What is a good online store like?

Online shopping attracts money now and in the future. You simply can't do it with just brick and mortar, and running an online store has become necessary for almost every company. At the same time, the competition for income received via the network is intensifying.

If your intention is to set up an online store or increase the sales of an existing store, it may not be the easiest thing to do at the moment. At least when you don't know what you're doing. Nowadays, you have to seriously invest in an online store if you want to run a successful business online. As an entrepreneur and online retailer, you should therefore know or at least understand what a good online store is like and all the things that make an online store successful.

In this article, we listed the eight most important things that all good online stores have in common. When your online store does business with each of these, we can guarantee that your competitor's customers will also switch to buying from your online store.

Without further ado, let's move on to the checklist of a good online store!

1. The online store is made from the customer's point of view

Even if your product selection is the best of its kind, very broad, or you offer a certain product as almost the only one in Finland, the customer still doesn't necessarily want to buy from you. If this is still the case at the moment, the reason is probably that the online store has not been designed with the customer in mind.

In this case, you transfer the potential cash flow that was in your jump to your competitor.

When an online store is bad, it gives a potential customer just reasons not to buy. If, for example, the information the customer needs is not easily found there, or the online store is even a little difficult or annoying to use, the customer will probably decide that the purchase is not worth the effort.

On the contrary, a good online store only gives reasons to buy. In a good online store, the customer's needs have been taken into account on a broader level, obstacles to buying have been removed and the buying process has been made smooth.

In other words, buying has been made as easy and fast as possible .

For example, when completing a purchase requires a minimal number of clicks and the online store is clear for the customer to navigate, the implementation has already been partly successful. In addition, it is worth using the search tool to make it even easier for the customer to find the products.

Another important thing is the loading time of the online store .

If a page or individual content takes more than two seconds to load, this will probably drive most people away from your online store, so you should fix it right away.

Sometimes, to speed up the loading time, it is enough to change the hosting service to a faster one. You should also check with the hosting service that there is no traffic cap in use.

However, in order to achieve optimal speed, you often have to remove unnecessary items from the online store, for example by tidying up the code, optimizing content and removing unnecessary add-ons.

2. Product images and product texts are of high quality

It is understandable that you may want to save on product images and texts by doing it yourself. There is nothing wrong with this if the online retailer is a skilled photographer and copywriter. If this is not the case, you can outsource the matter to a professional.

Low-quality images act as an obstacle to buying and create an unprofessional image of your company. This does not send the desired message to the customer. The customer may well think that if there is no investment even in the pictures, the product cannot be of high quality.

Product images and texts play a particularly important role in online shopping, because the customer cannot test the product in advance, feel it and its material, or examine the quality of the product as they can in a brick-and-mortar store. Sometimes it can also be difficult to judge the color and size of the product from behind the screen.

That's why in a good online store, pictures and texts show all the information the customer needs to make a purchase decision.

However, it's not worth listing all possible product features or writing a novel that no one can read. Still, all the most important features and benefits must come out from the pictures and texts.

In addition to using the texts and high-quality images sold in the online store, the former should be optimized for search engines and findability. There are heaps of tips on the net for those who are interested in this matter. In addition, it is definitely worth using videos and customer reviews in product listings.

Pictures, texts and videos can be produced by the online retailer himself, an advertising agency or a freelancer in the field. Hiring an employee is of course also an option if there are a lot of products or the matter is topical.

It doesn't matter who makes the content, as long as the end result is high quality.

3. Proceeding at the checkout is easy and fast

In a good online store, the customer's journey from the shopping cart to making the payment goes smoothly without unnecessary twists and turns. If shopping carts in your online store are abandoned at an exceptional rate, the reason is often that the checkout process is too difficult.

With the following measures, you can ensure that the purchase transaction is more likely to be carried through to the finish line:

• A simple checkout makes paying easy and fast . The checkout process should be limited to one page, which is kept as simple as possible. Even the titles and the menu can be sensible to remove from the checkout, so as not to be taken away from there. It is also not a good idea to exhaust or frighten the customer by asking for additional information that is not normally required to complete the order.

• Removal of mandatory registration . If ordering requires the creation of an account, it is an extra step for the customer and invariably an obstacle to completing the purchase. It is definitely worth lowering the threshold to buy by removing the obligation to register in the online store. You can always give the option to register to those who wish to do so.

• Clearly stating delivery costs . All fees charged to the customer's bag, be it postage, taxes or some other fees, should always be indicated in the shopping cart before proceeding to checkout. Surprise costs that only appear after entering the data are a sure way to make the customer abandon the shopping cart, also in a situation where the value of the order is greater than the costs in question.

• The right payment options . Finns prefer by far the most online banking, debit card and credit card when paying, so merchants operating in the domestic market should use these payment methods. In addition, you can consider the possibility of invoicing and partial payment, MobilePay, PayPal, Apple Pay, etc.

4. The online store can easily be found in search engines

A good online store is optimized for search engines at least on a basic level so that potential customers can find it easily.

In principle, a well-implemented online store is already partially optimized for search engines because the technology already works well there. If high-quality content has also been produced there, visibility in search engines can be at a good level, even if no special investment was made in optimizing the online store.

A bad online store is by no means optimal for people or search engines. Usually, such an online store relies on advertisements for visibility, which is not profitable in the long or even the short term, because advertising costs money and no one buys from a bad online store.

A search engine optimized online store does not need to be advertised at all if you don't want to, because it appears with the right terms and in the first search results.

