Best Practices for Building your Startup’s E-commerce
Being an entrepreneur is difficult nowadays. You need a combination of elements to work together, having a good business idea plus having the courage of actually doing something with your idea. After you start to build up your new business a lot of questions will pop up about every step you need to take. You will probably ask yourself how can you create your e-commerce. It’s a type of business that is growing more and more each year — we know that 75% of internet users bought something online in the past month — 2.818 billion people purchase consumer goods using e-commerce.
After working in a digital agency specialized in the creation of e-commerce, I have had the opportunity of working with big and small clients. I have always admired startup clients and, enjoyed seeing similarities in a start-ups’ journey with that of an entrepreneur. In this article, I will give you some insights into which elements can be applied to your own online store for better results.
It may appear that developing your own e-commerce is impossible due to time and budget constraints. Here is a quick list of suggestions for best practices that can be applied and will help you out. It is advisable that before starting your website you already have a brand book, this means at least having a logo, primary colors, and fonts; and also already have the product ready to be sold. Humans have a remarkable ability to remember pictures, consider the creation of your logo and photographs as an important step for your company.
There are many different platforms where you can create your e-commerce webpage yourself, for example, Shopify, Woo-commerce, Magento, Bigcommerce and more. Based on my experience Shopify is a perfect solution as it is simple to use and manage in both the front and backend. It’s a user-friendly platform that can be learned through tutorials and experimentation. The best part is that non-prior knowledge of coding is necessary!
There are basic principles that apply to all types of clients; for example, always invest in having good photography. This gives the best first impression to your clients. In addition, you can use the photographs as different assets, not just for product photos but also for publicity. Try to think of photographs that you can use in different formats. Your website images should not be bigger than 200Kb so that your webpage loading time is fast (you can check your page speed with the Google Page Speed Insights tool). Mobile pages that are 1 second faster had a 27% increase in conversion rate. It only takes seconds for happy customers to become frustrated.
There is a long list of good practices for e-commerce in general, but in this article, as said before we focus on the ones that are useful for startups or small new businesses. These are straightforward and, in some cases, do not need an extra budget.
Simple Explain, Fast Recognition
The first moment that people open your webpage, regardless of whether it is on desktop or mobile, they should be able to know straight away what you are selling. This message should be displayed with a combination of image + title + call to action. Make a list of the advantages or the value of your brand and announce them in a simple way (rather than long texts). Your calls to action could be: Show now, View product, See more, See collection.
Mobile-friendly Website
57% of the total population are internet users and 52% of the total population are mobile internet users. In 2019 the average amount of time per day spent using the internet via mobile phones is 3 hours 14 minutes. Mobile-friendly is a must if you want to be considered as a serious business. This means that your store needs to be adaptable for bigger and smaller screens, your designs and navigation need to work both on mobiles and on desktop formats.
Announcement Bar
If you have any offer to announce — new collections, promotions or free shipping — it is always a good idea to use an announcement bar at the top of your page. This can be used as part of the contact details, for example, if you consider calls as an important action from users. Offering a free shipping promotion is a strong motivator for users. I strongly advise that you consider in your prices the flexibility of offering free shipping, either in all the products or above a certain price. If it is above a certain price, the recommendation is that the price is the average ticker value you wish to have or that you have seen is reachable for the customer by purchasing more than one product. It is very important that this price is realistic and, in turn, encourages sales.
Email Lists
Having your client’s email address in a database is important and can be used for email marketing campaigns. But when you are a new brand, keep in mind that if you want to encourage people to subscribe to your page, they will look for something in return. Also, as a new brand, giving information or tips is not enough, as most individuals are looking for discounts. A sign up for a discount code is a strong motivator to encourage people to subscribe. However, do not make the subscribe section or an account login mandatory for the checkout process. This discourages users to finish the purchase journey, and instead, subscription to the website should allow a guest checkout option.
Client Service
Always consider having a contact page for communication with potential clients, if you enable customer service chat it will only work if the responses are fast, the average first response time is 48 seconds, so think twice before enabling it.
Collection Pages
In your collection’s product page, it is advisable to have filters that will help customers search for products with certain characteristics. It is important that even before the user has to click on the product, they can understand what it is. This is achieved by having product photos where the product is clearly shown and described. A useful option is to have a hover effect on images so that the user can have different views of the product before clicking on it, and this will accelerate the shopping process.
Product Pages
The product page should have more than just a photo of your product — showing it with lifestyle looks and in use will give the user an idea of how it looks or how it’s used. Show the product information with details but not lengthy text. Instead, highlight the different attributes and provide readable details in bullet points. Allbirds is a footwear company that creates its products with premium natural materials. Their website is a perfect example of the elements that an e-commerce should consider. Their brand identity and design can give you inspiration. Here we see the example of a product page and the elements that they show. Take a deeper look into their website to see the different pages that they have created, its functionality and design.
Have a visible price and if a discount is applied show the discount and the previous price. Have an add to cart button that stands out from the text information, you can do it by using an attractive color that is relevant to your brand outline. Always show if the product has guarantees, certifications and what the return policy is.
Social Proof
Encourage your customers to leave their customer experience reviews on the webpage, it’s important as social proof of the brand and instills user trust in the purchase decision. 90% of customers say that what they decide to buy is influenced by positive online reviews, and 94% will use a business with at least four stars.
“If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful.”- Jeff Bezos
It’s important to mention that these tips are for businesses that are just starting. Over time as the business grows, it is advisable that these tips evolve and complement more complex actions with different tools, apps, promotions, and ideas. Maintaining a dynamic E-commerce that it is up to date with the new trends in digital commerce is important in maintaining and understanding what clients look for.
Finally, I will share some of my favorite websites that hopefully will inspire you during the creation of your website and can be helpful as guidelines: Allbirds, Happiness Abscissa, Nick Mayer, Raquel Orozco, Popsockets, Press.
About this article
This article has been written by a student on the Grenoble Ecole de Management’s Advanced Masters in Digital Business Strategy. As part of a content creation assignment, students are given the task of writing articles based on their digital interests and disseminate the articles online. Articles are marked but we make minimal changes to the content. Thanks for reading! James Barisic, Programme Director, MS DBS.
