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18 Essential Features for Successful eCommerce Websites in 2023

John Ahya
John Ahya

May 03, 2022

4 Mins Read

Last Updated November 17, 2023

eCommerce Website Features

People worldwide now love to buy a lot of things online. They are using one or the other eCommerce website for the same. Besides this, there was a massive surge in eCommerce sales worldwide during the pandemic.

According to Nasdaq, more than 95% of purchases will be done online by 2040.

It indicates that the demand for eCommerce will increase in the near future like never before. But what is the reason behind the success of the eCommerce website?

The most important thing behind the success of an eCommerce website is its features.

If you have a brick-and-mortar store and plan to develop an eCommerce website, the most important thing you need to look after is the features of an eCommerce website.

There are many eCommerce sites worldwide, and each of them has different and unique features. Hence, it is really challenging to pick up the best eCommerce features list.

We have been developing eCommerce websites for a long time. Thus, we are familiar with the essential features of eCommerce websites.

Here, we curated the list of the best eCommerce website features you should consider.

1. User-Friendly Design

User-Friendly Design

User experience is one of the most crucial things customers expect from an eCommerce website. If customers do not find what they want, they leave the website immediately.

Therefore, it is essential to understand what users want from your website, what issues they are facing, and how you can fulfill them efficiently. To know your audience well, conduct usability testing and structure your website accordingly.

In the end, it boils down to a user-friendly design. It is responsible for increasing engagement and retention. Thus, user-friendly design is one of the crucial features of an eCommerce website.

2. Search Bar

A quick and effective search bar is one of the must-have features for your eCommerce website. Customers will keep returning if your eCommerce website has a search bar suggesting relevant products.

On the contrary, if your eCommerce website doesn’t have a quick search bar, users will leave it. This is because most users have a busy lifestyle and don’t like to spend hours finding a product online. Therefore, you should have a search bar on your eCommerce website that provides the best recommendations to users.

You can consider the search bar of Amazon. It is strong, and it displays the best feasible searches instantly. Hence, eCommerce search features give users the best results.

3. Create a Wishlist

It consists of all the products that customers would love to purchase in the near future. With the help of this feature, customers have to save products for later and buy them as per their needs.

Many people think that a wishlist is similar to a shopping cart. However, there is a sharp difference. In the case of a shopping cart, customers add products to the cart and purchase instantly. But in the wishlist, customers can add any product to their list and acquire it when needed.

Various eCommerce stores ignore this feature by not integrating it, which is one of the most common eCommerce mistakes. However, it is one of the essential eCommerce features in the case of products. Customers do not like buying many things immediately, like furniture, heavy electronic items, etc. They would rather add to the list and purchase in the future.

Besides this, a wish list is one of the best eCommerce features through which businesses can get valuable customer insights about customers and their products. They can make effective decisions based on the same.

4. Multiple Payment Options

Multiple Payment Options

When we talk about eCommerce, there would be a lot of transactions. If you want to establish your website as a leading store in the future, it is necessary to integrate payment options.

If you offer users to pay using a credit card or PayPal, you might still be unable to convert customers. Moreover, the limited payment option is one of the reasons behind increasing cart abandonment. Therefore, it is necessary to offer various payment options.

Currently, many users love to make their payments using electronic wallets. You should add this to your eCommerce website. Besides this, certain users love to purchase products the right way but don’t have money now. You can provide an option of Buy Now, Pay Later, which is one of the top eCommerce trends right now.

Integrating multiple-payment options into your website depends on your audience and business requirements.

5. Comprehensive Product Information

Shopping through eCommerce websites is a new norm. However, many people still hesitate when buying products from small retailers.

There are several reasons why people don’t like to purchase a product with a low to a minimum description. Firstly, people don’t have the option to try a product before purchasing. Secondly, customers don’t find relevant information about the product.

Product Information Management
In the USA,
56% of shoppers
place a higher value on detailed product descriptions.
Source: Periscope’s Retail Reimagined Report

Do you want to improve your product information? We can help you with the best Product Information Management (PIM) solution.

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Hence, it is really necessary to have a detailed product description that offers details like color, size, brand name, material, ingredients, etc. Also, there should be high-quality photos and videos of the product.

Lastly, a detailed product description helps the search engine understand the content well and rank high on search engines.

