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Seeing the boom in the eCommerce business industry, every business wants to have an online presence, and this is why they bank upon WooCommerce development. WooCommerce is a leading resource for eCommerce development and businesses bank upon it with closed eyes.
However, having the help of WooCommerce and having a solid eCommerce development process is not enough to construct an online store that outshines others and tops the search results.
This is why WooCommerce development should be powered by best practices.
While development practices can vary according to personal preferences and choices, certain eCommerce development traditions are applicable everywhere to experience laudable results. We’re going to decode the majority of them for you in this post. More insights are just a scroll away.
5 Crucial Elements of an eCommerce Website
As you embark on the eCommerce development journey, don’t make a mistake to move forward without knowing the crucial elements that should be a part of any impactful eCommerce website. Their breakdown is mentioned next.
- Site User Interface (UI)
The moment your prospects land on your eCommerce store, their first encounter is with the interface of the store. If it’s cluttered and clumsy, they’re not going to stick for long with your store as they won’t be able to understand which product is positioned where, how they can find a relevant product, and make the most of your online store.
The immediate result of this messiness is a low engagement rate and poor conversion. Instead of buying products, your customers will start abandoning their carts. Your stores will become window-shopping apps with high cart abandonment rates for your customers.
This is why every eCommerce store should have a clean and visually appealing user interface where everything is as clear as crystal. Such a design makes an ever-lasting positive first impression on your customers.
Using the Cart Abandonment Plugin for WooCommerce is another wise decision you can make. Abandoned Cart Pro has customizable user-friendly pop-up templates, which you can edit to match your website design and proactively stop users from abandoning the cart.
When you’re planning to design an engaging interface, make sure it’s optimized for various devices, especially mobile phones. Mobile-friendliness is critical as a growing number of users shop on smartphones and tablets.
- Standardization as per Business’s Niche
Your online store should reflect your brand image and should be able to resonate with your business’s niche. Maintain a consistent visual style, color scheme, and branding. This consistency is important as it creates a recognizable and trustworthy brand identity amongst the crowd.
- Security
An eCommerce business can never grow and have an expanding user database if it’s not secure. Protecting customer data should be the priority of any eCommerce store owner, and this is possible using robust security measures. Our recommendation is to use SSL certificates so that data transmission is 100% secured.
In addition, the store must follow PCI DSS compliance for payment processing to avoid any risks. Whichever security protocols you’re using should be updated regularly to prevent breaches.
To have better protection against the leading cyber threats, eCommerce store owners should plan to implement firewalls, conduct security audits regularly, and implement an intrusion detection system to keep hacking and data theft incidents under control.
Protection from Cyber Threats: Implement firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and regular security audits to safeguard against cyber threats like hacking and data theft.
- Functionality
The next crucial aspect of WooCommerce development is paying attention to the functionality of the eCommerce store. When we talk about functionalities, we mean offering smooth navigation, adding effective search capabilities, having smooth inventory management, and many more.
The store should have well-designed product categories and smooth access to the cart and checkout page. In addition, try to offer robust search functionality with filters and sorting options to help users find products quickly.
A functionality that should be a part of any online store is real-time order tracking features so that customers can learn about their shipments and their progress.
- Unique Features
Every online store should have a differentiating factor so that it manages to stand out from the crowd. This could be anything from personalized product recommendations to a loyalty program or a one-of-a-kind product customization tool.
Providing customizable products to your customers?
Product input fields for WooCommerce plugin offer 19 different field types for your product page so that you can get clear product customization info from your customers.
Each field has its own unique feature, values, restrictions, and customization options to give you the flexibility in getting clear information from the users. You can choose where to place the custom fields on the page and how to style them, and you can also set additional charges for your custom input field values.
When you start planning the WooCommerce development process, you need to keep these elements in mind and try to achieve great heights in all of them. Trust us! There is no going back after this.
11 Best Practices to Achieve Your eCommerce Site Development Goals
Now, let’s move to knowing eCommerce development best practices that will help you shape a high-rated, engaging, and attention-capturing eCommerce store. Here is a quick breakdown of all of these practices.
