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Blue Fountain Media, one of New York’s leading digital marketing firms, released a list of five essential elements every website builder needs to incorporate if they hope to design a successful e-commerce site. Designers that employ these essential ingredients will raise the bar on the customer experience, exceed customer expectations, and lay down a solid foundation for sales growth.
“Consumers are getting more educated and more demanding when it comes to their online shopping visits,” reports Gabriel Shaoolian, founder and Managing Director of Blue Fountain Media. “It’s critical that a business’s e-commerce site provides exceptional service to these savvy customers, and our list of essentials elements will serve as the building blocks for the creation of such a site.”
Below is Blue Fountain Media’s list of the five essential ingredients every business owner needs to use when building an e-commerce platform.
1. Set clear goals on every page: Every page of the website should have a defined purpose. A homepage should entice users to click through to product pages. Product pages should answer any questions users might have and convince them to make a purchase. The shopping cart page should simplify the checkout process and send the customer away reassured that the transaction was successful. It’s critical to make sure each page has a goal of guiding the visitor along a defined sales process.
2. List company contact information: Make it very simple and enticing for customers to contact your business directly. It’s important to display your contact information where it’s readily visible for your customers. Searching for contact information leads to lost sales. In addition to your location and phone number, also provide FAQs, product reviews, or comments for users to read, as well as user-generated content like testimonials that highlight satisfied customers that use your products.
3. Build brand loyalty: Always look for opportunities to bring users back to your website whenever possible. Most people shop online by visiting a number of different websites when searching for a particular product. Ideally, the more times a user visits your website, the more likely they are to make a purchase. A great way to bring users back to your website is with timely emails that go out announcing the arrival of new products or seasonal sales. If a popular item is out of stock, you can also ask for users’ emails and notify them when you have that item back in stock. By doing this, you’re not only servicing their needs but showing them that you care about their experience beyond selling them a product.
4. Offer a hassle-free checkout process: It has been proven that the more cluttered and complicated an online checkout page becomes, the more likely a customer who was willing to make a purchase will just exit your site instead. As well as maintaining a simplified checkout process, work to make your customers clearly aware of extra costs such as flat, expensive shipping rates that could hamper a potential sale. Finally, display trust symbols like VeriSign or McAfee badges proudly on your website in order to indicate that your checkout process has been verified and is secure in order to help ease any fears that potential customers could have when shopping online.
5. Make sure the site is up 100% of the time: Make sure that your site’s hosting plan is reliable and that it has the ability to handle any future growth needs your business will have. Your hosting plan should grow as your business and orders grow. If instead, your platform lags or delays order fulfillment, you’ll soon be saying goodbye to sales and repeat customers. Being skimpy on a hosting plan will negatively affect your reputation and lead to decreased sales figures.
About Blue Fountain Media
Blue Fountain Media A Pactera EDGE Company, is a leading provider of Data-driven, Intelligent, Digital Experiences. Blue Fountain Media works with global enterprises to create high-performing, data-driven websites, and cross-platform integrated marketing campaigns. Blue Fountain Media’s clients include: Element Solutions International, Hillenbrand, CDK Global, Peterbilt Motors, Workfront, Cathay Bank, and more.
