Running an eCommerce website could be challenging and sometimes even overwhelming. You need to create a perfect balance between design, functionality, and performance. It’s no longer enough to create an aesthetically pleasing website. Without the right features, your online store could drive away customers, leaving a severe dent in your bottom line.
In eCommerce, your website’s functionality could make or break the deal. The right integrations could provide a seamless user experience for your customers. It could also boost conversions and deliver exponential efficiencies and cost savings to your small business.
Essential eCommerce website features for small businesses
So, what eCommerce website features are crucial for your online store? Let’s find out.
1. Marketing and customer support
Marketing and communications typically consume a significant amount of time and resources. But with the right integrations, you can cut down on these efforts and dramatically improve your engagement with customers.
Live chat software like Tidio and Live Chat, for example, have become an absolute necessity for today’s eCommerce websites. They have simplified and sped up the communication process and allowed businesses to increase conversions.
Various other marketing features can help you achieve similar levels of efficiency. For instance, you can integrate email marketing tools, social media content automation, and content management systems to improve consistency and engagement throughout the customer journey.
2. Multiple payment options
If your eCommerce website has only one payment option, then you’re likely turning away many potential customers at the checkout. From credit and debit cards to e-wallets like PayPal, Stripe, and Google Pay, having several payment options is critical to extend your customer base. Today, some sites like Shopify are even accepting Bitcoin payments. So, for you to compete, this could be an essential feature to integrate.
Of course, payment security would be an essential factor to build customer confidence and ensure data protection. Building transparency into payments and refunds is also critical.
3. Shipping features
Clicking the purchase button and making the payment doesn’t end the purchasing experience for your customer. They would expect reasonable shipping fees and transparency in delivery with tracking facilities. The more information you can provide on these areas, the more inclined your customers would be to purchase from you.
This is where shipping features could come in handy. They can streamline the delivery process not just for your customers but also for your team. For instance, they can bring automation tools and allow you to compare carrier fees, manage orders, and track deliveries. And all these could help cut down cost-intensive resources, deliver transparency, and win customer trust.
4. Inventory management
Keeping track of your inventory on a spreadsheet could be a severe drain on your resources as your business grows. It could also increase room for errors and slow down the decision-making process. This is why inventory management should be an essential eCommerce website feature for a growing business.
It can help you keep track of inventory movement, plan more effectively for peak demand changes, and improve inventory forecasting. And these could translate to significant efficiencies and cost advantages in the long run.
5. Accounting integrations
As you scale your business operations, accounting activities will also increase. There will be more invoices to raise, a larger supplier base to pay, and more sales to process. If you’re relying on manual processing of all these activities, then you’ll need more people to manage them over time.
But by integrating accounting features, you can transfer the bulk of the workload online. It could help minimize errors, increase efficiency, and speed up decision-making for your business.
6. Customer relationship management (CRM)
This is another area you can easily integrate into your eCommerce website. When your business expands, manually managing customer data will not be practical. With CRM features, you can bring all customer information to a single platform, making it easier to analyze and segment customers, personalize communications and product offerings, and provide more customized service.
These are crucial to building better engagement, stronger relationships, and long-term loyalty. Overall, it could help keep your customers happy and boost conversions for your sales team.
7. Analytics and reporting
Data insights are critical for eCommerce businesses to thrive in a competitive marketplace. They can allow you to evaluate the customer journey and understand how customers think and behave. They can also help identify bottlenecks, take corrective action faster, and make prudent data-backed decisions.
So, analytics and reporting features are a must-have eCommerce website feature for any business, regardless of scale.
To wrap up
ECommerce website features available for today’s online businesses are simply countless. But for a small business owner working with limited budgets, weighing up business needs is critical before selecting what’s essential. But some features could add a significant boost to your operations’ efficiency, performance, and bottom line. Best of all, they could help you deliver a winning customer experience.
