35 Important Ecommerce Best Practices

Amidst the global pandemic, eCommerce businesses achieved massive sales and profits that were unimaginable just a year back.

While the pandemic remains with less fear in the universe and people are slowly going back to normal, this eCommerce industry is expecting the same growth or double in the near future.

There are a ecommerce best practices that can help businesses achieve success. First, it’s important to have a great website that is easy to use and provides a good customer experience. You should also make sure your product pages are well-optimized for search engines so that you can reach more customers online.

E-commerce businesses have seen a surge in sales over the past few years. In fact, e-retail revenue is expected to grow from $1.66 trillion in 2016 to $4.48 trillion by 2021, according to eMarketer Inc. However, as e-commerce becomes more popular among consumers of all ages, e-commerce businesses struggle to meet the increasing demand for e-commerce websites and e-commerce applications.

If you are not equipped to compete with giants in the industry, Intellect Outsource is here to give a proper insight into your eCommerce store and help grow your business to the sky of success.

Additionally, you’ll need to invest in effective marketing campaigns to drive traffic to your site. And finally, you’ll need to continually optimize your e-commerce strategy based on what’s working and what’s not. By following these tips, you can create a successful e-commerce business.

Here are 35 Ecommerce Best Practices & tips to boost your ecommerce website organic traffic & sales.

1. Don't use too much content on eCommerce category pages
2. Think like a customer
3. Simplify the shopping experience
4. Use the best website design for your store
5. Learn from your competitors
6. Product image is everything
7. Make your online store mobile-friendly
8. Add live chat
9. Promote customer reviews and build trust
10. Think how you can satisfy your customers with your store
11. Don't add unnecessary extensions and features
12. Give more importance to product catalog management
13. Make your store SEO friendly
14. Use all angles of photos in an eCommerce store
15. Increase the SEO score of your store always
16. Standardise all images
17. Improve the user experience
18. Implement smooth navigation
19. Ample product information
20. Easy check out process
21. Optimize titles and meta descriptions
22. Use high-quality videos
23. Implement layered navigation
24. List product in the apt category
25. Choose the right courier partner
26. Optimize all product listings
27. Use gif image in product description and gallery
28. Use a good hosting server
29. Implement best marketing ideas
30. Start your business YouTube channel soon
31. Use an experienced outsourcing team to reduce cost
32. Attention to cross-selling and upselling
33. Include WhatsApp to make easy communication
34. Optimize internal linking without errors
35. Offer free shipping
36. Implement instant cashback for a certain period

Come, let us turn your attention to best practices that help to make your e-business successful.

Tip 1: Don't use too much content on eCommerce category pages

Your customer visits your eCommerce website category page to know the details of their desired product.

Writing a story of that product traveling five generations following will irritate them! i. e., Too much content on your category pages might block your user's (or search engine's) smooth navigation. Also, if you put that much content, your qualified customers will have to take a long time to cover that "long story." it only leads to losing your potential customers and sales.

Make valuable content for your users, not for the sake of search engines! Content helps to rank higher on search engine rankings. But too much content—really irks!

Tip 2: Think like a customer:

The famous quote of Richard Branson is like this: "You can never go too far wrong by thinking like a customer who's new to the business."

Whether you operate an online or offline business, it is about thinking like a customer rather than a seller, especially in the age of tech-savvy shoppers. Your customers are wiser & practical than you in e-business. So if they don't get what they need from you, they opt for your competitor.

Analyzing your target audience and knowing their preferences and demands is the best practice in an ecommerce business. Then, focus on selling products or services that can cater to that

targeted community. Every customer who reaches your online store has an unfulfilled need. Seize the opportunity.

Lets Check How to Build Customer Trust on a New Ecommerce Store

Tip 3: Simplify the shopping experience

It is always a concern for new eSellers in the market: "How to Simplify the Shopping Experience to Customers?"

