9 Key Elements of an eCommerce Website Design You Can't Live Without

There’s no doubt that eCommerce is growing, generating sales, and providing new business opportunities. The question is: can you keep up?

You can. Don’t let the speed of innovation scare you away. As a marketer, you can’t let innovation scare you-you must embrace it. To fear innovation is to fear success and I know you’re better than that. At the very least, relish the anticipatory excitement of embarking on a change that can fuel your business.

You want to keep up with eCommerce website design essentials, but you, like most people in this frenzied capitalistic economy, are short on time. No problem – our San Diego e-commerce development team has the information you need to know in order to create a successful eCommerce website design.

Here are the 9 key elements of successful eCommerce website design that you can’t live without:

1. Responsive Design

• Only 22% of marketers say they’re ahead of the curve when it comes to responsive design. 29% say they have “average” experience, 23% say they’re behind the times, and 4% say they’re hopeless. (eMarketer)

That doesn’t mean give up; it means to seek help when needed. Responsive eCommerce website design is the way of the future. Why waste money building a website that will soon be outdated? Responsive web design is the only logical choice for any website built today. Why choose a responsive web design? Responsive web design works on any screen – whether it’s desktop, mobile or a tablet. Not only does it work, but it also provides a consistent experience, meaning you will see the same thing, regardless of what device you’re using. Imagine showing a client something on your website in a meeting using your tablet, only to find that it won’t load correctly, or that you have to pinch and scroll and zoom for a couple of harried minutes just to find it. That’s just embarrassing. You’re better than that.

2. Mobile and Tablet Compatibility

• 48% of users say that if they arrive on a business site that isn’t working well on mobile, they take it as an indication of the business simply not caring. (MarginMedia)

Ouch. Can you really afford that in today’s hyper-competitive environment? Unless you are the kind of person that arrives everywhere by private jet, probably not.

• 62% of companies that designed a website specifically for mobile had increased sales. (Econsultancy)

If you cater to mobile users, you will be rewarded.

3. A Blog

• Companies that blog have 434% more indexed pages. And companies with more indexed pages get far more leads. (Hubspot)

Blogging helps you with SEO, driving (relevant!) traffic to your website, and increasing your leads. What C-Suite can afford to say no to new leads? Yeah, that’s what I thought. Ready to talk about blogging?

• 81% of businesses consider their blogs to be an important asset to their businesses. (Search Engine Journal)

It’s not a completely crazy idea for your business to blog, I swear. Normally I’m not for peer pressure, but here I think it’s healthy.

• 79% of online shoppers spend at least 50% of their shopping time researching products. (PowerReviews)

Where do you want people to go to research YOUR company products? If you don’t provide people with all the information they could possibly need/want, they will go somewhere else to find it. You don’t want people going somewhere else. You want them going to you. If you know people are hungry for information, feed them. Make it your mission not to let a single potential prospect or lead go hungry. Doesn’t that mission sound benevolent?

4. Social Media Integration

• Approximately 46% of online users count on social media when making a purchase decision. (Nielsen)

Social media influences eCommerce transactions. It’s that simple. Let’s revisit marketing before the digital medium became king. Let’s say you’re networking at an event, and you have people interested and excited about your product. They want to go back to the decision-makers of their company and share the information. What do you do? You hand them some brochures, flyers, sales promotion materials, and your business card. They bring these back to the decision-maker who now is equipped with the information he or she needs to choose.

In today’s digital economy, social media is your chance to spread flyers and share your business card. There’s a little bit more finesse to it because you’re not going to just push a hard sell, but it’s still about creating relationships and getting valuable information to the right people. People live online and social media is essential for the spread of information. Your company needs to have social media integration with your website so that when someone finds your product or service highly interesting, relevant, or useful, they can easily share that information with their network. This means social media integration benefits are twofold: social media helps you spread valuable information about your company, products, and services, AND it helps drive traffic to your website to help you close leads.

• Content marketing distribution leads to a 2,000% increase in blog traffic and a 40% increase in revenue. (Marketing Sherpa)

If you don’t have social media integration, you might be missing out on easy referrals from prospects, clients, and other interested parties.

You wouldn’t go to a tradeshow without sales materials. Don’t go online without social media.

5. Fast Loading Time

• 40% of people will abandon a web page if it takes more than three seconds to load. (Econsultancy)
• The change in a website bounce rate spikes to 100% when a page takes 4 seconds or more to load. It jumps to 150% if a page takes 8 seconds or more to load. (Mobile Joomla)

People will leave your site and not come back if it doesn’t load properly. People are busy and impatient, and they don’t have time for that kind of low-quality performance from you. You might think you can afford to skate by with low quality or mediocre website, but it doesn’t work on mobile devices. You are sending a lot of people away. Who knows how much business you’re losing out on by shutting your doors to the growing population of people who want to meet your business on mobile.

6. A Lead Nurturing Program

• 65% of B2B marketers have not established lead nurturing. (MarketingSherpa)
• Nurtured leads produce, on average, a 20% increase in sales opportunities versus non-nurtured leads. (DemandGen Report)
• Companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales at a 33% lower cost. (Forrester Research)
• Nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads. (The Annuitas Group)

If you would like to improve your sales and save money, implement a lead nurturing program. These stats pretty much say it all.

7. Marketing Automation

• Companies that automate lead management see a 10% or greater increase in revenue in 6-9 months. (Gartner Research)
• Marketing automation users report 3x more leads passed to sales after one month. (Marketo)

If you are looking to increase revenue, consider implementing a marketing automation program. It saves time, makes your marketing more efficient, and increases sales. Join the club.

8. SEO

• 70% of the links search users click on are organic. (Search Engine Journal)
• 70-80% of users ignore the paid ads, focusing on the organic results. (Search Engine Land)

It’s getting harder and harder to just pay to get traffic. You want to know why? Cold hard selling with ads isn’t attractive anymore. Consumers are skeptical and they don’t want to hear you get on your soapbox about your product. You have to win their attention with things they actually want. (Hint: relevant information, insights, resources they can use, educational material, etc.)

• 75% of users never scroll past the first page of search results. (Hubspot)

What this means is that you can’t go halfway. Don’t hope you can get on page 3. Page 3 of search results is the digital equivalent of putting up shop in the boonies where no one lives within 50 miles. You wouldn’t ever consider doing that would you? Nope, didn’t think so. Get yourself some prime real estate where people will actually stroll by and come in for a visit.

• When consumers were exposed to both search and social media influenced by a brand, that overall search CTR went up by 94 percent. (GroupM)

Do you know what happens when you don’t have search and social? People aren’t compelled to click on anything. It’s okay if your company is going through this dull, crickets chirping-like experience of not getting any action on your website. Anyone can still get in the game and turn that around with the help of digital marketing.

• SEO leads have a 14.6% close rate, while outbound leads (such as direct mail or print advertising) have a 1.7% close rate. (Search Engine Journal)

This is simple – CLOSE MORE LEADS! Why exhaust yourself trying to get outbound leads when it yields far fewer results.

9. Landing Pages

• 48% of marketers build a new landing page for each marketing campaign. (MarketingSherpa)
• 48% of offers have multiple offers on them. (MarketingSherpa)
• Businesses with 31 to 40 landing pages got 7 times more leads than those with only 1 to 5 landing pages. (HubSpot)
• Those with over 40 landing pages got 12 times more leads than those with only 1 to 5 landing pages. (HubSpot)

If you would like to generate more leads, build multiple landing pages with offers on them.

You can now stop drooling over all of the amazing numbers that support strong eCommerce websites. You can have one too.