There are plenty of factors and items to think about when creating an e-commerce website for your business. From the planning and designing to deciding on payments and process automation, everything can be overwhelming.

This is where an e-commerce checklist should help. This list contains some essential things you need to perfect when creating an online store. In this article, I will guide you through the essential steps you need to cover one by one.

Choose The Right Platform For Your eCommerce Website

Whether you’re familiar with website creation or completely new to it, the right platform should save you a lot of time when moving your business online. Choosing an option tailored specifically for e-commerce will bring you all the necessary functionalities and features in one place. 

An excellent e-commerce platform should have a drag-and-drop online store website builder that eases the creation process. Additionally, you’ll be able to set up the store without a single line of code.

To get one with the best value for money, check if the platform offers other services and features that may help business processes. Look at what additional marketing, security, or conversion rate optimization features your chosen platform offers. Make sure it also supports multiple payment gateways allowing customers to check out and pay easier. 

Choose a Domain Name Matching Your Brand

A domain name is an essential part of branding. It is the address people type in their URL bar to visit the website, and it may be the first thing they remember about the website. 

We recommend using a .com TLD for online businesses. It is the easiest to remember and the most trusted TLD.  

Using a brandable domain will make your business more memorable. Brainstorm a list of domain names representing your product, mix and match words until it makes a unique name. For example, netflix.com is a better name than watchmoviesonline.com.

Provide High-Resolution Product Pictures

Having high-resolution images for product pages goes a long way. It helps customers examine the product and ease their decision-making process. Not only that, but it also adds credibility to your online store and makes the product page more attractive. 

To have a great product picture, start by using a white background for the photoshoot. This is to lessen distractions and highlight the product in the photo. It’s also great to take pictures of the product from multiple different angles.

Make The Cart Icon Available On Every Page

To make the checkout process easier, ensure that you have the cart icon available on all pages. It should show the number of items that customers have added to the basket and make checking added items easier as there is no need to visit the cart separately. 

You can add a cart icon to each page by clicking and dragging the cart element to your website on the website builder. Usually, e-commerce websites would place the icon on the top right corner of the page.

Provide a Clear Call To Action

A call to action is used as a blond statement, urging a visitor to perform a very specific task. Before adding a call to action, be sure to decide what’s the action in question. Is it signing up for a trial or newsletter, or adding a product to the cart? 

If you’re looking to grow your mailing list, create supporting content on a page detailing the benefits users will get from signing up, then add the CTA button with a clear, actionable message like “Sign Up Now”.

On the other hand, if you’re releasing a new product, you can place a promotional banner on your website’s front page. Then, include a CTA such as “See Our Newest Release” to pique the visitors’ interest.

Show Stock Availability 

It’s essential to show the number of products available for sale on your website. It saves the customers time as they don’t have to finalize a purchase on a product that isn’t immediately available to ship. Additionally, having product stock displayed if it’s limited creates urgency, encouraging conversion. 

You can easily do this with most e-commerce platforms. On your dashboard, add a new product and enter the number of products available in stock. It should keep track of every finalized purchase and update the numbers automatically. If not, you can always track and edit the numbers manually.

Include Customer Review For Your Products

Reviews provide social proof, builds customer trust, and further eases the purchase decision. Creating a review page also helps build relations with the customers. It shows that your online store puts the customers in the spotlight and cares about their feedback. 

Most online store builders have review blocks included, however, if you’re using WordPress and WooCommerce, use plugins to create an attractive and easy-to-use review section. Customers should be able to easily submit their own reviews, which will be displayed immediately under the products or the review page upon submission. 

Add a Wishlist

If you have a lot of products, a wishlist may come in handy for the customers. It allows shoppers to save products that they might want to buy later as they continue exploring the site.

You can do this by installing a wishlist plugin on the website. Usually, you can find it in the app store of your e-commerce platform. An ‘add to wishlist’ button will appear on product pages. 

Show Delivery Times

Customers want to know the estimated delivery date of the products they purchased. Fortunately, most delivery services provide an estimated delivery time and update the progress of delivered items. You can connect it to the website and display this information for the customers’ orders, and show the estimated time during the checkout process. 

Install an order tracking tool on the website to do this. You can keep track of the items during the delivery process to the customers and keep your customers informed at the same time.

Conclusion

Building an e-commerce website may not be the easiest, but knowing where to start and what to do should simplify the process.

Begin with choosing the best e-commerce platform and the perfect domain name as a base to the website. Then, use this checklist to ensure you have installed all the necessary features and functionality on your online store.

We hope this article helps, if you have any questions, make sure to leave them in the comments section below.

