The world wide web offers shoppers an unprecedented amount of choices. Because of this, it is crucial that your website offers everything that shoppers could need in order to browse, make a decision, and purchase from you rather than your competitors. Because of the total saturation of e-commerce solutions for just about every type of product and service on the web, shoppers are pickier when it comes to how each brand’s website is designed, what features it provides, and the amount of information it contains. If you want to lock down more sales without massive amounts of additional marketing and work, then you’ll want to know about these features that help improve your site’s functionality.

Always-Visible Search Box

First-time visitors to your website may not be able to easily find what they want at first glance. In order to make the process easier for them and ensure they are never more than a click away from an answer, your e-commerce website should feature an always-visible search box that maintains a consistent position on the screen of any device. Likewise, you can also feature static search boxes in multiple locations on each page to further facilitate the ease of searching for desired products and services.

Always-Visible Shopping Cart

Just like with search options, a friendly reminder to shoppers of their shopping cart (and the items they’ve added to it) is a great idea that improves functionality. Especially for those on mobile devices, you don’t want to be pinging your website to them in a format that makes checking out difficult. By creating either a floating shopping cart button or positioning multiple shopping cart buttons on various parts of the page, you’ll ensure a higher rate of conversions and purchases in every situation.

List Current Sales

Have several items that you’re wanting to get rid of quickly? Promoting a few in-stock items in this week’s email pitch? You can improve the chances of people purchasing these items by featuring them on their very own page. By featuring these items and ensuring that there is a clearly-visible “sales” button or link on every single page, you will grab the attention of more people who have stopped in to browse your goods. This feature can help increase sales as well; some people will end up buying more items once they see the great deals you’re offering on other, select goods.

Create a FAQs Section

Many shoppers will have questions about various policies for your business. When do you ship items? What forms of payment do you use? How do you handle returns? By pinging your website with this information, you will reduce customer service inquiries and more adequately convince shoppers to make their purchase immediately (which reduces the percentage of shoppers who do not follow-through once adding items to cart).

Have any e-commerce horror stories? Tell us about them below in the comments.