Websites have certainly come a long way in the past few years. With today's technology, you can easily design a site that fits your personal aesthetic while incorporating navigational features that work best for your audience. If your business is in a space that sells products or services online, you're losing out if you're not utilizing the benefits available via online ecommerce options. The thing is, not all ecommerce options are created equal. It's up to you to find solutions that work best for you and your customers.
To help guide you through the best practices of WordPress ecommerce implementation, we've created this quick guide.
Incorporating SSL Certificates
SSL certificates are small data files that optimize your shoppers' online security by creating a virtual padlock that prevents thieves from capturing the data entered into your site. In this day and age, you should always run your ecommerce store over SSL because it protects both your users' data and the information of your own company. Consumers are aware of the pitfalls that exist when sites don't run on SSL, so you'll have a hard time getting people to enter their credit card numbers on non-SSL sites.
As an added point, Google expects your site to be SSL-certified, so if you don't want to mess with your SEO rankings, secure your site.
Investing in a Fast Web Server
If you want to deliver a positive web experience to your online shoppers, you need to reduce page load times. Fast servers increase your chances of sales, but slow site loads and hanging pages increase the likelihood of abandoned sales.
If you're trying to figure out where to invest your money when you're creating your ecommerce site, don't overlook the power of a fast web server. This decision could ultimately be the difference between a visitor and a paying customer. Many reputable web hosts also provide SSL at no cost. (See the point above to learn why this is important.)
Updating Your Site
It's important to keep your site up to date. Regular updates will keep your site safe and secure while ensuring your plugins and theme are working properly with WooCommerce and other WordPress ecommerce software. Doing updates too infrequently increases the likelihood of encountering issues when updating the software that powers your ecommerce site. A good rule of thumb is to update the themes, plugins, and core WordPress files monthly. It’s always recommended to test these changes thoroughly on a staging environment first to ensure that there are no issues with functionality before implementing on production.
Ensuring a Quick and Easy Purchase Process
The more cumbersome you make the purchase process, the more likely you are to lose customers before they finalize the sale. As a seller, your ultimate goal should be to make the purchase process as easy as possible. The faster and easier the checkout process, the more likely a user is to complete the purchase.
When you're talking about WordPress ecommerce platforms, WooCommerce takes the cake. WooCommerce can ensure a quick and easy purchase process. It’s less about the number of pages that a user needs to visit to complete the checkout and more about the overall ease of flow. Whether your checkout process is a single Ajax powered page or a multiple page flow, WooCommerce has options that will fulfill your needs.
Adding Vivid Imagery
A picture is worth a thousand words, and if you want people to pay attention to your ecommerce store, you need to grab their attention. Images are essential for online marketing, no matter how big or small your brand is. If you truly want to drive sales (which should really be your goal if you're operating an ecommerce business), you need to use high-quality imagery to increase interest in your brand.
It's equally as important to be 100% sure that you optimize the images you use for the fastest load times possible. There’s no reason you can’t have beautiful purchase, enticing imagery that is also optimized to have as small a file size as possible. You never want to lose out on a sale because the images you've added to drive traffic wind up bogging down your website!
Zero Gravity Marketing is a full-service Digital Marketing company that does it all. If you're ready to boost your ecommerce sales and bring customers to your door, we're ready to show you how it's done. Reach out to us when you have a minute to talk!
Tim Dugan
