Top 25 Features of E-commerce Website That You Should Not Miss

In today's competitive market, the features of your e-commerce website can make or break your success.

From building trust with customers to offering a seamless shopping experience, the right features will help you dominate the market and create a loyal following.

But with so many options available, where do you start?  Join us in this blog to see the top 17 must-have features of an e-commerce website that you absolutely shouldn't miss!

What are the Types of E-commerce models?

Before knowing the features of e-business, let’s know the e-commerce business models.

There are e-commerce models that describe almost every transaction between consumers and businesses. Below are the primary types of e-commerce business models:

🔘Business to Consumer (B2C): In B2C, the business sells its goods or services to the individual consumer, such as the pair of shoes we purchase from an online retailer.

🔘Business to Business (B2B): The sale of a good or service to another business, for example, a software-as-a-service sold by a business for consumption by other businesses.

🔘Consumer to Consumer (C2C): A consumer's sale of a good or service to another consumer. For example, we sell our old furniture on eBay to other consumers.

🔘Consumer to Business (C2B): This is when the consumer's product or service is sold to a business or organization. For example, a government body could offer its online audience exposure for a certain fee, or a photographer could license their photographs to a business.

🔘Business-to-government (B2G): In this model, products or services are sold from businesses to government agencies in some online portal or marketplace.

🔘Government-to-business (G2B): Government agencies sell their products or services to businesses using online portals or marketplaces.

🔘Government-to-consumer (G2C): Under G2C, government agencies make deals directly with the consumers, whether it’s a product or service, through government online portals or marketplaces.

After determining your business model, you can connect with an e-commerce website development company to build a scalable, user-friendly website for you.

What are the Benefits of E-commerce?

There are various advantages and disadvantages of e-commerce, but despite that the e-commerce industry continues to thrive.

So, before proceeding with the characteristics of e-commerce, let's explore what benefits e-commerce offers for business:

1. Convenience

E-commerce allows customers to shop from home or anywhere with access to the Internet, which means they can make purchases at their convenience.

2. Global Reach

E-commerce allows reaching more potential customers outside one's immediate reach, and customers can be global.

3. Cost-Effective

E-commerce eliminates using a storefront and the other overhead costs attached to a regular brick-and-mortar shop.

4. Personalization

E-commerce allows businesses to personalize their product offerings according to customers' behaviour and preferences while shopping, resulting in a very personalized experience at the shop.

5. Easy and Secure Payment

E-commerce ensures safe and easy payment, whether it’s e-wallet or UPI payment app. It makes transactions easy for customers.

6. Data Collection and Analysis

E-commerce enables businesses to collect customer data and then analyze it so that appropriate changes in marketing and sales can be devised.

7. 24/7 Availability

E-commerce provides a 24/7 opening to potential buyers. Buyers can buy online anytime when offline physical outlets are open and closed.

E-commerce is a new avenue for businesses to expand their customer base, increase sales, and improve customer satisfaction while providing greater convenience, access, and flexibility to customers.

What are the Functions of E-commerce?

The characteristics of e-commerce highlight its working capacity; however, what exactly are the functions of e-commerce?

Basically, whenever you record a sale on a brand’s e-commerce website, it isn’t enough. You need to integrate other functions to run the online store smoothly.

Here are some of the major functions of e-commerce:

1. Marketing

For any business, Marketing plays a major role in its success. It doesn’t matter if you have established your business online, offline, or both; marketing is the key element to growing it further.

But what is the foundation of close-to-perfect digital marketing for e-commerce?

Firstly, conduct in-depth research to help develop a compelling brand strategy to help sell your products to your target audience.

Digital marketing is one of the primary functions of ecommerce that aids in promoting the products or services to a wider audience without geographical limitations.

It involves running ad campaigns such as Google Ads or social media platforms ads. It may also include influencer marketing, email marketing, and other marketing practices.

These digital marketing practices help your brand communicate to your audience well.

2. Supply Chain Management

While establishing an online store, one of the biggest challenges is supplying products to your customers within the dedicated time.

Every product goes through a cycle of moving from a warehouse to your customer’s destination, while the customer expects the delivery to be done via lightning speed.