To provide the most satisfying shopping experience to the customers, you need to identify the current obstacles in the shopper's path of navigation. Then clear the obstacles. :

When you make your online store comfortable to navigate, you can win over more customers. Besides, offer an excellent mobile shopping experience to make online shopping convenient for shoppers with mobile devices too.

Tip 4: Use the best website design for your store

Your whole website design is crucial when it comes to eCommerce business success. But the most crucial is the design of the landing page. The landing page lands a user on your website when the user clicks from the ad, email, or search engine result link related to your website.

People judge a book by its cover. Isn't it?

So, make your website designs, especially landing pages, impressive to convert more leads. It plays a key role in successful online sales.

People only take 0.05 seconds to form an opinion about your website. So, convince your users with a compelling and professional web design.

Tip 5: Learn from your competitors

Do you know how to outperform your competitors?

Well, studying them constantly from their strength to weaknesses. Monitor the ways your competitors do business.

Studying your competitor's means, finding & learning who are they? What do they offer? What prices do they sell products and services? How do they present their business? Etc.

If you can't learn from your rivals, how do you improve?

But, simply copying the rival strategies may not work. Instead, focus on your business, blend your rivals' ideas with your creative ideas and innovate something new to stay ahead of the pack. Then, implement those innovative strategies and outperform your competitors by selling your products and services competitively.

Tip 6: Product image is everything

Well, high-quality images power your business. The product images have a psychological connection with people's minds. When your customers see high-quality, clear-cut product images shot from all corners, they "tap" or "click" it again to know more details about the product features.

The future of customer searches will be of images rather than keywords.

In fact, good product images boost up your conversion rate. Moreover, it creates a high-quality shopping experience for customers who visit your website. Use best product image processing services to make quality output.

Tip 7: Make your online store mobile-friendly

eCommerce stores are the best examples of portraying how mobile usability transforms into direct profits.

Keep the "touch" factor in the top priority list when you create your business website because mobile devices are taking the lead over desktops now. In addition, a mobile-friendly shopping experience for your customers can help you improve your brand reputation and sales.

Get along with the trend of a mobile-optimized website.

Build ecommerce website for online business as per latest UI/UX standards. Provide a fast-loading website & lure even more customers to your website.

Tip 8: Add live chat

Attaching a live chat to your eCommerce website is best practice and will be a clever move for boosting sales because you have customers 24/7 and 365 days. There are no time restrictions for buying and selling now.

Those live chats are immediate helplines in which your customers can ask their queries the right way and get responses instantly so that they can shop smoothly without confusion anytime.

This piece of tech is a beneficial mechanism to converse with your customers anytime. Use it and reduce your shopping cart abandonment rate. And skyrocket sales.

Tip 9: Promote customer reviews and build trust

Implementing customer reviews is a best practice for ecommerce sites

If you need to show filter color swatch, you need to tick the check box given there.

Positive customer reviews will influence your customers to trust your business more. Customer trust is hard to gain & easy to lose.

There is no shortcut to acquiring customers' trust. Provide the best customer experience. Be honest and transparent on all the services you offer. Identify the right moment and ask your customer for their review or feedback. They will definitely provide their genuine review when you serve them loyal.

People always trust the experiences of others over the claims of a company. Accept positive and negative reviews and go ahead according to them. If you get positive reviews, it will boost sales better. Otherwise, it is your time to improve your service.

Tip 10: Think how you can satisfy your customers with your store

Because your e-business has a range of global audiences with different tastes and preferences. Your online store should aim to meet their distinct needs. Align with your customer's expectations.

Your business gets long-term customers only when you provide high customer satisfaction. So, explore deeply about satisfying the needs of your qualified customers. Make innovative ideas to delight and retain customers with your store. Stand with good understanding with your customers and always focus on the quote "Customer loyalty is ultimate."

Tip 11: Don't add unnecessary extensions and features

While some features and extensions are necessary to impress customers and improve conversion rates, many are unnecessary.