6. Customer Support

Strong customer support is one of the main reasons behind the success of an eCommerce website. Many customers get stuck while purchasing a product, have issues regarding the product, and face one or the other issue on an eCommerce website. Hence, they are looking for customer support.

To address the needs of these customers, you should provide them with different ways to contact you. It could be an email address or a toll-free number. Besides this, you can also integrate live chat to allow users to get answers to their queries instantly.

7. Product Reviews

Product Reviews

Many users love to read real-life reviews before making any purchase. According to the testimonial Engine, 72% of users don’t decide to buy a product before they read any review.

It indicates that customers trust reviews just like they get recommendations from their friends. Moreover, it gives them confidence regarding the purchase.

You should include customer reviews on your eCommerce site in a way that users can easily read them to make their purchase decision.

Integrating this basic eCommerce feature builds trust among customers about your brand and presents that you dare to present reviews.

8. Navigation

Navigation is another crucial eCommerce functionality. If your website doesn’t have proper navigation, users can’t find their desired product efficiently. Hence, you should provide better navigation to the users.

Besides primary navigation, your site should have breadcrumb navigation. It is a small text path indicating to users where they are on the website along with the symbol(>). It also states to Google that your site is structured. Therefore, you should integrate breadcrumb navigation into your eCommerce website.

9. Multi-Level Security

While accessing an eCommerce website and making a purchase, one of the things that people think about a lot is security. It is because users are sharing their data on the website.

It is necessary to provide multi-level security to protect users’ data from fraud, theft, or phishing attacks. For those who do not know, multi-level security enables you to sort objects and users depending on a system of hierarchical security levels and a system of non-hierarchical security groups.

To provide better security on the website, you should ensure the site has an SSL certificate. It is necessary to protect users’ sensitive information. Moreover, browsers display a non-secure message on the website that is not secure. In addition, at times, sites without SSL certificates don’t even open due to one or the other security issue. Hence, it would be best if you used SSL on your site.

Apart from SSL, you should ensure that your site has HTTPS. It prevents users from any kind of attack. In addition, Google gives more importance to a site that has HTTPS. So, multi-level security is also one of the must-have eCommerce features that you should consider.

10. Mobile-Friendly Features

People rely heavily on mobile devices to buy things online in this digital era. According to Statista, more than 58.99% of web traffic was from mobile devices in the 2nd quarter of 2022. The number will increase in the coming years.

To survive and thrive in the competitive market, you should ensure that your site is mobile-friendly. You should provide a better experience to the users right from the visit to leaving your eCommerce website.

You can keep your website mobile-friendly by offering a streamlined process for checkout. Also, you can provide a guest checkout option to make the process more efficient.

By keeping your website mobile-friendly, more users will visit your website. It will increase your conversions and revenue.

11. An Effective Shopping Cart

A shopping cart is one of the top eCommerce website features, which simplifies the entire process of buying products. In other words, it fills the gap between shopping and purchasing. It is a feature that facilitates actual purchases.

The shopping cart accepts all the payments from the customer and shares the purchase details with the retailer, payment provider, and other third parties.

It is nothing but the online version of the basket and cash register present in a supermarket store. The main difference is that the online shopping cart does much more work. It includes the role of shelves, building, cash registrar, and payment category, which sends details to the bank.

Simply put, it consists of many features such as product summary, adding or deleting products from the cart, selecting shipping details, entering coupon details, and continuing shopping.

The main thing here is to keep the users hooked on your store until they purchase products. Therefore, you should improve your shopping cart and keep it distraction-free. Offering a personalized experience on your shopping cart page can help, like showing recommended products or recently viewed items.

Further, you can integrate the abandoned cart module on the eCommerce store. When you integrate this, you can alert users about the products they have never purchased in their carts.

12. Special Discounts & Offers

Who prefers to avoid getting special discounts and offers on the product?

It is something that people worldwide look to offer while shopping from eCommerce websites. These things generate an emotion of FOMO (fear of missing out), and they love to purchase the product right away.

Moreover, most people believe they would save more through discounts & offers.

Now-or-never deals, limited-time offers, BOGO (Buy One Get One), etc., generally attract users to get the products at the best time and increase their sales.

One of the best things you can consider is offering free shipping to the users. It will drastically increase your sales. Hence, this is one of the best eCommerce store features.

13. Sort & Filter Options

Customers use a very detailed search on an eCommerce site. For example, ‘gray tee with half sleeves medium size’ or ‘iPhone with 12GB RAM, 64MP camera’. So, it becomes essential for you to show them what they are looking for.