Such efficiency requires perfect supply chain management, an integral part of e-commerce businesses.

SCM includes effectively establishing the inventory flow from the seller to the buyer while ensuring the product is in safe condition when it reaches the customer.

This could be achieved using various SCM software available in the market as the role of information technology in supply chain management is prevailing.

3. Financial Management

We cannot mention business without acknowledging the business aspect of it. For every business, finance is its backbone. Without proper financial management, any business may collapse, making it an integral part of e-commerce’s functions.

A financial management system software helps manage and optimize the cost at every step of your business, enabling a profitable journey.

Why You Should Implement Top Features of E-commerce Website on Your Site

It is challenging to choose the best features for your online store website when you have so many options. We recommend taking it easy, not getting overwhelmed, and creating a shopping list of your features.

E-commerce is indeed a fast-growing industry, and the stakes are high. It’s crucial to pay attention to your business goals, needs, and objectives when deciding upon a basic ecommerce website template on an ecommerce website builder or a custom e-commerce web development.

This step plays a significant role as it will decide how your business will evolve. If you make the wrong decision, you can spend way more money than necessary to get started as an online service/product seller.

As a business owner, you should keep in mind that when it comes to e-commerce business, everything is about the shopping experience of users, and your efforts should focus on creating personalized experiences for your online shoppers.

Hence, your platform must be fully aligned with your business objectives, and support features that your target audience expects and wants in your platform. If you fail, sorry to say, but your audience will be engaging and buying from your competitor's website, not yours!

Must Read: How Much Does Website Design Cost in India?

Top 25 Must-Have Features of E-commerce Website That Your Customer Want

Now that you know e-commerce’s types, benefits, functions, and why implementing these features is crucial for attracting visitors and converting them into customers, you might be excited to see the answer to your next question: what are the features of e-commerce?

But, before we get into it, it’s important to know that not all website trends, such as cool animations, 360-degree product previews, dynamic product search, and trying things before buying features guarantee a high conversion rate or an outstanding user experience.

There are essential features of an e-commerce website that ensure a relevant online presence and make you a competitive business.

That being said, let’s explore together the top 25 salient features of e-commerce that you should add to your website to  provide fantastic shopping experiences to your customers and grow your business:

1. User-Friendly Design

User-friendly design is perhaps the most important feature of an e-commerce website that your customers want on your site.

As we mentioned earlier, a good user experience is key to the success of an online shopping platform.

If your visitors can’t find their way around your website or struggle to find what they are looking for, there is a high chance they’ll quickly leave your site and start searching on the many other online retailers.

Therefore, it’s crucial to use e-commerce UX/UI best practices and prioritize the customer experience. To do this, you can create a simple, straightforward, high-quality homepage, include a simple search bar, clearly list category pages in the navigation bar, and focus on creating a responsive website.

2. Site Search

Only some site visitors have the patience to move from page to page to find what they really want. Most would instead leave the site and then go through that stress.

In this case, you should add a power search feature to your e-commerce site. Also, it should be good enough to give smart auto-suggestions, just the same way Google and Amazon do.

Here we have an example of the ‘Site Search’ feature on the Amazon website.

When you add the search option, you also need to implement it on all your pages. In fact, it should have 100% visibility across your platform.

Searchers should find it quickly no matter where they are on your site; additionally, focus on keeping it simple; there’s no need to use a fancy search bar.  Just add some visual cues, such as a magnifying icon to let customers know it’s a search bar.

Explore More: 8 Useful Tips for Automotive Website Design to Attract More Customers

3. Footer Navigation

Have you thought about how to use the footer of your website to enable customers to quickly find your most popular products?

Use a link list of top products, services, and other information your customers want to locate.

T-Mobile uses the footer to direct customers to their social media platforms, both English and Spanish websites and platforms, featured phones and plans, support, and company information.

The footer effectively links to everything the company wants customers and search crawlers to find from any page on its website.

4. High Quality Pictures

Pictures tell more than text. This is the reason why you must add photos to your list of must-have features of an e-commerce website.

