By Dani Chudler, Paid Media Specialist, Speakeasy Co.
As an eCommerce and logistics platform, we've paved the way for over 300 brands to begin their journey with direct-to-consumer (DTC) sales. The idea and product are there, but what is the best way to reach customers online? It all starts with a high-functioning, user-friendly shop website.
With our preferred platform Shopify at top of mind, here are some tips for creating a successful eCommerce website:
1. Brand and Product Imagery
You've claimed a domain and began building your website, featuring your logo on headers and footers. The next step is adding high resolution product shots and lifestyle content visible across your shop website.
Product Shots: Commercial-style images act as a foundation to your product. For the alcohol industry, we recommend a simple background with clear lighting on the bottle and label.
Lifestyle Shots: We recommend adding lifestyle images to your product pages, or scattered throughout your website as sliding banners and headers. When done correctly, your brand personality should shine through your photographs, providing a memorable website experience.
Videos: Proven to drive sales, videos can be formatted as a how-to or lifestyle shoot, supplemental to necessary photos.
2. Prioritize Mobile First
Our phones put the world at our fingertips. On average, Americans spend over five hours per day on a mobile device. Consequentially, 60% of landing page views and search volume come from mobile users.
With this in mind, the design of your shop should be prioritized for mobile before desktop. Providing a pleasant user experience on mobile is essential. Shopify makes it easy to edit your themes and optimize for mobile. Developers can even edit from their phones to imitate the user experience before publishing.
3. Navigation
Be seamless and user-friendly. This can be done by minimizing the amount of clicks needed to add a product to your cart. Providing all product info on one page, after clicking on a certain product, will create a substantially quicker purchase decision for the customer. Oftentimes, online shoppers act on impulse. It's hard to be impulsive if compelling product details and reviews are not right in front of you.
4. Connect to Social Media
A simple yet effective technique for growing organically on social media is by adding your links your shop website. Some Shopify themes have this feature already embedded. Curious customers will take a peek and may give you a follow. Additionally, using Shopify, you can integrate a shop onto your Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest.
Bonus points for building your DTC site with Speakeasy! With talented and seasoned web developers at Speakeasy, we drive incredible growth for our partners. These optimizations are a part of a winning strategy that will surely reflect in a higher conversion rate on your website. We appreciate the chance to grow with our partners. Click here for success stories.
Sources:
https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/small-business/ecommerce-website