The sorting & filtering feature comes in handy in such a situation. These features allow customers to easily navigate and find the products they are looking for by sorting and filtering based on various criteria such as price, brand, and rating.

The ability to sort and filter can save customers time and increase their likelihood of finding what they want, resulting in a better user experience and a higher chance of making a purchase.

14. FAQ Section For Products & Store

An FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) section is a must-have feature for any eCommerce website in 2023. This feature provides customers with quick and easy access to answers about products and the store. Your FAQ section can help reduce customer service inquiries and streamline customers’ shopping experiences.

You should add an effective FAQ section that covers questions related to product specifications, shipping and returns policies, payment options, and store hours. The section should be well organized, easy to navigate, and provide clear and concise answers to customer questions.

A good FAQ section will eventually help you build customer trust and credibility, and customers will more likely feel confident in making a purchase.

15. Easy Checkout Process

Cart abandonment is an unfortunate but prevalent reality in eCommerce, so streamlining checkout processes to address this challenge is key in combating it.

Enabling guest checkouts is critical as it enables customers to complete purchases more seamlessly without creating accounts. This eCommerce website feature reduces friction and potential drop-offs and offers multiple payment methods for optimal payment experiences.

Reduce user effort and hasten the process by only collecting essential information in form fields. Implementing a progress indicator provides users with a clear picture of where they stand in their checkout journey, increasing transparency while encouraging completion and decreasing cart abandonment rates.

16. Personalization and Recommendations

As we mentioned earlier, the search feature can provide valuable insights into what exactly your customers are looking for.

You can use these insights to customize product recommendations for frequent customers.

This is one of the important eCommerce features that opens up an opportunity for up-selling and cross-selling.

Using customers’ contact information, you can send them personalized recommendations through emails or text messages.

17. Order Tracking

When we are talking about eCommerce features list, order tracking is crucial. Today, customers want real-time updates on their orders. They feel completely satisfied if they are well-informed about their orders’ progress, right from confirmation to shipping to delivery.

Real-time order tracking facility reduces customer inquiries about status updates and saves resources and money by cutting operational costs.

Furthermore, real-time tracking builds trust between buyers and sellers as customers witness how far their package travels between its warehouse origination point and delivery to their doorstep.

18. Social Media Integration & Sharing Option

Businesses should never ignore social media’s impact on purchasing decisions. By adding social sharing buttons on product pages, businesses allow customers to easily share their favorite items across their various networks.

This is one of the important eCommerce features that effectively turns customers into brand ambassadors who increase visibility while building trust through personal recommendations from friends and connections more so than traditional advertisements can ever hope.

Enabling users to log in using social media accounts also simplifies registration and login, eliminating friction in the customer journey.

Furthermore, social login also offers valuable data insights, helping businesses better understand their audiences and tailor marketing efforts more efficiently. These strategies boost engagement while expanding reach. This ultimately increasing conversion rates and driving growth within digital marketplaces.

Want To Implement These e-Commerce Features in Your Online Store
Want To Implement These eCommerce Features in Your Online Store?

Our dedicated team of eCommerce developers can help you implement these eCommerce features in your online store to improve your user experience.

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Final Words

We hope you have understood the top eCommerce features that you should have on your website. By integrating the right set of features on eCommerce websites, you can provide a better experience to the users and increase your revenue.

If you still have any doubts about the eCommerce website features, feel free to reach out to us.

Webdesk Solutions is a professional eCommerce development company. Hence, we can understand your needs well and provide you with the most reliable and futuristic solution.

Frequently Asked Questions

It would be best if you focused on branding, optimizing user experience, providing high-quality products and services, using effective marketing strategies, and providing excellent customer service to make your eCommerce website stand out.

It’s important to have a responsive and mobile-friendly design because it ensures that the site is optimized for all devices, including desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones, which helps to provide a seamless user experience and improve conversion rates.

Product reviews and ratings can help build trust with customers, improve the perceived quality of your products, increase engagement, and ultimately drive sales.

John Ahya
John Ahya

John is the President and Co-Founder of WebDesk Solution, LLC. Living the digital agency life for over 10 years, he explores an extensive eCommerce world. He has immense experience in all major e-commerce platforms. Being a nature lover, he likes to breathe the fresh air on the hill stations during vacations.

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