Ensure that a professional photographer takes the pictures and videos, as the visuals should be good enough to represent your brand and appeal to your visitors.

 

Not just high-quality pictures, but today, online shoppers expect to see multiple angles of your products and real people using or wearing your products.

Thus, the pictures should have the zoom-in feature and, if possible, add a  360-degree overview.

Another critical point to consider is having fast-loading photos. According to Adobe, 39% of visitors will leave your website if the pictures take less time to load.

In short, focus on displaying multiple high-quality images of the product, be clear and high resolution, and most importantly, should be optimized for page load time.

5. Extensive Product Page

In this essential e-commerce features list, an informative and engaging product page is undeniably one of the most important functionalities.

Not only does it help you convey the value of your products but also the customers can understand if they really want to purchase the items.

When you design the product page consider using the latest web design trends and include sections for featured products, best sellers, exclusive items, related products, or top savers. This will motivate customers to keep exploring your website.

 

Aside from this, add customer product reviews, similar product recommendations, and pop-ups.

You can also add micro animations on your product page that will help you improve the overall user experience and highlight areas of a page where you’d like your customers to pay more attention.

Usually, the micro-interactions take the form of confirmation messages, hover animations, scrolling visuals, transition animation, sound effects, and error messages.

6. Product Comparisons

If you have a big choice of products to select from in any category, let customers easily compare the main features of each.

REI lets customers do this with products like hiking bags.

Customers who visit the comparison page get an in-depth description of each product, ratings, reviews, and pricing. Letting customers compare the products is one of the best features of e-commerce.

7. Mobile Friendly Features

In today’s modern marketplace,  online shopping consumers are increasingly reliant on their mobile devices.

According to a survey by Rakuten Insight on online shopping behavior in India conducted in 2022, about 83% of consumers used their smartphone or mobile to purchase online. On the other hand, 12% of consumers used their tablets for online shopping.

 

In other words, most customers want to browse online shopping stores on their phones, so including mobile optimization in your ecommerce website design is one of the most vital features of e-retailing.

Ensure that your web design is automatically modified for the screen size and shape of smartphones to enhance your conversion rate and keep customers happy.

8. Mobile App

Besides having a mobile-friendly version of your website, which all shoppers can view from any device, consider developing an app for your store.

Mobile apps have many benefits that enable you to keep your brand at the top of your mind by putting your app icon/logo on customers' smart devices.

Push notifications eliminate the need for customers to open a browser, visit social media pages, or open emails to get your latest sales messages and offers.

You can push those promotional updates through your app to any customers with notifications, as Home Depot does with its app.

9. Wishlists

Include a wishlist feature so that customers know what they had their hearts set on the last time they were in the store.

The Nintendo Store lets signed-in users quickly add an item to their wishlist with just one click or tap of the heart.

They'll be able to recall precisely what they want next time they're looking for ideas for a birthday gift or as a gift to themselves.

10. Product Reviews

Review features of an e-commerce website can help you drive social proof and improve customer loyalty, ultimately building digital trust with your customers.

Reviews are creative ecommerce website design features that drive social proof and improve customer loyalty. According to Entrepreneur, 88% of consumers trust online testimonials as much as personal recommendations.

 

Based on your website functionality, online stores can apply modules from the most popular review platforms such as Yelp, Trustpilot, and Facebook.

In fact, customer reviews are one of the most essential B2B e-commerce website features that can help you boost your website’s credibility and prove that you have paying customers.

Additionally, customer reviews will add keywords to your online shop, which enhances your site’s SEO (search engine optimization), which is another main element for any e-commerce website.

Here’s an example of eBay that allows customers to rate and review products, displaying reviews below the product descriptions and sponsored items.

Don’t Miss: How to Get Rid of Negative Google Reviews & Strategies to Handle Them

11. A Well-Designed Shopping Cart

A shopping cart is one of the features that differentiate e-commerce websites from each other.

One of the ways you can satisfy your buyers and guarantee fantastic shopping experiences is by making it easy to add or remove products, go back to the product page to make changes, or purchase new items.

More than 70% of shoppers leave a website before completing a transaction due to a complex checkout process.

