1. Ecommerce website loading speed

Your website's load speed is essential to seeing high conversion and success with selling online. Most consumers expect websites to load in less than 5 seconds. Yep, just 5 seconds! The ideal time for websites to load in is around 3 seconds.

So, how do you make sure your website loads quickly? Here are a few things you can do to help your website load fast.

• Pick a website theme/design that loads fast. If you're using Shopify to build your ecommerce website I would recommend the Turbo theme for Shopify. It's one of the fastest-loading Shopify themes and it's got great layout and customization options. It's also mobile friendly, which we'll talk more about later.
• Use website plugin apps that load quickly. Free apps often don't load fast, but paid apps typically use faster servers (like AWS) that will help their plugin on your website load faster.
• Make sure photos on your website are small in size, preferably less than 20 MB.

2. Ecommerce mobile website design

Nearly 80% of consumers who shop online use a mobile device to complete their purchase. It's important your website is fully functional on cellphones and tablets as well as on a desktop computer. While you may use a computer to edit your website's theme, it's important to consider that most of your customers will be using your website on their cellphone.

Look at the mobile website option before selecting a website theme or finalizing your website design. Use it on your own cell phone if possible and have other people try it out as well. Is it easy to navigate? Does it load quickly?

Your mobile website should load quickly, be easy to navigate, and offer the same (or more) features than the desktop version of your website. Vertical photos and links to social media are also good additions to mobile versions of websites.

3. Creating social proof

Social proof is the idea that people are motivated by seeing what other people are posting, clicking, adding to cart, purchasing, etc. Having social proof on your website will show customers that your brand is desirable by others and trustworthy because other people have used your services or purchased your products.

What are examples of social proof?

• Customer reviews of your products
• Social media posts about your brand
• Notifications showing when someone adds to cart or buys something from your website
• Photos on your website of customers using products

You can include social proof on your website by allowing customers to leave reviews and showing live stats of how many people are on your website. You can also feature photos from social media accounts of your products in action.

4. How to drive traffic to your website

Think about how people are going to find your ecommerce website. Popular ways to drive traffic to your store are using search engines and social media.

The term "SEO" or search engine optimization is all about making your website and products show up on Google, Bing, Yahoo, or other search engines when people type in specific keywords. Keywords or search terms are things people type into search engines to yield specific results. For example, you might type in "healthy dinner recipes" into Google and Google will show you food blogs that use the word "healthy dinner recipe" a lot on their website, or recipe books with "healthy dinner recipes in the title or description of the product listing.

You can use SEO to drive traffic to your website from search engines. You can do it organically or using paid advertisements. There are a ton of different SEO strategies that vary with the type of business or website you are trying to promote.

The other popular option for driving website traffic is social media. You are likely more familiar with this method. You can create social media accounts for your business that you post on and point people back to your website to drive traffic. Like SEO, you can use social media to drive traffic organically or by using paid advertisements.

5. Sharing shipping and return policies

One of the most important things to online shoppers today is an ecommerce business's shipping and returns policy. It's important to make this information prominent on your website. Create a page on your website simply titled "Shipping and Return Policy" and outline the details there. 

Your shipping and return policy will be dependent on your business. Think about how quickly you will be able to fulfill orders, what shipping methods you will use, how you will handle lost packages, and other possible situations you can encounter when shipping packages. Then, think about returns. Will you accept returns? Are there contingencies involved? 

Make this information clear and easy to find on your website. Add your shipping and return policy page link to your main menu and footer menu. Google actually looks for this page and favors websites that display it. In fact, you can't run Google Shopping Ads without a shipping and return policy page.

Looking for more small business tips and resources?

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