Features to look at while
selecting your ecommerce store

 
Online shopping has evolved far beyond travel, books and music downloads. Shoppers are buying in more categories online, including fashion, health, beauty and groceries. To cater to such a huge number of categories, you need to be mindful while selecting and customizing the online shopping cart. The following will help you decide based on the best ROI.
 

• • Design: The e-commerce platform needs to have the flexibility to give your website the look you want. It needs to be able to update pages required to promote and run your businesses. The e-commerce platform should also be flexible enough so that minor design or page updates can be done without involving the developer
  • Stress-free integration:Seamless integration with new or existing sites is crucial. Online shopping cart applications should be capable of doing so. The shopping cart application’s architecture should be capable of supporting any technology as the business demands
  • Extensibility: On average, 55% of mobile commerce sales occur on tablets while 45% stem from smartphones, according to data from 43 retailers that broke out their mobile sales figures by device for the new 2014 Internet Retailer Mobile 500. This is a rising consumer trend that your business needs to consider as well. Increased spending comes as smartphones and tablets have become commonplace devices for shopping and buying online. To be successful in generating more sales, ensure that your online store renders user-friendly in all online channels, especially on mobile phones and tablets. Plus, your shopping cart application must provide integration services with multiple channels such as integration with POS systems, online marketplaces and price comparison engines
  • Security: Security, such as PCI compliance, is a foundational component to shopping cart software. It is mandatory and any application that raises red flags when it comes to the security of customer information should be a deal-breaker in your search
  • Delivery: Different customers have different priorities. Some are willing to wait for their orders; others are willing to pay extra for faster shipping, while still fewer are willing to pay the maximum fee for same day or overnight shipping. Therefore, it’s important that you have multiple shipping and payment options to offer customers. Moreover, tax management ability should be available to comply with different countries’ codes
  • Reporting: Often entry level packages are found to lack this feature. However, detailed reports on customer activities inside your store are always valuable for your business. Such reports will help you fine-tune your sales process, your marketing activities and store so that you can maximize your sales
  • SEO Friendly: To increase your website visibility, make sure you search for an SEO-friendly platform that will improve your ranking on search engines. Platforms which include SEO elements such as Meta content, use of the canonical tag, top-level URLs, search-friendly URLs, and even redirecting functionality have more prominence on the web than others
  • Support: The e-commerce platform should provide good service and customer support so that customers can reach a representative easily whenever they want to. This builds customer satisfaction and loyalty. However, customer support costs are expected to be included in the hosting costs itself. Checkout Nexcess.

Changes in the retail world are happening faster than one can hope to follow. In such a competitive industry, it’s not enough to just market your product or service. A smart shopping cart application with all the best features is one of your best tools to meet the latest technological challenges for retail companies.

How can i95Dev help?

If you would like to learn more, please feel free to contact us at info@i95dev.com or call at 301.760.7499.