social Media Platforms
Social commerce is defined as the use of online social networks to help buy and sell goods and services.
You can now connect your Shopify store to your Instagram or Facebook page to expand your customer reach. Plus don’t forget to Supercharge Your Shopify eCommerce Store with Wishpond.
eCommerce Feature Example: Master Dynamic
Download Your FREE eCommerce Checklist
6. Create a Comprehensive FAQ Page
A FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) is another essential eCommerce feature every eCommerce store should have present on their website.
FAQ pages allow you to put a substantial amount of detailed information to all the frequently asked questions or current or new customers. Its purpose is to provide readily accessed information day or night without a customer rep. present.
This can also be a resource for training your eCommerce store’s customer representative as well.
eCommerce Feature Example: Sephora
Need help creating an FAQ page for your eCommerce store? Check out Shopify’s Guide on FAQ Pages: Why You Need It, How to Build One, and 10 Great Examples.
7. Add Social Proof & Links on Your Ecommerce Store
Adding social media proof and links to your eCommerce store can help increase sales for your store. Online stores with social media presence have 32% more sales on average than stores that don’t. Which shouldn’t come as a surprise?
eCommerce Feature Example: Amazon
Social proof allows you to show off your (customers) content in the social space adding honesty to your brand. People use what your brand shares on social media to examine your credibility. Some common tactics for establishing social proof are:
- Positive reviews
- Customer testimonials
- Influencer or celebrity endorsements
- Growing your social media following
- Number of users or customers
- Awards and recognition
8. Create an Optimized Checkout Page
One of the most underrated landing pages lacking optimization is your checkout page. Your checkout page is the last phase of your buyer’s journey on your eCommerce page. Around 41% of shoppers have abandoned a transaction during checkout in the past year.
When it comes to shopping cart abandonment (when customers add items to their cart but never checkout), the checkout page has the highest rate of abandonment. This could be for several reasons, a few of which are :
- High Shipping Cost
- Lack of Trusted Payment Options
- Cluttered Checkout Page
- No Discounts
- Lack of Terms & Condition
eCommerce Feature Example: Crate & Barrel
5 Must-Have eCommerce Checkout Page Features
Here are some checkout features for every successful checkout page to encourage a completed purchase:
Add Shopping Cart Details: Customers expect brands to showcase their product details, units, color, and size. This works in both your favor (the brand and the customer). This helps customers see their final order, so they know what to expect when delivered. If you have a discrepancy, your customer service reps can refer to the order details.
Add Product Suggestions: Always upsell your products from start to finish. You never know what might tempt customers to add more to their cart. These could be smaller items that customers can consider adding without worrying about the cost or a subscription-based on product supply and demand.
Shipping Terms & Conditions: Give customers a quick overview of when and how they’ll receive their package before or after it’s shipped. This helps to put them at ease. Place estimated delivery management or shipping dates and be specific if they’re a business day or exclude major holidays.
Payment Options: Having multiple payment options gives customers the freedom to pick and choose what works best for them. Brands are now allowed customers to select credit cards, PayPal, Apple Pay, Amazon Pay, Payment options, and more.
A/B Test Your Checkout Page: If you realize that eCommerce store visitors aren’t completing checkout, then it’s time to consider A/B Testing your checkout to see what’s working and what’s not. This gives you personalized data on what apps, features, and layouts work best for your eCommerce brand.
For more check out The Complete Walkthrough to the Essential eCommerce Marketing Tactic
9. Offer Reliable Online Customer Service
Around 80% of online shoppers stop doing business with a company because of poor customer experience. Whether you intend to or not, how you help customers online leaves a lasting impression on a (potential) customer.
It’s important to give your customers more than one option to contact you, as it allows you to look approachable before or after an order is placed. Provide customer service via:
- Contact Number/Skype
- Social Media
- Live Online Chat
eCommerce Feature Example: The Modern Shop
Always Provide eCommerce Customer Service on Social Media
Around 80% of consumers use social to engage with brands. It’s now become the norm for customers to reach out to brands via social media, which is why 51% of consumers trust companies that make it easy for visitors to contact the people behind the company.