Pay attention to those unnecessary components in your e-business website. Try to realize the correct requirement of those extensions and features before adding them. Avoid all complexities and blocks in your customer's smooth navigation path.

Tip 12: Give more importance to product catalog management

The success of any business depends on obvious, precise, and concise information being presented to the customers. Hence, product catalog management services becomes the primary success factor of your eCommerce business.

The product catalog engages your customer. Shoppers feel delighted when they see a well-structured product catalog so that they can shop smoothly.

Deliver consistent customer experience and ensure customer satisfaction with accurate and real-time product catalogs.

Tip 13: Make your store SEO friendly

With so many people clicking organic search results, it is essential to use SEO to get higher rankings on search results. So, invest more in building an SEO-friendly store and drive traffic to your store.

An SEO-friendly CMS could also help to boost up rankings and conversions. Optimize the meta descriptions to improve website clicks in search results.

Create web content to target valuable keywords. Let it drive interested leads. Use the right internal linking, optimize the header tags and images. Let search engines find and index your web pages easily.

Tip 14: Use all angles of photos in an eCommerce store

A zoomable quality product image clicked from different angles will communicate the complete specifics of the product you are selling. Customers who cannot see the specifics of a product will not likely buy it. Hence, angles matter in product photography.

A 360-degree close-up view image can convince your customers than a lengthy product description. When your customers can get a closer look at product closures, textures, and other features, they trust your brand and purchase.

Dust off that camera and click standard quality images and exhibit them to your customers. It will lead to customer conversions that you can't even imagine.

Tip 15: Increase the SEO score of your store always.

Every day, customers lean-to search engines to find their desired products. There are about 3.5 billion searches that happen on Google every single day.

With that many people searching for their desired things, you lose the game if you are not ranking high on the search results. Therefore, the SEO score really matters in an eCommerce business.

For that, identify the target keyword first. Then, pay attention to optimizing your website's content with about three keywords. Implement on-page SEO and perfect it maximum to enhance your search ranking.

Publish killer content favoring customer demands while leveraging relevant and targeted keywords.

Tip 16: Standardise all images

When customers visit your eCommerce store, they must acquire the "touch and feel" experience of shopping in the store. Standardized product images will catch customer sights easily.

Include up to 10 images with packshot, detail shot, lifestyle photos, etc. But standardize all images to appear convincing to users.

Display one image that portrays the scale of the item to avoid the misconceptions of the miniature size of the product. Use the same background color for all images. Maintain equal background spacing around the product image.

All product images have to be about 15-20% bigger. Review images and crop them to make them uniform.

Related Blog : Best practices for Optimizing Product Images

Tip 17: Improve the user experience

Great eCommerce UX = Increased sales + Happy customers

Nowadays, most of global consumers are e-shoppers. When many people search for their needs on the internet, they consider delightful and seamless user experience a huge factor in shopping satisfaction.

Create mobile-friendly and responsive eCommerce UX, improve your website loading speed, allow your customers to purchase without logging in through accounts, offer clean & optimized navigation, avoid unnecessary content-- keep it clean and short and offer one page check out option—all these help to improve user experience.

Tip 18: Implement smooth navigation

Do you know the attention-grabbing time of a human being?

It is just 8 seconds.

i.e., you have only 8 seconds to impress the customer to your store.

Website navigation must be implemented by keeping the customer in mind. Grab customers to your store and ensure they don't have any confusion or troubles while they try to buy from you. Some essential tips are:

• Keep a customer-friendly home page
• Apply simple UX design
• Use clear labels
• Include a search bar
• Focus on the amount of content your web page has and, if unnecessary, avoid it
• Reduce the number of dropdown menus
• Place categories in the navigation menu with much care according to their importance
• Reserve space for CALL-TO-ACTION buttons and make them bolder and brighter
• Create websites for mobile devices and consider a portrait view of the website.
• Pay attention to footer navigation as it displays how a customer can reach you.
• Remember, simplicity is the fundamental factor in a website's navigation.

