Checklist For Your Online Shop’s Digital Storefront

With online shopping becoming the sole way some people shop, period, e-commerce is growing — and your digital storefront should lead the way to many sales and endless happiness! While it’s fun to show off your website to your peers and industry friends to ogle at and admire, it should be a place catered to your clients, first and foremost. But it’s not always easy to know what to actually do, especially if you don’t know web very well. If you’re asking yourself, “what’s a CSS?” or if the word “hosting” to you is always followed up by “a party,” this post is here to save the day! Click through for our checklist of things you should consider when it comes to your online shop. —Sabrina

Clear Navigation and an Easy-to-Understand Interface

Imagine if you couldn’t find the check-out counter in a physical store, or the men’s section was behind hidden doors that you had to search for. Frustrating, right? You should think of your website the same way. Easy-to-use and understand navigation should be your #1 priority, especially on your web store’s landing page.

Oh, and that goes for browsing on mobile, too! Nothing spoils the broth of a great, easy-to-use website more than a lack of mobile optimization for phones and tablets.

Image above: Tattly‘s neat and clean site does a stellar job of highlighting seasonal products and sharing all their products via categories on the left sidebar of the site under the Designs header.

Make On-Site Search Prominent and Sufficiently Sophisticated

To use the physical store analogy again, imagine having a question about something and no merchant available to answer it. You’d likely leave the store and think twice before returning. Same goes for your website: Make sure your search function is prominent on every page of your website and that it actually works. As a bonus, provide a contact email or phone number for customer support, should the search not fulfill someone’s needs. Be an attentive hero!

Image above: Salt takes a traditional approach to their site navigation, clearly outlining their hierarchy in the upper righthand corner, and then a subcategory for their online store and its products prominently above their tees on their product page.

Never Underestimate Formatting

As mentioned in our previous post where we shared tips for your storefront window, hierarchy is important. In terms of websites, this means your body copy shouldn’t be given the exact same style treatment as a CTA (call or action) that you want to stand out.

Some great ways to highlight certain things are by increasing font size, placing it above the fold (meaning it’s visible upon landing on the site without having to scroll down) and using graphics to make things stand out, such as icons, illustrations, photos and color. Your site should communicate in a way that makes it easy for a customer to understand what you want them to do; be it “add to bag,” “learn about our services,” or “visit our shop.”

Image above: This wallet store, Bellroy, specializing in solving the bulging wallet problem, shows you exactly what you should know about your problem and their solution. They smartly offer several easy-to-view formats to choose from — explore (a product page), start slimming (solve your problem this way), play video (how-to in a fun-to-watch and informative short form video) and travel light (blog post).

Share Your Payment Option on Every Page

There’s nothing more frustrating for a shopper set on making a purchase to learn at checkout that you don’t offer their preferred method of payment. With lives filled with credit card rewards and membership benefits, most people have a payment strategy in mind and believe or not, they search out online merchants that accept a particular method of payment. Don’t surprise them! Let them know upfront that they can pay the way they prefer (or not).

Image above: Helbak’s ceramics website displays their accepted payment methods in the lower righthand corner on every page of their site.

The Ubiquitous, But Necessary, Pop-Up

Just because we might find annoying the pop-up invite asking us if we want to sign up for a newsletter and receive yet another email in our mailbox, does not mean everyone else feels that way, too. In fact, the number of people that sign-up using that pop-up is always more than zero, so don’t fear this tool. If you do, you won’t meet the people who actually want to hear from you and are the most likely to actually make a purchase. Remember, you can control the frequency and duration of the pop-up so potential customers aren’t greeted by it each time they visit your site.

Image above: Odd Pears pop-up is straight forward and tells you exactly what it wants the customer to do. They’ve even included an incentive for sign-up.

Ensure and Guarantee Security and Safety

One security or data breach can mean disaster for a small business, so let’s avoid that altogether by making sure you use SSL certificates, provide clear terms/privacy policies and regularly check and update your site’s security functions.

Once your site security passes with flying colors, make sure you implement an easy and reassuring checkout and payment process. I’m sure we’ve all had that sinking feeling when online shopping through a questionable store, so making users feel safe and that their money is protected is oh-so-important.

Appearance is (Almost) Everything

Websites have come a long way in the last decade(s). We now have the ability to customize anything and everything to our liking. But often, having too many choices can lead to making no choices. If web design confuses or scares the socks off of you, try thinking about it one step at a time. Start with the basics and keep is simple (a logo, contact information, an about page and a menu that leads to all of these things). Without sacrificing your interface’s simplicity or the site’s readability, build on that; create your shop, add photos and fun features, integrate your social media feeds in a sidebar, etc.

WordPress is a great option if you know a thing or two about web. And if you’re interested in learning how to DIY your website, there are plenty of free tutorials and lessons in CSS and HTML from places such as Codecademy, Lynda and W3Schools. But if designing your own site is daunting, there are tons of great CMSs (content management systems) out there; SquareSpace, Big Cartel, Shopify, Storenvy, Bigcommerce, and Etsy are just a few.

No matter what platform you choose to pursue, don’t forget to use photographs on your website! High-quality and varied photos (think detail shots, lifestyle shots, etc.) make all the difference. If you don’t have a great camera, backdrop or location to shoot in or on, you should consider hiring a photographer: it’s one of the best investments you can make in your business.

Another important thing to consider is your website’s copy. Error-free, high-quality writing is imperative for your business’s credibility and legitimacy. After all, would you buy socks from a company who misspelled them “sokcs?” If you’re not a confident writer, I have one piece of advice: hire a copywriter or copy editor! They are lifesavers (shout out to our own wonderful Kelli)!

Image above: The clean, clear statement on this website offers three invitations at once and shows you a large, lovely example of what you’re being invited to.

Do Some Best Practice & Resources Research

Beyond the helpful posts available here on Design*Sponge, there are tons of online companies and resources to help you to succeed. Find them! Start with the Knowledge Center over at American Express and see some firsthand examples of small businesses thriving. All the sites from the images above were discovered on Inspirational Shops. See all of their online shop picks for inspiration and research right here.

There’s a lot to think about when starting and running a business, but your website shouldn’t cause you to lose sleep at night. Whether you’re launching a new site or revamping an existing one, keep these tips in mind and let your digital storefront do the legwork for you.

Do you have great tips or a story about your digital storefront? Share below!

This post is presented by American Express ­ committed to helping make merchants like you be even more successful with the latest in business trends, insights and tools. Learn more here.

Enter for a chance to win $10,000 towards redesigning your store by uploading a photo of your storefront window displaying any of our window decals (including the new decal series by Design*Sponge) to Twitter and/or Instagram with the #LoveMyStoreAmexContest hashtag. 20 runners up will receive a $100 American Express gift card. Get your decal now to get started! For full contest rules, click here.

No purchase necessary. Open to American Express® Card accepting merchants with brick-and-mortar locations in the 50 U.S., DC, PR & other U.S. territories & possessions (“Territory”), who have $3,000,000 or less in annual American Express charge volume and who have 25 or fewer locations (“Qualified Retailers”). Franchisees are not eligible to participate in this Contest. Industry exclusions apply. Only owners or authorized representatives of Qualified Retailers who are at least 18, or the legal age of majority in their jurisdiction of residence, whichever is older, and legal residents of the Territory, may enter on behalf of Qualified Retailer. Contest ends 11:59 p.m. ET 7/31/15. Void where prohibited. See Official Rules for complete details.