Not to mention that solving an issue on social media is 83% cheaper than resolving it through a call center interaction. (Go Globe)
Check out Commbox’s Guide on The Role of Social Media in Customer Service, a Social Media Guide
10. Manage Customer Data in a Reliable CRM
CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management Software. A CRM gathers customer interactions across all channels in one place. Managing centralized data helps businesses improve customer experience, satisfaction, retention, and service. This eCommerce feature allows you to accessibly find, manage, and make the most out of your customer data.
The right CRM platform, like Wishpond, will include integration with your email marketing, eCommerce store orders, tickets, and lead generation campaigns.
Wishpond’s leads database allows you to create segments of leads and track their activity across your website.
11. Create an Automated Email Campaigns
Email campaigns are essential tools for retaining customers and skyrocketing sales for your eCommerce store.
In 2018, Smart Insights found that email marketing rivals organic and paid search amongst the top channels driving sales online.
The best place to start with your emails is by capturing emails! Website pop-ups help to capture emails from visitors who are at various places on your website. Pop-ups can increase your conversion rate by up to 10.23% or more once implemented on your website.
eCommerce Feature Example: Harry’s
Three Must-Have eCommerce Email Campaigns
Creating effective email campaigns is a must for any eCommerce store owner. Here are three must-have ecommerce email campaigns you should have:
Welcome Email Campaign: You’re welcome email is the first impression you make on potential customers. The average open rate for a welcome email is 50%. That makes it 86% more effective than standard newsletters. So don’t skip your welcome email campaign. This is also an excellent opportunity to show off your best sellers, brand story, show off your social proof/UGC, and more.
Order Email Campaign: Have an automated order email campaign to inform customers once they’ve made their order when it’s shipped and delivered. Order emails help to give customers confidence in your brand and inform them from start to finish.
Shopping Cart Abandonment Campaign: Nearly 40% of surveyed consumers responded that they abandoned their shopping cart because they had been just browsing in the first place. When you send shopping cart abandonment email campaigns, you give visitors a reason to go back to your store and complete a purchase.
Here are 6 Ecommerce Email Marketing Examples & Strategies That Improve Sales you can try today!
12. Consult Amazing Marketing Experts at Wishpond
At Wishpond, we have a wide variety of resources for entrepreneurs, agencies, marketers, and do-it-yourself marketers. Below is a list of our best marketing resources (apart from our blog) you can access right now!
Wishpond’s YouTube
Wishpond’s Marketing Team
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Don’t forget to download and start using your FREE eCommerce Checklist.
Summary
Investing in the right tools are just as important as having them. How we approach a problem with these tools to determine the best results rather than expecting these tools and features to do the fixing for us!
We see a lot of success stories when it comes to eCommerce stores around the world, what they don’t tell you is that these listed must-haves are tested over time until they’ve found their secret sauce to fast-track them to success. And so can you!
Here’s a quick recap of the 12 must-have eCommerce features you need to increases sales…and more!
- Proper Branding on All Your Online Platforms
- Create Stunning Lead Generating Pop-Ups
- Integrate Upselling eCommerce Apps to Push Sales
- Create an Optimized Landing Page
- Showcase Featured or Product Suggestions on Your Online Platform
- Create a Comprehensive FAQ Page
- Add Social Proof & Links on Your Ecommerce Store
- Create an Optimized Checkout Page
- Offer Reliable Online Customer Service
- Manage Customer Data in a Reliable CRM
- Create an Automated Email Marketing Campaigns
- Consult Amazing Marketing Experts at Wishpond!
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*Website Marketing for Small Businesses: The Ultimate Guide - 10 Amazing eCommerce Instagram Accounts and Examples We Learned From
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