Tip 19: Ample product information

In eCommerce, accurate product information is crucial. It is on that product information your customers rely on for making a purchase decision.

Help them with enabling product comparison, displaying product reviews, etc., to gain their trust and to build confidence in them to buy from you. Include ample and precise product details that inform & persuade your target customers.

Related Services : bulk product data entry services

Tip 20: Easy check out process

When customers visit your store and enter the checkout section to complete their purchase and find your checkout process is not optimized, they abandon it.

One out of every five online shoppers abandons a cart due to the complicated and lengthy checkout procedure. Implementing an easy checkout process is one step towards improving your overall conversion rate. A great way to streamline purchases is a fast and simple checkout process.

• Offer a guest checkout option
• Use clear CTA buttons
• Display a progress bar to showcase the progress of the checkout process
• Offer all the trusted payment methods
• Implement mobile check out process
• Show preview order details
• Make a simple account recovery option.

Tip 21: Optimize titles and meta descriptions

As an eCommerce shop owner, Have you gone through the thought of getting the most impact of SEO with the least amount of time?

Sure, you might have thought of that. However, it can be implemented simply.

Optimize meta titles and meta descriptions. And drive organic traffic!

The meta title is the page title you see as a clickable blue headline shown in SERPs. Optimize those meta titles. Limit the page title to 50-55 characters. Include the target keywords in the title, which can end with the brand name. Add the important keyword at the beginning itself.

Meta descriptions are those short descriptions that appear under the clickable meta title in SERPs. Write meta descriptions that are relevant and match the target queries to improve the rankings in search engine results.

Restrict the range of the meta description to 155 characters. Try to make room to display your CTA within the 155 characters itself.

Tip 22: Use high-quality videos

Product videos highlight the product features and present them in action. Those videos have the potential to attract new customers to your product and give the customers enough confidence in your brand.

Do you know videos drive more traffic to your store?

Yes, people love to watch videos because videos have a high level of engagement. So, use high-quality product videos in your store.

Self-explanatory product videos could eliminate the majority of user confusion. When you attach such videos, and people get the correct answers to their queries, they look no further: In fact, they purchase from you. That is the power of product videos.

So, jump behind the camera and start making product videos.

Related Blog : Importance of product videos in ecommerce website

Tip 23: Implement layered navigation

You can't sell a product that your customer can't find. Hence, the search process plays a vital role in the customer's buying decision. When your customer cannot find what they search for, it frustrates them, and you lose that potential customer for a lifetime.

Say goodbye to inelegant and cumbersome filters and navigation. Instead, it is time to implement layered navigation in your store. It will optimize the search and filter process and make it help for increased conversions.

Tip 24: List product in the apt category

Categories group and organize the products so that visitors can easily find what they are looking for. Product taxonomy matters here to devise a logical means to present your products.

It is important how effectively a store showcases a wide variety of products. It can elevate the possibility of sales.

Try to list products in matching categories so that your visitors don't have trouble finding their desired product. When it is done correctly, your customers can pick and buy their aspired product from a specific group of products.

Tip 25: Choose the right courier partner

Customers have no patience when it comes to online purchases. Your courier partner should deliver the orders quickly. You should provide proper technological infrastructure to customers to track their orders.

Right, and instant courier services can satisfy the customer needs to a great extent and influence customers for repeat purchases.

Tip 26: Optimize all product listings

For a product to appear to targeted customers, it is necessary to include the most searched keywords to all product listings of ecommerce website.

Determine the root keyword related to the product that has a confirmed search volume. Include it with product listings to bring it in the top search results when customer search for it. Use Google Analytics, SEMrush, Google trends, etc., to determine the relevant keywords.

Tip 27: Use gif image in product description and gallery

Although an engaging product description explains product features precisely, it is something that most customers skim. Customers want complete product features conveying mechanism along with the descriptions on the web and high-quality images in the gallery.

Product-Gif is something that show-off products with full effect. It displays angle-to-angle product specifics that can profoundly explain product specifics and improve customer experience, which will lead to instant product purchases.

