If you package and display your online store’s products smartly, and incorporate a simple and straightforward purchasing process, your customers are much more likely to make purchases and recommend your online store to others.
Here are a few tips, several WordPress theme recommendations, and several things you don’t want to neglect if your goal is to provide your customers with a great shopping experience.
Create a Great Online Shopping Experience
To create a great online shopping experience, keep the following in mind:
- Products First, Design Second –While it’s important to have an attractive online store, its design should not be allowed to overwhelm or detract from your products. Working to achieve a minimal, yet elegant design would be one good approach. Another approach might be to create webpages packed with interesting images, all of which call attention to the products. Make your store an interesting and pleasant place to visit, but keep your focus on the products.
- Great User Experience – Offering a great user experience is not all that difficult to achieve. Simply give your eCommerce website’s visitors the information they are looking for in order to make a purchase. If the information is there, your visitors will spend more time at your website, leading to increased sales. A visitor who can easily find the information he or she is looking for is more likely to become a repeat customer.
- Related Products – A related product might be a different make, a different model, a different size or color, or an accessory. It could be anything that might also be of interest to someone who is looking for a certain product. Give your customers options and suggestions designed to kindle their interest. Make it easy for them to place one more item in the shopping cart.
- Great Product Photos – Since a shopper can’t touch or feel an online product, how your products can be critical. Make every effort to use images that will show products at their best. Show how they are used, or show images of them from different perspectives. The more a photo has to say, the easier it is for a shopper to make a decision.
Take Advantage of a What a Premier WP Theme can Offer – Creating a top-notch online store can involve a great deal of work, but if you choose the right eCommerce WordPress theme, it will do the heavy lifting for you.
Here are some of the best
Finding just the right theme to create a top-of-the-line eCommerce website is not always the easiest of tasks. The theme you choose should have all the necessary features, it should be receiving excellent reviews, it must have the flexibility and user friendly capabilities that enable to you to easily create a website you would want to put your brand on, and its customer support should be there for you 24/7. Atelier is such a theme.
Atelier is a multipurpose, eCommerce-oriented WordPress theme. View any of its 12 demos, and it immediately becomes apparent that the main focus of its Power Elite Authors is on online shopping, with an emphasis on tailor-made display functions that fully address the needs of the mobile-device shopping crowd.
This theme is an ideal choice for the website designer who wants to offer a slick and satisfying online shopping experience. The layouts are modern and elegant, and the features and elements you need to customize your web pages are right at your fingertips. Atelier may well be today’s most popular WordPress theme that specifically addresses the eCommerce niche.
If you want a WordPress theme that was created solely for the eCommerce niche, one that is fun to use, and one that has all the features you need to sell almost anything to anyone, you should definitely give Shopkeeper a close look. This is an ideal WordPress theme if your product line features clothing and accessories, although you can easily customize your web pages to sell whatever product line you wish.
The grid and masonry product layouts are designed to make your products stand out, and there are special shopping pages, categories, and related eCommerce features galore. You will enjoy working with Shopkeeper’s powerful Admin Panel, the Revolution Slider plugin, and the popular Visual Composer Page Builder.
ThemeForest customer feedback was, and is, largely responsible for the creation of this theme, which strongly suggests it has every feature you are likely to need to create a stunning eCommerce website.
If ease of use was the only criterion, Enfold would most likely win every contest against any competing multipurpose WordPress theme hands down. This best-rated ThemeForest theme has what is arguably the easiest to use drag and drop layout editor you are likely to come across in your search for the ideal eCommerce theme. Enfold has everything you need to put together a shopping website that will not only attract visitors, but will encourage them to stay awhile.
This multipurpose theme is suitable for any skill level, and if you should encounter a problem or have question, the customer support is excellent. Ask any of this themes 56,000 customers what they think and you will most likely get a thumbs up. Since Enfold is highly responsive, your online store pages can be showcased in high definition on all current mobile devices.
Trend is a relative newcomer (Created June 15, 2015) that is already getting its share of 5-star reviews. This multipurpose, responsive WordPress theme could easily be your eCommerce solution. It features an array of pre-made layouts/conceptual designs that are excellent idea generators, in addition to being completely customizable. You will like the header style selection, and the fact that the Visual Composer page builder, Slider Revolution, the Main Mega Menu, and WooCommerce come with the package.
This premium WordPress theme’s amazing collection of features can be used to create a unique eCommerce website that will give your customers a shopping experience that will be hard to top. The authors of Kallyas appear to have left no stone unturned in their quest to create the perfect eCommerce theme.
The slider collection alone is more diverse and comprehensive than you are likely to find in any other WordPress theme. The same is true for this theme’s collection of home and custom pages. This super flexible theme is one of the most complete themes to ever appear on the market.
Some Things You Should Not Overlook
You naturally want your online store to be attractive, user friendly, and easy to navigate; but before going online, there are several things that should not be overlooked.
Mobile Optimized
If your website is not mobile optimized, your presentations could be degraded, mobile device shoppers could find navigation difficult, and you could easily risk losing half of your potential customer base. Responsive WordPress themes won’t let that happen, but you should check nevertheless.
Easy Checkout
A cumbersome online checkout process is the equivalent of making a customer stand in line. While a checkout process involves more steps that placing an item in a shopping cart does, you still want to make it as streamlined as possible. Abandoned carts are not moneymakers.
Customer Reviews
Your online store should feature a customer review page. Shoppers like to know what others think about a given product or a service. Giving your customers the opportunity to express themselves shows how much you appreciate their business.
FAQ Pages
An FAQ page or two is a customer support feature visitors appreciate, plus they can save you the time you might normally spend answering the same questions over and over. Check out other websites’ FAQ pages for some good ideas.
Fast Load Time
A web store that is slow to load can turn away customers and hurt your search engine rankings. If your website pages takes 3 seconds or mode to load, you need to take remedial action. Test load times with Page Speed before going online.
Any of the four WordPress themes we have recommended here will do the hard work of building an eCommerce store for you, but to ensure your venture will be a success, you need to follow the tips we’ve offered, and also make certain you have not overlooked something of importance. We would like to hear about your experiences with the WordPress theme you’ve selected.