Characteristics of an Online Store

1. Clear, Easy Navigation
If visitors cannot find what they are looking for on your website, they would probably be disappointed and return back. Customer Satisfaction is significantly improved if the buying process is fast and efficient. Therefore, you need to make sure that your website is easy to use and explore. How can you offer an excellent user experience to the customers visiting your site? By regular side and top navigation bars; clickable and meaningful labels; significant drop downs and addition of a search bar.2. Fast Loading Time
What if the loading time of your website is slow? The visitors will stop shopping and walk away from your website to the competitors’ website. This will make you lose potential customers. There are many things you can do to ensure a high loading speed of the website. The very first thing is to stick to the simple design, use online tools to compress the file size, reduce the use of plugins and redirects, and enable browser caching. This will help you increase the website’s speed.3. Secure Payment Gateways
A payment gateway is a connection between your eCommerce store and your merchant bank. It sanctions your customers' debit and credit card payments just like a cashier in some physical store. Being necessary for online transactions, it can be another reason for cart abandonment if not set up correctly. Online customers want their personal data to be safe, so eCommerce stores follow the best practices to ensure that the customer data is encrypted and protected. For this, they ensure obtaining and installing SSL certificates on their website. Read more: Grow your E-Commerce business with best Woocommerce Development Services4. Strong Social elements
These days, customers do not prefer buying anything without seeking assurance from others. So, to make sure that your customers convert to buy, you need to offer several directions to fulfill this need. Include social media links on your website so that people can comment, like, and share the experience with your products. Additionally, you can add reviews and customer testimonials to your website. The more positive social proof you showcase, the higher level of trust you will perceive.5. Multichannel Customer Support
Professionally providing exceptional on-time customer support is very important for your business's success. It is pretty frustrating to see a website with no clear contact details, and that walks you through long FAQ channels. The key to success is offering your customers a wide range of options to get in touch with you. For example, a phone number, email address, or live chat feature can be the most effective solution for your customers to contact you directly.6. Effective Call to Actions
Even if your web store looks perfect and works smoothly, it has a problem if your customers do not know where to click. This is where the call to action buttons come into the realm. They tell customers where to click, what to do, and what to buy. Examples are “proceed to checkout", “click here”, etc.7. Mobile Responsiveness
Every year more and more people are shifting on to their phones for shopping. So, if you don't have a mobile-friendly website that offers your customers a great experience, you will probably be left behind. Responsiveness is essential because if your website isn’t responsive, it will likely be slow to load. In addition, it will have an awkward layout, and the website will ask for zooming and scrolling to see the website's content. This will significantly stop them from converting into customers. Read more about How to Choose the Best Responsive Website Design Services These were the essential characteristics of an eCommerce store, and now let’s come to the main point that is “Common Mistakes to Avoid while developing a web store.”Pitfalls to Avoid While Developing an eCommerce Store
