Features Every E-Commerce Site Should Have

What Kind of Features should every E-Commerce Site have, that would be good to get customers to purchase?

What have you guys done, and seen a promising return on?

What do YOU think they should all have?

Well I think they should have the Credit Card Proocessing, Paypal, Google Checkout, but is there anything else that we should have to make it so anyone can buy, is there anything im missing?

Clear Call-to-Action above the fold, additional cta's below if the page is long enough.

If you use forms, make them as short as possible.

Clear links to your privacy policy, TOS, shipping, returns and other type policies that buyers need to know about.

Extremely good descriptions, customer reviews (when and if possible), detailed pictures (if possible), and anything and everything that contributes to product knowledge/informed buyers. Be sure it is organized in a professional manner (don't jumble everything on to one page just because you can).

There are so many tips and tricks it would be impossible to list them all here, but I thought these topped the list.

Just expanding on what jsteele wrote:

Contact information that's really clear and easy to find. Also make sure you've clearly distinguished where to go for what purpose. "For placing orders, use these addresses/phone numbers." "For customer support, go here." "For press inquiries, go here."

Also, here's a thought about site organization. You may have your products mentally organized in one way, but your customers think of them in another way; if you want to make more sales and avoid annoying (or chasing away) your potential customers, you may need to take that into consideration.

Say you sell pots and pans. You think of them as organized by manufacturer, and you sort them that way on your web site. Your customer thinks, "I need a frying pan." If she has no way to access all the frying pans by all of your manufacturers on one page -- perhaps so she can compare features and prices -- she's going to have to click to the category page of every pot and pan manufacturer you have on your web site separately just so she can buy a dang frying pan.

I know that was an overly simple example, but you probably get my point. What you do about this is up to you.

Tracking Tools Integration for shipping if you are selling products. Otherwise customers will drive you crazy with wanting to know their status.

Credibility is the most important feature. If ur visitor doesnt trust u, he wont make a purchase. Credibility comes through fascinating layout, superb navigation, good description of products, clearly defined payment and shipping policies, believable customer reviews/ratings, transparency in business processes (like comparison shopping features, complete contact details including physical address, name and phone of contact person) and human touch. By human touch, i mean ur business should look like being run by humans and not automated programs. A simple 'thank you' phone call whenever a visitor makes a purchase often results in client retention and word of mouth publicity by the client.

We should probably define more clearly what type of E-commerce site we are discussing. Most of the advice here seems to be aimed primarily at sites that sell tangible goods rather than say downloadable content subscription access etc. which are also technically e-commerce.

There is already a lot of good advice in this thread. As with most things the details will vary widely by product/company/market.

I suppose the most universal 'feature' they should have is a sound business model. And to qualify as e-commerce they will need a checkout.
Much of the rest is dependent upon your target market. People signing up for a porn subscription or downloading an MP3 probably do NOT want a phone call about it. OTOH people buying a mattress will generally be very happy to get one.
This is why I say that many of the factors vary.

As was pointed out one of the key elements is trust. The customer must believe the site is legitimate and that they will get what they are paying for. What specific 'features' build trust may depend some on the industry. What is acceptable will also depend upon the business model.

If you can be a bit more specific about the type of company you are interested in we might be able to provide a more complete answer.

Some very good points brought up so far for "general must have's." Trust is major along with versatility and another thing is accessibility. You must be able to adapt.

Depending on your product or service, people shop differently. Some people shop solely by price while others adhere to the words and advice of previous buyers (reviews, ratings, etc.) and the list goes on. You need to do your best to identify how your target audience purchases and deliver that to them. Everyone is different and has many different approaches to arrive at your site.

I am personally not a fan of digging around to find something. I like to have access to all major parts of the site from 1 page or the current page I'm on. If I trust the site, I'll be more prone to poke around if I cannot find what I'm looking for right away. Defining trust is a topic of it's own.

Himanshu brings up a good point about following up. While there is likely an ulterior motive for this (getting info on how you can become better and deliver what your visitors want), it does help establish trust. While I think this is a great approach, I'm curious to know how much success anyone has had with this in the past and what their tactics were. We tried this a few months ago and had no success.

The most important feature of an e-commerce site is the payment system because that's where the most crucial transaction happens

This is not really advice. It is more common sense. It's an ecommerce site. Of course it will have a payment system.

Now, do you have any advice about that payment system?

Most carts require a customer to set up an account in order to purchase. Offering an option for a one-time purchase without setting up an account is a good idea (and gives you another metric to work with later on).

Also try to make the checkout process as short as possible. The checkout process is usually of series of separate 'steps' (pages) for buyer info, shipping info, payment info, order review, order confirmation, etc. Each page load gives the customer time to reconsider, change their mind, get frustrated or whatever. Try to turn that 5-6 pages into 2-3 pages by merging some pages such as buyer info & shipping info. Other little shortcuts can help too, such as a check or button for "Shipping Address Same As Billing" to auto-fill the shipping addy form, which saves people the trouble of typing the same address twice. The sooner you can get your buyer through checkout, the lower your cart bounce will be.

This isn't really a 'feature' to get customers to buy. But it IS something EVERY e-commerce site should have:

Webmetrics solution

Different sites will warrant different solutions but nobody should have an e-comm site without appropriate Webmetrics. There are more fun ways to gamble with your money.

I think a good landing page will do this.

hi,

The features that every E-commerce shud have a opening for the customer to by this particular product.
Use of credit card processing, paypal a/c shud have been there.
Must make it a highly secured site. Security must be of high quality.

Thank u