The post The Ultimate E-Commerce Website Essentials Checklist appeared first on TravHQ.

According to updates posted by Goibibo Co-founder & COO Deepak Tuli on LinkedIn and Twitter, he is moving out of Goibibo. On November 6, he posted on his social media accounts notifying that it was his last day at Goibibo and that it has been a great journey with Goibibo in a rhetorical way.

Deepak comes with years of experience in the travel, tourism, travel technology, e-commerce and internet industry and was a part of the launch team of Yatra.com before Goibibo. In his role there, he was handling multiple processes like setting up the hotel business, media planning and promotions and also launched Yatra.com in UK. After working for over 3 years with Yatra, he started with Goibibo and the team built the brand with a small amount of funds.

The journey of Goibibo began when Makemytrip, Yatra and Cleartrip were dominating the e-commerce picture in India and despite being late to the party, Goibibo grew very fast into what it is now. While it started as a social network in 2007, the Goibibo as we know it now was founded by Ashish Kashyap, Sanjay Bhasin, Deepak Tuli, Uma Shankar and Vikalp Sahni in 2009. The company grew more than 200% in the first year itself.

It isn’t clear at this point about what is next for Deepak Tuli. With the kind of expertise he has in the e-commerce and travel industry, he is exactly the kind of leader brands in this space look for. Most of his connections commenting on the update were interested to know what he plans to do after Goibibo but there was no update from him about the same. We will update you with more details as we learn more about it. We wish him luck in whatever challenge he picks up next.

The post Goibibo COO Deepak Tuli parting ways with the brand appeared first on TravHQ.

In the highly competitive travel space, it is hard to bring potential customers to your website and even harder to convert them into paying customers. People often ask us how they can increase the conversions on their website. While there are no universal best practices for the same, we have tried to put together a list of best practices that can help you increase the rate of conversions on your website.

#1- Keep it simple

Ask less questions before making the sale. Even one extra field can result in a significant drop in the number of conversions. You can ask the user to provide more details when required to avoid putting off the customers at entry. Of course it goes without saying that a simple and neat website layout also helps.

#2- Add buy back

To make a sale, it is very important to inspire confidence. You can do that by offering cancellation options and easy refunds. Usually the number of bookings you gain will outweigh the ones you have to refund by a significant margin.

#3- Always be around

It is very important to have a customer support team readily available. Apart from the phone support, also add the chat feature so that users can interact even if they have a query in the middle of the transaction.

#4- Add faces

Don’t hide behind your brand, especially if the brand in question is a young startup. If your brand is young, tell your story, show your face and let people see the team behind the product. Adding testimonials is also a good idea but it is better to embed tweets and posts rather than just copy pasting the testimonials into your website code.

#5- Work on social media

While you might be promoting your Facebook page or Twitter account to sell more, a strong following will help you present yourself as a trustworthy brand. If the social media numbers are worth flaunting, flaunt them. This will work as a social proof and users wont be hesitant to buy from you.

#6- Dont just throw money on Google

If you are using Google AdWords or any other form of advertising to bring visitors, make sure you don’t just dump them on homepage. You need to have a proper landing page for people who click on your ad and make sure the landing page copy is along the same lines as the ad copy. The page should be clutter free and should be focussed on the one product or service that user came looking for.

#7- Experiment with CTA button

Play around with the position, look and size of your ‘buy’ button and see what works best. It may perform quite differently depending on where it is and what it says. Avoid text links and use large buttons as much as possible to offer better experience for mobile users.

#8- Add more payment options

A recent Think with Google report indicates that a large number of Indonesian travellers won’t buy from a website if they don’t find bank transfer as a payment option. A large number of buyers abandon the cart if they don’t find the payment option they prefer and usually they won’t come back for the same reason. You absolutely don’t want to repel a customer, who was ready to pay, due to the lack of options.

#9- Sell more at checkout

You can present one time only offers at the time of checkout to create a sense of urgency and sell more. Like if you are a booking platform, instead of offering ‘flights’ and ‘flights+hotels’ separately, offer relevant hotel options right after someone books a flight. If possible, offer discounts at this point that won’t be available otherwise.

#10- Make them come back

It is also important to turn a buyer into a repeated customer. To bring them back, incentivise them with deals or gifts on their next purchase. You can also add points or credit to their account which can be redeemed on next purchase to bring them back to your website.

If you have shifted you focus to mobile app for your travel brand, you can read How you can reduce the number of users abandoning your travel app. Join the discussions on travel marketing and get inputs from the topic experts here.

The post 10 simple tricks that will boost your website conversions appeared first on TravHQ.