1. Develop Super Neat UI
As mentioned above, UI is the aspect that decides the customer experience with the store in the first place.
If it’s not up to the mark or lacks usability, a store will have a tough time securing a place in its targeted customers’ hearts. Hence, the first aim for any eCommerce developer should be keeping the store’s UI as neat as possible.
‘Neat’ means that the layout is uncluttered and free from unnecessary elements that could confuse or overwhelm visitors. The store layout presents the information in an understandable and aesthetically pleasing manner.
Other than having a user-friendly interface that keeps the needs and preferences of the website visitors, another aspect of a neat UI is that it’s optimized for all the leading devices.
A well-organized UI contributes to a positive UX by reducing friction in the user journey. It can lead to higher user satisfaction, longer session durations, and increased conversions.
2. Branding
Maintaining brand integrity during WooCommerce store development is vital. Consistency across design, messaging, and user experience is key. Implement the brand’s color palette, typography, and logo throughout the site. Ensure product descriptions, images, and tone of communication align with the brand’s identity. Customizing themes and templates to reflect brand elements fosters recognition and trust. Seamlessly integrate social media, aligning content with the brand’s voice. Implement intuitive navigation that reflects the brand’s ethos. Regularly review the store’s performance, gathering feedback to refine the user experience. Upholding brand standards within the WooCommerce store not only ensures recognition but also cultivates a loyal customer base.
Maintaining consistent branding throughout WooCommerce development is very important for any developer.
You can achieve this by keeping the color scheme and typography according to your business logo. This establishes a strong and memorable brand identity. (need to be improved)
3. Continuous Testing
You can’t achieve perfection in setting up your eCommerce business if it’s not extensively tested. The more you test, the better understanding you gain of your store and its functionalities.
The easiest way to achieve extensive testing is to use a staging environment and use it to test used plugins and themes. You can use this staging ecosystem to check the compatibility and security concerns of prospective themes and plugins without affecting the live site. Tools like InstaWp help you test the site before going live, read their guide to know more about testing a WordPress plugin without affecting your live site.
InstaWP is a dependable tool for creating a WordPress sandbox. It allows you to create a staging site from scratch. You’re able to design as many staging sites as you need for testing themes and plugins for your online store.
As it comes with great security measures and editing tools, getting started with a staging site is easy.
4. Enable eCommerce Analytics
As an online store owner, you need to have tabs on your store’s performance. This is possible by using analytics tools to track user behavior, conversion rates, and other relevant metrics. Use this data to make informed decisions and optimize your site. Here are a few tools that might come in handy for you-
Google Analytics for WordPress by MonsterInsights: Integrates Google Analytics into your WooCommerce store, providing enhanced e-commerce tracking.
- WooCommerce Google Analytics Integration: Specifically designed for WooCommerce, this plugin seamlessly integrates with Google Analytics to track e-commerce data.
- Metorik: Offers detailed WooCommerce reports and insights, combining customer profiles, order details, and engagement metrics.
- WooCommerce Mixpanel: Integrates Mixpanel analytics into your WooCommerce store, allowing for detailed tracking and analysis of customer behavior.
Reduce Cart Abandonment
A high cart abandonment rate is no less than a headache for any online store owner because it leads to revenue loss. It’s shocking to know that 40% of people abandon a website that takes more than three seconds to load. And this is not the only reason for leaving a cart. (our post link)
There are many more out there. WooCommerce store owners need to know about the reasons behind cart abandonment and sort them out ASAP.
Plugins like Abandoned Cart Pro can help you address all major issues and improve sales.
6. Smooth and Short Checkout Process
An online store with a complex or confusing checkout process will have a tough time making history. Day-to-day survival will become a matter of concern for such a store. When 69.57% of customers are abandoning because of a mere reason like a slow load page, there is no scope for a poor checkout process.
Hence, checkout should be as smooth as possible, and to make it happen, store owners have to identify and remove any unnecessary steps or fields in the checkout process.
