You naturally want your eCommerce website to attract shoppers, and having the right tools for the job can certainly help to make that happen. It is equally important however to do whatever is necessary to keep your visitors interested, and convince them to stay a while, since longer visits tend to lead to more purchases.
Create a Superb Online Shopping Experience
While creating a superb online shopping experience involves making the best use of the right tools, there are several other things you need to pay attention to as well.
- Related Products – Displaying related products will often result in additional sales. Related products consist of such things as different models, different colors or styles, useful or required accessories, or spare parts. When your customer clicks on a related product image, make sure to display it in a new window.
- Great User Experience – Simply having the products your visitors are looking for is not enough. You have to make the products easy to find (excellent navigation), provide useful supplementary information, and offer a streamlined checkout process.
- Good Site Search – Incorporate a search box, where a customer can enter a product name or number, a product line, or a keyword. A good search function takes work, but your customers will appreciate your efforts. Dropdown menus are another option worth considering.
- Great Product Photos – Your customers can’t pick up your online offerings and sniff, squeeze, or poke at them. A high-quality image is the next best thing. Show your products in the best possible light, and if appropriate, show them from different perspectives or show how they are used.
Take Advantage of a Top-Notch WP Theme – A premier WordPress theme will do much of the hard work for you, but you should keep the above tips in mind as you proceed with your website design. Any of the following five WordPress themes can provide the solution you are looking for in your attempt to build a better eCommerce site.
Atelier
Atelier has become one of the most highly popular premium eCommerce themes, if not the most popular WordPress theme of its type today. It is a relatively new WordPress theme that became a hit immediately following its initial release. Its popularity is not difficult to understand. Besides the many page-building and eCommerce-building features offered, it’s the 12 high-quality one click demos and the simplicity and elegance of its page layouts that point to its success. You may even find yourself reluctant to change more than a layout product’s price, image, and description, even though you can customized every layout any way you choose.
Any of Atelier’s 80+ layouts will provide an excellent starting point for your web store design. Since Atelier is totally responsive, you can expect visits from PC shoppers and mobile device shoppers alike once you go online. This theme allows you to create a shopping experience that will cause your customers to linger for a while; and that often translates into added sales. Visit the Atelier website. Check out their in-depth demo, and the impressive listing of core features.
Shopkeeper
Finding a WordPress theme specifically designed with eCommerce in mind is not all that difficult. Finding a theme whose WooCommerce demo is a good source of entertainment, a theme that is easy to use, and one that is fun to use, can be more of a challenge. Shopkeeper not only meets the challenge, but this WooCommerce-powered theme has everything you need to create a magnificent eCommerce experience. This theme’s flexible framework lends itself to most types of website themes, but it is in the online shopping arena where it really struts its stuff.
In addition to the customizable pre-built layouts, unlimited header and display options, and all the design elements you are likely to need, Shopkeeper features something else as well. This theme provides a set of highly sophisticated store management features including wishlists, add to cart buttons, a simplified checkout procedure, payment options, shipping, and inventory management.
Enfold WordPress Theme
Enfold is a responsive, multipurpose WorldPress theme that claims to have the easiest to use page builder of any premium theme. This claim that appears to be justified, since Enfold is ThemeForest’s best rated top seller with more than 56,000 sales to date. Since it is frequently updated, you can always expect top performance, and continual improvement with each new version. This extremely easy to use WordPress theme makes it an ideal choice for those at any skill level. Coding is unnecessary, and a novice can build an impressive eCommerce store in a relatively short time.
Demo files can be imported with a single click, and features from the different files can be combined and included in a single installation. More advanced designers will notice an improvement in their productivity by switching to Enfold.
Kallyas Theme V 4.0
The authors of Kallyas set a goal. They decided to create a theme that would be the most complete WordPress theme ever, and they appear to have succeeded. This premium eCommerce theme has everything you need to set up an online shop. The number of different homepage and header variations you can create is virtually unlimited, the number of special pages devoted to shopping is larger than what is typical for most themes, and there are a dozen different sliders and slider accessories to work with.
Kallyas is responsive, translation ready, and as you would expect, WooCommerce compatible.
SinoShop
SinoShop is an ideal WooCommerce template for an online fashion shop, a digital shop, or nearly any type of marketplace business. This responsive WordPress theme’s features start with a 5 homepage demos (and counting), a Mega Menu together with a companion Vertical MegaMenu, and much more, including Visual Composer, Revolution Slider, Google Fonts, and Awesome Icons. SinoShop can be installed with a click, and no coding knowledge is necessary.
Some Important Website Features not to be Overlooked
Before going online with your eCommerce store, take a moment to think about the features shoppers most like to see, and make sure those features are being properly addressed in your store.
Customer Reviews
When they are about to invest in a product, shoppers often like to know about the experiences others have had, who have purchased the same product. Encourage your customers to submit reviews of their own. As a store owner, you can profit from what your customers’ opinions and reviews have to say.
Fast Load Time
If your website pages typically take 3 seconds or more to load, you can expect to lose roughly 40% of your customers. A sluggish website can also do damage to your website’s search engine rankings. Use Page Speed to test your load times before going online.
Mobile Optimized
If your eCommerce website is not mobile optimized, potential customers shopping from mobile devices could find your presentations far from optimal, and navigation and checkout difficult or impossible. Don’t risk losing up to nearly half of your potential customer base.
Easy Checkout
A cumbersome checkout process can put a quick end to an otherwise pleasant shopping experience. Unless you want to set a record for the number of abandoned shopping carts, make every effort to ensure your checkout process is customer friendly.
FAQ Pages
An FAQ page or two can be a time saver. It can also lead to higher sales, since a customer may decide to shop elsewhere rather than take the time to attempt to contact you for an answer to a question. See what other online shops have done if you are in need of an idea or two.
If you follow these tips and insights, and select a premium theme that will do the hard work involved in creating an eCommerce website, you are really putting the interests of your customers first, which is what you need to do if your eCommerce venture is to be successful. Premium WordPress theme authors are careful to leave nothing out, and it will pay dividends for you if you take the same approach when creating your online store. We would like to hear of your experiences, so please feel free to share them with us.
