E-commerce Website Checklist

Services are intangible, the customer can not touch or feel. So the presentation of services or products is the most important aspect in doing business. When it comes to any services like E-commerce, the presentation of a product on the website makes the most impact. So, it triggers the demand for fulfilling the E-commerce website checklist. 

Getting a website up and start selling is not the end, though it is just beginning. It needs to define some terms in simple English to make it all understandable as mentioned in the E-commerce website checklist. 

Below mentioned is the E-commerce website checklist.

Page URLs

• There is the way for search engines to index the content of the website.
• In the SEO point, URLs are search engine friendly and the visitor can easily understand it.
• URL should be in a logical and structured way, avoid random scramble of numbers and letters in the structuring of a website with different categories and filters.

Bread Crumb Navigation

• Breadcrumbs help visitors to navigate on the website, in the form of HTML links with hierarchical depth by showing categories, tags, and parent pages Example: use the symbols →, i.e. categories→tags→parent pages, or any other marking.
• This is placed horizontally below the main navigation bar on the left, above the main content of the page.
• Page Headings.
• Make sure, every page will have a single heading, even if the page has multiple headings they must be separated into sub-level heading at the bottom of the main heading.

Website Errors

• Search engines like Google and others look unfavorably on the website, and that will impact the user experience
• The errors of the website might be following anyone
  • Broken links
  • 404 pages
  • Outmoded statistics

Social Media Integration

• Search engines continuously monitor the visitor activity on the website. For the reason that, when the user is on the website, it will make it easy to share the content of the website among various social platforms.
• Not only does this marketing activity, but also shares the information with various search engines that will help in optimizing the result page rankings of the website.
• Even more, Sharing of the content on multiple platforms gives back-links and mentions across the web, which will help in positioning for and authority and other SEO success.
• Make sure having icons on the website especially on product or services page visitors able to share and mentions at different platforms according to the E-commerce website checklist. 
• Above all, Social media icons linked with accounts should be clearly displayed on your website homepage or in a footer or header. It helps to get the social audience.

XML & HTML Sitemap

• An XML sitemap is a document that helps Google and other search engines to a better understanding of the website while sneaking.
• HTML sitemaps are designed f to help the users to find content on the page and don’t need to include each and every sub-page.
• This helps visitors and search engines to find pages on the site.

Responsive design

• Adaptive designs work to detect screen size and load the appropriate layout for it, generally, we can design the following six common different screen widths.
  • 320
  • 480
  • 760
  • 960
  • 1200
  • 1600

Customer checkout, Add to cart, and Wishlist Pages

• These are some of the key pages of the website that greatly affect the customer experience, we should make it the way the entire process takes smooth and quickly keeping in mind the E-commerce website checklist.
• Do not ask the customer to sign up or login until he/she placing an order
• Accept all payment methods
• Offer multiple shipping methods at effective cost or free shipping on certain shopping
• Provide option to continue shopping after placing order  
• Easy add or removal of the items to cart and wishlist
• Wishlist suggestion at the time of checkout
• Provide “Apply promo code” option at the checkout page
• Display how much they saved on each purchase
• Show the appropriate shipping date & time

Follow Up with customers

• It is the best way to provide support to the customer and can send attractive deal emails with offers. Besides that, here is what you need to include in the emails.  
  • A Thank You and Welcome message, to join the growing list of satisfied customers
  • A price receipt
  • A picture of the product or item
  • Include links to the product, site, support, and related products.
  • Send a one to two weeks follow-up to see how the product is.
  • Ask for a reviews
  • Offer a discount code if they have not ordered again after a few months
  • Ask if they want future notification alerts for specials and products
  • Send a promotion for abandoned carts
  • Display where the product was delivered
  • Have an option to cancel the order
  • Links to share on social media
  • A link to track the shipment
  • The order number and a link to return instructions
  • Include a survey link

Customer Reviews

• Customer reviews are strong social validation for the product and can influence the new users to make a purchase. They are real, uninfluenced from the shopper. So definitely, it gives trust and other user’s perspectives about the product.

Page loading time

• One of the key factors that influence the customers, nobody like slow loading website, especially in e-commerce it will lose the customers, it means a lot to them, search engines like Google and other prefer to rank fast loading sites on the top of their pages.
• All pages should load in less than three seconds
• Images in a proper size that won’t take much time in loading
• Check website, not to have plugins that slow down the website

Support Pages

• Providing support to the customer before and after purchase makes loyal customers and builds trust.
  • Live chat areas
  • Forums
  • FAQ’s
  • 24/7 customer support
  • An extensive period

Home Page

• Certainly, whether the customer visited the website to look at or purchase, the home page is the window that takes him/her deep into the website.
• The homepage should include the following sections
  • Firstly, Top selling
  • Secondly, Featured products
  • Thirdly, Recommended section
  • At last, Recently viewed
• It should have large appealing images of the products, offers, and promotion

Landing pages

• Most importantly, Landing pages are the best place of the website to promote the particular product by running promotions
• Even more, we can list the products in grid view having images, price, and direct “Add to cart” function
• Also, we can use these pages for the testimonial, badges, and other social proofs.

Blog

• The blog is the best way to inform about products to the customers and can increase the traffic by introducing social media “like” and “comment” options.

These are for now, with technological advancements new ones may come or replace the current one.

Hence, we hope you are now thorough with the E-commerce website checklist and will make sure everything is included. However, if you have any further queries, click here.