Search engine optimization includes three different areas. Internal optimization covers the content of the online store (keywords, metadata, URLs and internal linking), external optimization backlinks (links leading to your online store from elsewhere) and technical optimization technical aspects such as speed, usability, responsiveness and code. In a well-planned online store, the last mentioned has been polished to perfection.

If this is not the case, the online retailer has a lot to do. If the technology is flexible and there is enough time and interest, you can learn to do everything yourself. There are also instructions for this online, especially for those who are able to learn about it in English.

Often, however, it makes more sense to outsource the optimization to an expert company that can achieve results quickly and reliably.

The experts also follow the best practices in the field and know how to avoid the so-called black-hat techniques that can quickly get an online store on Google's blacklist. If you still plan to do or do optimization yourself, it is worth looking for more detailed information.

Maintaining good visibility also requires measures from the online store, because search engines change their algorithms constantly and the terms used by customers change over time. So the things that work today may not work two years or two months from now.

However, providing the best possible user experience and high-quality and useful content are things that cannot go wrong.

5. There has been an investment in user and customer experience

Let's talk about user experience. A good product alone does not guarantee sales if the customer's experience from the online store is not good.

As we talked about earlier, the user experience should be seamless, i.e. as easy and fast as possible for the customer. You should also personalize the experience, because the more you show that you care about your customer by offering individual service, the more positive it will be of course.

When the entire purchase path is tailored to the needs of the target customer, a positive experience is created, thanks to which a purchase is made and the online store is likely to be returned to and recommended to others. Investing in the best possible user and customer experience in the online store and elsewhere in business is, in the long run, the thing that increases trust in your company and creates long-lasting customer relationships.

In a good online store, user and customer experience is probably taken into account already in the planning phase, when it is easiest to implement.

Customer experience can also be improved with automation. Automated communication is an effective means of establishing a connection with the customer and reminding them of the existence of the online store. You should not rely on it alone, but the customer experience must be refined from within the online store.

In campaigns, invest in interesting content and offers, as well as a title that entices the customer to open the message. It is also worth testing different transmission times. The customer can also be nice to be remembered on the anniversary with congratulations and, for example, a discount code.

For some, reminders about an abandoned shopping cart work well, for others, worse. You should remember to include a link in such an e-mail, from which you can go directly back to the shopping cart.

In addition, it is definitely worth automating the collection of reviews, because there is no sales method that works better than other people's recommendations.

However, remember to ensure that the customer is not contacted too often or without permission. On the other hand, the interval between sending messages must not be too long, because the matter is often not relevant to the customer months or weeks from now.

6. The online store works flawlessly on mobile

A good online store is always ready to serve the customer, no matter what device they use to arrive there.

It is estimated that even more than 70 percent of customers use a phone or tablet when shopping online or researching and comparing products before making a purchase. Often the same person also makes visits from several different devices. According to statistics, online shopping can't afford to be anything other than mobile-friendly.

So you should make sure that the layout of your online store is responsive, i.e. adaptable to all devices. This should happen without the customer having to do anything about it. In addition, the store must work quickly on mobile.

This way, you won't lose a single deal because the customer is driving with the wrong device and can't get the online store to work properly.

Today, Google and other search engines place great value on mobile responsiveness, which means that a responsive online store can also be found better in search results.

7. The online store's customer service is fine

The growing number of contacts can surprise you during the high season and when online store sales suddenly take a hit. The same thing can happen if several blunders accidentally happen.

Of course, the best way to keep customers satisfied is to prevent damage and the need to contact them. However, there must always be the possibility of contact.

Many damages, such as selling a sold-out or incorrect product to a customer, can best be prevented by implementing an enterprise resource planning system (also in a small online store) and integrating it into the online store .

A good online store also has functional customer support, which you can contact easily and quickly enough if necessary.

Sometimes the online store's customer service is the online store itself. You can prepare for the busiest times of the year by hiring help, so delivery and response times cannot be unreasonably delayed and no customer is left without service.

In addition, you can prevent the so-called unnecessary contacts and returns efficiently when you answer customer questions on the website.

The customer should be able to find with little effort, for example, information related to products, delivery and returns, as well as other information relevant to your operations. By offering these, you save both yourself and your customers' time.

You can offer even more information, for example, in the form of downloadable user manuals or in a blog, which is also a great way to increase search engine visibility.

However, the most important things should be summarized so that they become clear to the customer by looking at the online store.

8. Bots to support customer service and sales

Not everyone has the opportunity to hire labor and not everyone wants to do it. In this case and in other cases as well, it is worth using interactive bots to help the online store, which are there to help the customer 24/7.

Unfortunately, at least at the moment, the chat bot does not completely handle customer service for you, but it can answer the most critical questions, in which case the online retailer's active work effort is not required quite as much. Of course, the merchant or customer service representative can also personally respond to the customer via the bot.

However, the advantage of the bot is that the customer can easily leave a message directly on the website even outside of normal opening hours.

This can even increase the probability that a possible problem situation will be reported while the issue is still relevant and the customer relationship can be saved. The more often people report their problem and other matter of surprise directly to your company, the more often you can of course react to the situation and restore trust in your online store. This is how you keep your customers satisfied and avoid negative reviews that hinder the creation of stores in the future.

‍

All eight of these features can be found in good online stores. So it is not an easy task, but not impossible either. However, with the help of a professional, the process goes much more smoothly and painlessly.