We all have been to a physical store to buy something and the customers like it when the things they need are easily found, if not they approach the nearby store representative and seek their help to find the product. However, when it comes to online shopping a customer’s patience level is far less than in the physical store, and the chances of them simply moving on the next brand’s website or marketplace is high.
According to a study, a user may decide whether to stay on your website or leave within the first 8 to 10 secs. It is thus important for your website to be clear, concise, and engaging so that the customers do not leave and stay on it until they purchase your products or service or at least add it to their cart.
In this guide, we will help you understand how to design your website and the pages to include so that it funnels the customers to the ‘Click to Buy’ button, in short converting them into sales. But before that let us quickly run through the basic terms for better understanding.
Decoding an E-commerce Website
As per the Cambridge dictionary, Commerce is defined as the activities involved in buying and selling things, and E-commerce stands for Electronic Commerce meaning activities involved in buying and selling on the internet, and it also covers the transfer of money and data to perform these transactions. The stores that sell on these websites are known as E-commerce stores or online businesses.
If you’re planning to start an online store, then you need to make your website engaging and one that communicates with your customers. It should have an overview of your business, contain all the general information, your business photographs, testimonials/reviews, links to your social media, FAQ page, your business policies, contact details, etc. And all of these should promptly and easily be available for the customers to find. The website should not be cluttered and too confusing, it needs to be organised in pages for things to easily be located or else the customers lose the attention and skip your website.
Now that we’ve understood what an e-commerce website is and the basic things you should keep in mind when designing it. Let us now move on to the pages your e-commerce website for small businesses should have.
6 Must Have Pages for Your E-commerce Website
Here are 6 crucial pages you should include on your e-commerce website to be successful and attract customers and generate revenue:
- Homepage
You may consider the homepage as the entrance of your store or the face of your store. Your homepage needs to be appealing to the visitors and hook them on as soon as they land on your website. it needs to have the preliminary information about your business in a concise manner with banners and supporting images of your products/services. - About Us Page
The About Us page is supposed to include a brief summary of your business, the founding date, how you started your business and how it has transformed, details of the board of directors and the other team. In short, everything that is important for your business needs to be on the About Us page. - Products/Services Page
This page should have detailed information about the products and services that your e-commerce store offers. Customers can browse through your products and services and click on buy, pay for it online and buy it on the spot. To make sure the customer payment process is seamless make sure that you integrate the top payment gateways that are safe and secure. - FAQ Page
An FAQ page can club all the user’s doubts and queries and provide answers and solutions to it so that it can guide the new user before he/she reaches you out with that query and thereby saving yours and your customer’s time. However, if customers still have questions, you can redirect them to your Customer Care service where they can get in touch with you directly over call, email or chat. - Testimonial Page
Not all e-commerce websites have this, but it is a good practice to make the customer’s review public so that your prospective customers get an idea about the product or service they are going to buy. Not only does this help in building trust and credibility around your business but also helps in promotion. - Contact Us Page
It will be pointless if you have all the above-mentioned pages and have managed to make the customers interested in your products/services, and they cannot find any details to contact you. Hence, it is important to have your contact details (updated!) mentioned on your website for all the prospective customers to reach you.
Above are the few important pages that every website should have, any customer visiting your website for the first time would expect at least these pages for the different information he/she needs about your website. Apart from the above pages, you can add many more pages such as Terms & Conditions, Blog, Sitemap, Gallery, Careers, etc. as and when your small business grows. At the same time, make sure that your website and the web pages are SEO optimized.
Building Your E-commerce Website
Now that you have got a fair idea of the importance of the about us page and other key pages on your website, you might be wondering – how do I go about creating my e-commerce website. Adding an online store to your e-commerce website can help boost sales, make your website look professional and take your business places.
Depending on your technical expertise you can choose to create an e-commerce website yourself or use a website builder. We at Bluehost provide both options based on your comfort.
If you’re a newbie entrepreneur, building an e-commerce website with the Bluehost Website Builder is a hassle-free process requiring no technical skills. All you need to do is explore the smart drag and drop tools, select a smart AI theme of your choice, and your e-commerce website will be ready in a matter of a few minutes. Along with this, you can easily add products to your e-commerce website and integrate top payment gateways with the Bluehost E-commerce Builder.
On the other hand, if you would like to build your website from scratch you can build your e-commerce website easily using our WooCommerce Hosting. With WooCommerce Hosting, you can easily integrate an online store with WordPress as the site’s backend. There are several benefits of e-commerce for small businesses and building your website with WooCommerce Hosting aids in optimizing your business as it supports SSL certificates, can handle traffic surges, several online payment options, SEO optimization, performance, and much more.
After you’ve decided the mode of creating your e-commerce website, all you need to do is register your domain name and get designing. Once your basic website is setup, make sure that you include the above-mentioned pages on your e-commerce website so that it looks professional and credible. However, remember to not add too many pages and make it cluttered, remember to keep it clean and attractive and engaging and get that customer.
So, what are you waiting for? Set up your e-commerce website today with the right website pages and online store, to take your small business places!
Furthermore, if you want to learn how to build, grow, and maintain your online website, get professional support from our experts. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to drop them below.