Launching an online store or eCommerce website can be pretty complex, especially for new business owners. When it comes to a website launch, all business owners will want to experience a perfect, hassle-free process. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case. With this guide, however, we’ll show you how to effectively get your website off the ground and make a great first impression on your online customers.
eCommerce Website Checklist: A Step-By-Step Guide
When building a website, one of the most important things to remember is to cover all your bases and ensure that no detail is left out. With this handy checklist, we’ll be able to make sure that everything is in order so that you have a smooth website launch process. Follow this step-by-step checklist and you won’t have any problems.
- Use Clear Calls to Action (CTAs)
Often, your online customers need a little gentle persuasion to make a purchase. Using clear, actionable phrases like “Buy Now” and “Order Now” will do the trick. For a little additional encouragement, these CTAs should also be made in colors that stand out so your customers can’t miss them.
2. Use Consistent Style
Creating strong branding for your company is important. For your website, this means having consistent style, colors, fonts, tone, and other elements that customers may notice. Before your new website launch, carefully go through each page of your website to ensure your branding is consistent.
3. Get High Quality Images
With online retail, your customers don’t get the chance to feel or see your products in person before they buy them. To try and give them the closest real-life experience, each product should have high-quality images. These pictures should also be taken at different angles and include a mix of overall impressions and close-up detailed shots.
4. Have An Easily Accessible Cart and Checkout Pages
Online shoppers can be rather fickle. They won’t stay and make purchases on a website that makes shopping difficult for them. For that reason, before the date of your eCommerce website launch, take the time to ensure that the shopping cart icon is strategically placed for easy access and that the checkout process is simple and transparent.
5. Grab Your Customers’ Attention
Statistics show that approximately 55% of online shoppers spend less than 15 seconds on a website. Because of this, you need to make sure your website catches their attention and makes them want to stay. Feature your best product images and videos on the homepage to catch their attention in a short timeframe. Also, make sure that things are positioned correctly on your website, that the color scheme and fonts are appealing, and that everything loads properly.
6. Make Your Website User Friendly
Another important thing to remember is to make sure your page offers a great user experience. That simply means that your website should be intuitive and easy to use. Have a dashboard from where customers can access all the information they might need. Billing details, order history, tracking numbers, and similar crucial detail should be here. You want your customers to have a great time shopping on your website, so useability should be a key part of your website launch strategy.
7. Check All Your Links
Your website will have links strategically placed throughout its pages. Make sure to spend time checking that all these links work properly. There’s nothing worse for a customer than clicking a link to find it goes to a dead page. If you link to external sites, these should be set to open in a new tab so that customers don’t unintentionally navigate off your website.
8. Minimize The Load Time
We’ve already mentioned that online shoppers have minimal patience, which is why 47% of them expect every website they visit to load in 3 seconds or less. The quicker your website loads, the higher the possibility that your customers will come back to make more purchases. To minimize load times, make sure you use small image file sizes and don’t overload your pages with too much visual content.
9. Fully Optimize Your Site
This means designing your website in a way that potential customers can visit every page without any hitches. You want to ensure a seamless website experience. Similarly, while they should be able to go through each page easily on a laptop or desktop computer, your website should be optimized for mobile devices.
10. Write Compelling Meta Descriptions
Another crucial tip for your website launch is to make sure all the page have compelling meta descriptions. After all, you want your customers to be able to find your page in a quick internet search and want to click through to it. An engaging, informative meta description is your best chance to get potential customers to click through from SERPs. The content of a meta description should be brief but informative enough to pique the searchers’ curiosity.
Get Your eCommerce Business Off to a Good Start by Using the Best Way to Launch a Website
A new website launch can be nerve-wracking. After all, you’ve spent a lot of time creating an online business idea and putting things together, so it needs to go well. But, with this website launch checklist, you’ll cover all your bases and have the best chance of having a smooth launch process. Don’t forget, Easyship can help your new website get off the ground with smart shipping solutions that save you time and money. Sign up for an Easyship account today and give yourself the smoothest eCommerce website launch possible.