Tip 28: Use a good hosting server

A perfect eCommerce web hosting server should be reliable, manageable, scalable, and affordable to your store. Operating with such a server covering all essential features for your store, you achieve efficient store performance amidst your competitors and instantly capture customers.

Constantly review and analyze the hosting server's uptime, compliance, security, domain transfer services, flexibility, maintenance, and customer support features. Make sure it maintains quick-loading web pages.

Tip 29: Implement best marketing ideas

Every eCommerce store you see successful has used and continues to use solid marketing strategies to promote its e-business.

When people dive into the sea of the internet for almost everything, one effective way to market your store is to make it mobile-friendly.

In addition, build Instagram & Facebook stores to capture a bunch of mobile shoppers. By boosting your online store's social presence through digital engagements, you can make substantial differences within the business in a while.

Tip 30: Start your business YouTube channel soon

No idea how to promote your business?

Start your business YouTube channel soon!

Making video content on a YouTube channel is very important for your ecommerce business. Having a YouTube channel for your business is a smart move to grow your business.

Know your audience and attach relevant content to the channel to claim your potential audience. Start investing in YouTube ads. Promote your channel and maximize the audience engagements to direct them towards your online store.

Intellect Outsource YouTube Viedo Channel

Tip 31: Use an experienced outsourcing team to reduce cost

Many businesses realized outsourcing is an excellent way of reducing costs. When you outsource your business with an experienced outsourcing team, it will reduce business operations cost to a great extent.

In addition, you could save more time and get a skilled

workforce to manage your business. Excellent, isn't it?

Tip 32: Attention to cross-selling and upselling

Perhaps the intelligent and easiest way of increasing sales in an online store is the smart use of up-selling and cross-selling features.

Put a bit of attention to cross-selling and up-selling features on your store. This feature can excite your customers to buy products that better meet their requirements, and it also adds value to the product they are buying. Alongside, you get increased sales and revenue!

Related Blog : Difference between cross-selling & upselling

Tip 33: Include WhatsApp to make easy communication

Modern businesses understood the potential of WhatsApp to scale up sales and business. When your competitors are making sales & profit with it, why don't you give it a try?

Go with the trend of conversational commerce. Enables business messaging with WhatsApp through rich and contextual messages that influence customers to purchase within seconds.

Tip 34: Optimize internal linking without errors

Unless you optimize internal linking without errors, your website won't perform well. Besides, your web pages won't get top rankings on search engines for their content. So, pay attention to internal linking to deliver the most value for your website.

Drive more web traffic with proper inbound links and content. In addition, strategic internal linking can be used as a powerful technique for your content marketing.

Tip 35: Offer free shipping

Online shoppers spend their hard-earned dollars wisely. In fact, they love to save money. So, whatever offers you provide to your customers will overwhelm them.

Implement numerous free shipping strategies, impress tech-savvy shoppers, increase average order value and strengthen the customer relationship. Test it for a shorter period than straight implementing it.

Tips 36 - Implement instant cashback for a certain period

Cashbacks play with the psychology of customers' minds and help eSeller to attain more business. When you offer an instant cashback offer to your qualified customers once, there is likely more chance that those customers return to you for the next purchases.

When your customers get an amazing means to save their money, at the same time, you too get bulky website traffic and increased sales.

If it positively impacts you, why don't you give it a try under frequent intervals?

Final Takeaway

So, you have reached the end of our informative blog. Ecommerce best practices indeed a long descriptive content for you. Still, our blog must have enlightened you to do something more than you had thought for your eCommerce business before. If you have got that insight, that is our success.

Intellect Outsource could definitely help you to implement many of the tips mentioned above for your business. We have a smart and proficient pool of talents in web design and development and catalog data management.

Throughout this ecommerce best practices blog, you may have found dozens of ideas to implement in your store. Leverage the skills of our team to execute those ideas. Hook up with us for a successful transformation of your store.