Hamzah Gani from Digital Retail advises on the features your website needs to answer customer questions and easily interact with them.
Header
In your header, start with a menu bar that includes your company logo, links to categories and other pages important in the sales cycle, such as a link to the shopping cart. Below the menu bar, add a picture banner. This is a shopper’s first impression of your store, and this is prime real estate. Use this opportunity to showcase who you are – be expressive and engaging. This area is used less to sell a specific product and more to sell your shopper on the idea of buying from you.
Body
While the header and footer may remain static, the body is your store and a shopper’s journey through your store. The body will start with a display of your opening products and will change as your customer browses. Shoppers enjoy the experience of shopping, so it is important to ensure your store flows and is easy for them to find what they are looking for. Do this by separating products into categories and adding attributes such as colour and size to your shop’s filter.
Product page
Due to the nature of e-commerce, the product is not in front of the shopper and cannot be inspected. So a good quality image and a clear description is critical to selling online. Offer related products, upsells and cross-sells.
Customer support form
This includes name, number, email and message fields. Some customers prefer to send you a message directly from your online business. Get a neat and easy to fill out customer support form that goes directly to your email.
Easy communication
Provide easy communication options where a shopper can move the shopping experience over from the website to human assistance. Identify your shoppers’ concerns and update the site with the relevant information. Understand your customers and tailor your site to their needs and wants. Click-to-call and click-to-email links are golden oldies that make it easy for any customer to communicate with you almost instantly.
Add a WhatsApp icon
You can add this to the bottom of your website. This feature can be a simple click-to-WhatsApp feature, which sends users directly to your WhatsApp profile with a pre-typed message.
Facebook Messenger icon
This makes it easy for customers to chat to you now and continue chatting to you after they have left your site and are browsing social media again. Also provide an email capture form, allowing shoppers to subscribe to your email ads. With Facebook messenger chat, you’ll get messages directly to your Facebook Messenger inbox.
Shipping
A store can offer customers the option to purchase online and come to the physical store to collect (some customers still prefer this option). Shoppers can also have their goods delivered to them. Price your shipping your way and set custom pricing rules for different delivery locations, parcel sizes, and delivery times. You can also set up rules to offer free shipping when certain conditions are met. Make shipping rules and delivery methods visible and clear to understand.
Third party shipping integration
You can completely automate your delivery process where you form shipping partner integrations and where your orders are automatically dispatched to your preferred shipping provider.
Payments
Payments can be manual, where shoppers are presented with your banking details and asked to make an EFT. To automate the payment process, integrate with a payment gateway such as Payfast, which will securely handle the transaction and transfer monies from your customer to you.
Autocomplete address fields
Nothing complicates delivery more than incorrect address details. Try and get access to Autocomplete Address Fields integration with Google Maps. This helps you get a 99% correct address capture so you’ll never have to double-check addresses again.
Footer
A shopper interacting with your footer is like a shopper interacting with a manager. Shoppers may have questions before purchasing or may have concerns with purchasing from your store. So ensure the content in the footer communicates trust and credibility and allows for easy communication with a person.
Terms and Conditions
This is your agreement with a shopper on your site. This agreement is separated into smaller policies and procedures. Shipping policy includes shipping information, returns and exchanges, while a privacy policy outlines what information on the shopper is stored and how it will be used. Clear and easy to read T’s and C’s will provide shoppers with a sense of trust and credibility.
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