In addition, you must not impose account registration on users. Having a guest checkout option is a must for any online store. In addition, the navigation should be as smooth as possible.
7. High-Quality Content
Content like images, descriptions, blogs, guides, to-do guides, videos, and infographics are the key aspects of any online store. Without powerful content, an online store will be lackluster and engaging. So, you can’t overlook this aspect, and it has to be perfected. We recommend using high-resolution images and videos that are optimized for different devices.
8. Payment Gateway Integration
There is no point in setting up an online store if its payment gateway is not strong. In the absence of a seamless and secure payment processing system, it will be difficult for any online store to win the hearts of the customers.
The key factor to keep in mind while setting up payment gateway integration in the online store is diversity. Yes, you need to keep multiple payment methods so that your customers can find a preferable and suitable payment method without any hassles.
The security of these payment methods also matters. The use of SSL encryption is non-negotiable here.
9. Trust-Building
Any online store needs to have a strong trust factor to thrive in the competitive world. If your customers have trust in your store, they will never leave your side. And, when it comes to trust building, the display of professional badges, security certifications, and clear return and privacy policies matters the most.
According to a study by Moz, online reviews are one of the most important local SEO ranking factors, with review signals accounting for 13% of how Google ranks local search results.
If you’ve some genuine customer reviews and ratings, go ahead and highlight all of them.
If you don’t have these trust markers, go ahead and start collecting all of them from today onwards.
10. Live Chat
A live chat feature might be sitting in a small corner of your online store. However, this holds great power to leverage your online store. With the help of a live chat feature, any online store owner has the potential to address all of the customer queries and concerns promptly.
This feature can help customers to have tabs on order status, share their delivery concerns with the team, and even raise a return or swiftly ask for a refund. Offering such sort of assistance has a direct impact on improving customer satisfaction which plays a great role in reselling and cross-selling.
While you’re planning to set up a live chat feature for your store, make sure it’s integrated well into your store. Its positioning matters a lot. It should be evident and placed where it can easily be spotted.
If you’re setting up a chatbot, we recommend you not to bank on it completely. An AI-based chat support can be available around the clock, but it might lack dependency. Try to mix human intelligence and the promptness of AI in your chat support.
11. Marketing (Pre and Post-Launch)
Every store needs a solid marketing strategy so that it gets the adequate attention of the customers before and after the launch of the online store. In pre-launch marketing strategy, we recommend having a great strategic planning approach that should focus on the targeted audience, key tactics to achieve the goals, and many more.
SEO optimization of the online store is another key aspect of the pre-marketing approach that involves performing keyword research, having fully optimized Meta tags and descriptions, and having a search-friendly site structure.
Build an email list and create email marketing campaigns to nurture leads and build anticipation for your site’s launch. Start building noticeable social media platforms before the launch and start spreading the word about your store.
- Mailchimp for WooCommerce: Integrates Mailchimp’s powerful email marketing tools with WooCommerce, allowing for targeted email campaigns, automation, and customer segmentation.
- Constant Contact for WooCommerce: Enables seamless integration between Constant Contact’s email marketing platform and WooCommerce, providing tools for email campaigns and list management.
- Klaviyo for WooCommerce: This integration provides powerful email marketing automation, segmentation, and analytics tailored for WooCommerce stores to create personalized campaigns.
Once the store is successfully launched and is out there in the market, the marketing strategy should be tweaked accordingly. For instance, now the focus should be on building strong customer retention.
Regularly analyze marketing and website performance data. Adjust your strategies based on what’s working and what’s not to improve your ROI continually.
| Recommended Reading: Mastering Ecommerce Order Fulfillment: A Complete Guide for Business Success |
Final Say
When you have plans to set up an eCommerce business, you need to make sure that appropriate eCommerce development best practices are in place.
As mentioned above, developers should learn about the nitty-gritty of developing seamless UI, focus on continuous testing, work immensely towards trust building, and many other aspects that we discussed in the post in detail. Try to adopt all of them when you aim to develop a powerful and engaging online store.
Trust us! They will all help you develop an online store that will win the hearts of your prospects in no time.
