10 things you need to know before building your e-commerce website

Web Design and Development
Author: MASK Digital Solutions
April 29, 2021

If you’re thinking about creating an online business or selling your products online, we’ve created a list for you to make sure your e-commerce website checks all the boxes! Sell your products and services online whilst creating an online community of people that genuinely love and engage with your content.

  1. Figure out what kind of content you’ll be publishing

There’s a couple of different types of content you can create on your e-commerce website to help bring in new customers and retain them.

2. Remember to keep your website design user friendly and mobile responsive

The easier it is to navigate through your site, the less likely it is for customers to bounce off it. Nobody likes a site that’s complicated to use. Having a clear navigation path also helps Google crawl your site faster. This improves your SEO and makes it easier for your website to rank on SERPs.

If it takes you more than a minute (and that’s pushing it) to find something on your site, then you need to streamline your UI some more.

 3. Optimize for voice search

More and more people use their phones to search for things and complete tasks during our day-to-day lives. According to Think with Google, 72% of people who own voice-activated speakers say that devices like Alexa, Google Assistant, Apple’s Siri or Samsung’s Bixby are used as part of their daily routine. So we need to start adapting our SEO strategy to suit the way people talk as well! Start targeting different keywords to suit the way people voice search for things online.

4. Secure checkout

Make sure your checkout process is secure and will not be liable for any breaches or attacks from hackers. You can integrate payment gateways like Stripe or PayPal and even include the option to pay in instalments using Afterpay or Klarna. Having a streamlined and efficient checkout process is very important to an e-commerce website because a complicated one means your customer will be more likely to abandon their cart. Also, make sure to include your pricing summary very clearly so as to not lead to any confusion when the time comes to make the payment (e.g unexplained shipping costs or taxes).

5. A CMS that allows for easy updates to the website copy to keep up with the trends or news.

Just like how the modern world is always evolving, your website copy has to as well! You need to update your website copy every 3-6 months or so. Not to mention, you might want to create blog content on your website to bring in customers, so having a content management system that is convenient to use is very important!

6. 24/7 Customer Service

If you’ve got a website that offers products and services globally, then you need to be prepared to find out a way to answer any questions that your customers might have. A good way to be available all the time is to incorporate a chatbot, (we like ManyChat) or a good free option is Facebook Messenger Customer Chat. You can customize your Messenger chatbot and easily embed the chatbot on your website.

If you don’t want to do this, you can incorporate an FAQ page and include 5-10 questions that customers usually contact you about and provide detailed answers for them.

7. Incorporate a social media sharing feature into your website

This makes it easier for people to share your blog posts or products on their Facebook or Instagram pages. Which means more exposure for you! It’s a quick integration into your website and will help start the conversation around your brand.

8. Connect to Instagram shop

Instagram shop is the latest big shift to convenient online shopping. Getting your business up on Instagram shop is a breeze and shopping on it gives people a visual storefront to explore products from the businesses they follow. It also allows easy access to pricing and product information. All your shoppers have to do is tap on a tagged post or click on the shop button and check out all the businesses that have an Instagram shop.

9. Invest some time into email marketing

We’ve said this before and we’ll say it again, email marketing is super cost-effective and helps you reach a ton of people! A monthly newsletter can do wonders to help you acquire and retain customers, and it won’t take you too long to create the content for it. Take your email marketing to the next level by automating your processes using ActiveCampaign or MailChimp to handle all your email marketing campaigns!

10. Include product reviews and testimonials 

If potential customers don’t know how great your products and services are, then they might not ever convert! Include written and video testimonials from your previous happy customers. It’s also a great way to improve your credibility, and you can reuse your testimonials and broadcast them to all your social media followers!


As always, feel free to reach out to us if you have any questions on any of these points mentioned above! You can email us at support@maskdigitalsolutions.com or DM us on Facebook or Instagram.

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