Blue Fountain Media Reveals the Five Essential Elements Behind Every Successful E-commerce Site

A leading NYC-based digital marketing agency, Blue Fountain Media, has released a list of five essential elements that every successful e-commerce site should feature.  With 76% of consumers citing a website’s ease of use as its most important attribute, companies need to create a seamless shopping experience to garner more sales. Blue Fountain Media reports that in order to guarantee conversion rates, there are certain critical components that every e-commerce site needs to employ in order to be competitive and relevant.

“Businesses need to raise the bar when it comes to providing their customers an exceptional online shopping experience,” says Gabriel Shaoolian, founder and Managing Director of Blue Fountain Media. “If your e-commerce site delivers a smooth and seamless purchase path, the ROI you’ll see from it will be huge.”

Having helped thousands of businesses build successful, revenue-generating websites, the digital marketing experts at Blue Fountain Media have identified the following five components as critical for any e-commerce platform:

1. Feature a Dynamic Shopping Cart: When a visitor adds an item to their shopping cart, make sure to display the cart on the page in a small window that dynamically populates with the product(s) the customer is adding. This way the user experience is smooth and the customer is assured that their goods have been added to the cart. Sometimes, visitors may add a number of items to their shopping cart without having the intention of actually completing their purchase. Rather than forcing your customers to make the choice between deleting a product from your cart or buying it, allow them to save it for later instead.
2. Offer Product Filtering:  Allowing your users to customize their e-commerce experience on your website by giving them the ability to filter through your category pages based on prices, popularity, and more is an essential tool for any website to have. Customers don’t enjoy clicking through endless pages of products, so having a “View All” option is also a good idea to make things easier. To help customers that are interested in a product on a category page, use a quick preview feature to help your customers decide if they want the product without having to click through to the actual product page.
3. Make Social Sharing Simple:  Implementing social media share features on your product pages so you can leverage customers to show your products to friends and colleagues is a great way to get products that are relevant to an audience’s interests on their radar for the first time. Although users can always do this manually, having social share buttons dramatically increases the chances that someone will share a product with their social networks.
4. Provide A Related Product Banner:  Showing users related products that compliment or are similar to the product page they’re viewing is a great way to increase the bottom line. Using this type of feature can influence users to spend more time and money on your website by showing them products that are like the ones they’ve expressed interested in as opposed to just a random assortment of products from your website.
5. Assure the Customer with Payment Confirmation: Clicking the final “submit payment” button for many customers can be a very stressful moment. Calm their nerves by not only displaying a payment confirmation page, but also by sending them an email confirming receipt of their payment. Provide your customers with tracking information once their order has shipped as well, so that they can feel at ease through the final step of the transaction.

“Some of these elements may seem commonplace, and yet our agency meets with client after client who end up missing one or more of these important components on their websites,” notes Shaoolian. “That’s when we get to work.”

About Blue Fountain Media

Blue Fountain Media A Pactera EDGE Company, is a leading provider of Data-driven, Intelligent, Digital Experiences. Blue Fountain Media works with global enterprises to create high-performing, data-driven websites, and cross-platform integrated marketing campaigns. Blue Fountain Media’s clients include: Element Solutions International, Hillenbrand, CDK Global, Peterbilt Motors, Workfront, Cathay Bank, and more.