The internet can be a wild west of an ensemble of things. You get to read, see and experience a lot of interesting stuff once you hit enter on a website. Doors that will lead you to someplace nice and even nowhere. As for your store’s website, you want to make your visitors or customers feel welcomed and not feel lost. Unlike store fronts, you can get the chance to entice your customers by simply making them look around the actual store while you guide them along the way. But it’s quite tricky online, all you get is a flat screen and can only see things one at a time as you scroll. It’s greatly important to build a solid structure of your store’s website. One that is understandable enough for the customer to navigate it on their own.
On this list you can see the best features of an outstanding and well managed website.
1. Social Media Integration
Placing internal links of your social media profiles in between blog posts and your footer or header is at the top of our list of features that can help endorse your business’ other networks. Placing share buttons or Facebook comments under articles will help increase website traffic. Adding a community based relationship with your customers.
2. About Page
Sometimes visitors or potential customers don’t have a good grasp on what your business actually does. Sometimes they are familiar about your business and would like to know a little more about its history and treasured goals. These types of customers will always check or look for the about page. Make sure that the story and message placed here are concise, clear and has enough information to keep both customers and competitors at a professional connection. Information such as the date where the business was founded, owners who started it all, hardships faced to keep the company afloat, how amazing the main product is and core values makes a solid foundation for your about page write up.
3. Live Chat
No matter how small your customers can be, it’s always helpful for them to have a live chat, this is our 3rd on the features list, as an option to meet their inquiries. There are still some information that they tend to seek that can’t be found on the website, which is why it’s extremely important to double check that your store’s website doesn’t have any loose ends in case live chat can’t be enabled yet on your website or still needs some tweaking in it’s code. If you want to find an affordable version, Facebook messenger has a plugin that lets your customer chat from your Facebook page be enabled in your website. You can find these steps on their Facebook for Developers article site. Additionally, you have to upgrade your Facebook account to a Developer account before you can get access to this.
4. Mobile Compatibility
Less is more, when you’re on mobile or tablet of course! Use an easy structure of your website that can shrink well on smaller screens. Fonts that are just the right size and posts that are just enough to not scroll too much on portable devices. Avoid too many videos or photos placed on a write up. It may look good on computer screens but it will slow down loading time on smaller devices. Especially videos that automatically play on their own. Keep your website simple and clear but still stylish to make an accessible website.
5. Search bar
When your customers have a hard time navigating around the website, found themselves lost because they’ve clicked on an incorrect article and can’t lead themselves back, or simply searching for a specific item and wants to save time– 5th on our features list – adding a search bar to your website can help add more stars to your store’s customer service and accessibility in the website. It’s both good for the management and the customers themselves.
6. Clear navigation
Your website’s toolbars are the secondary parts where they are greeted to the homepage. They should be categorized properly in a way that customers still feel being assisted and taken care of. It should only consist of the most searched items or main departments of your business. Things like headers and footers should have contain immediate contact information and internal links to guidelines or announcements. Clear navigation also consists of properly color blocking sections of your sales page. As well as properly blocking snippets of blog write ups in your website.
7. Newsletter form
Adding a newsletter form in your website can help prompt customers with new announcements and offers up to date with your store’s services. If your business’ email address has an email newsletter integrated, it will help handle newsletters and inquiry forms from website visitors faster and more efficient. But if it hasn’t been enabled on your website, make sure that your newsletter form asks basic information such as name, contact details and email address as required fields. This will add customer information on the database of your business and keep a solid track record of each customer interaction. Although if you wish to keep an anonymous option to customers, it’s alright as long as it keeps a required field to share their email address.
8. Contact information
Contact numbers and email addresses should be placed on the header or footer of your website. It should also be placed in your top toolbars and near your newsletter form. Adding Google Maps beside your location and internal links for your social media profiles and phone numbers will help customers engage more and feel more at ease once they leave the website.
9. Testimonials
People nowadays recheck and review products online by searching their other profiles or related articles that say about their service and performance. So it’s best to post your customer’s testimonials to help build that credibility that people are looking for. If you can integrate your store with a review website like Trustpilot or Google reviews, it will help make a solid reliability of your website. This features, yet so simple go a long way into making sure customers start to put trust in your brand.
10. FAQ
Last on our features list is FAQ. One of the best ways to answer your customer’s queries is through a summary of all the general frequently asked questions people talk about the most about your business. This should be found on one of your toolbars as a distinct navigation apart from your newsletter form or contact information. Saving time and helps build customer service fast, direct and easy.