Therefore, it’s recommended to have a simple checkout page that includes a picture of the teams in the shopping car, their names, and details such as size, color, price, etc.

Also Read: How to Develop a Web Portal For Your Business

12. Return Policy

As not all sales go well, implementing a return policy feature in your e-commerce website is essential.

Sometimes, customers receive the wrong product, such as the item being in the wrong size or different color, or they might also not want the product anymore.

Regardless of the reason, the customers expect a return option in the online store. Hence, you need to add this feature. Can customers return products for free, or will there be a charge they’ll need to pay?

What is the minimum waiting time for returns? Can customers exchange an item for another?

These are some of the questions you need to answer in your return policy.

13. SSO Integration

Enable your customers to create new accounts and sign in faster by integrating single-sign-on.

This feature enables customers to create an account and sign in quickly using Google, Microsoft, Apple, LinkedIn, or any other account frequently used.

eBay is just one of many large shopping sites that provide this feature.

Reducing friction in signup and sign-in would enhance sales volume for your store. It aids in consumer’s buying motives.

14. Multi-language Support

If your ecommerce store targets customers in an area, you can do either of the following two to support the top languages spoken there:

Relay on Google Translate to help customers to translate your website into their preferred language.

Develop different versions of your site for a handful of selected languages.

Xfinity uses English at the www subdomain and Spanish at the es subdomain.

15. Carousels

While marketers may argue the importance of an e-commerce homepage image and video carousel, many ecommerce brands use them.

Major retailers, including Walmart, eBay, Home Depot, Samsung, Wayfair, Lowes, Costco, Sam's Club, and Kohl, have their latest promotions and sales carousels.

Chewy is another ecommerce brand that has a carousel on its homepage. This carousel offers discounts for auto-ship orders, healthy pet food, flea & tick medications, pet bedding, and more.

16. Order Tracking

After the customer places an order, the very first question that comes to their mind is when their order will arrive.

So, add order tracking features to your website and make it simple for customers to check their current order status.

The above example of Myntra clearly demonstrates how you can implement this feature on your e-commerce website.

17. Push Notifications

When it comes to must-have features of an e-commerce website, push notifications functionality is undeniably one of them. Implementing push notifications can help capture your e-commerce store visitors as subscribers.

This feature allows visitors to subscribe to your latest updates in their browser. When you have deals you want to notify subscribers of, you can send a message that will be delivered to their notification center via their browser. So, if you want to stay connected with your customers, you should definitely implement this feature.

18. Multiple Payment Option

The online payment system is an essential element of e-commerce platforms. If you’re selling online, your website should accept online payments.

Payment gateways increase customer data security and online transactions and prevent fraud. Payment options play a vital role in buying decisions and closing the sales funnel.

If your customers cannot complete online purchases using their preferred payment method, they will go to your competitors.

That’s why it’s best to integrate multiple payment options. It could be debit cards, credit cards, PayPal, bank transfers, UPI payments, wallets, and more.

Choose online payment options with low to no transaction fees and additional payment security features.

The more payment options, the more efficient and user-friendly the checkout process will be; the more completed transactions, the higher the conversion rate and revenue.

Read More: A Complete Guide on How to Develop a Secure and Feature-Rich UPI Payment App in 2024

19. Chatbots

One of the biggest advantages of running an online store is its ability to generate revenue, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, throughout the year. That also means providing support to your customers during those hours as well.

According to a survey conducted by LivePerson, of 5,000 consumers, positive sentiment about the use of chatbots nearly doubled between 2020 and 2021, from 31% to 61%.

Today, seeing the importance of customer support, many online stores use chatbots to help online shoppers with basic questions and navigate them to specific products or support pages.

So, don’t forget to add a chatbot to your e-commerce website.

20. Coupon Codes

When we go on an online shopping website to purchase something, we often search for coupon codes when presented with a coupon or discount box on a checkout page.

According to Statista, in 2020, 88% of consumers in the USA used coupons when shopping.

If you want your customers to come again and again and want to finish the checkout process, simply give them great deals via your won coupon codes.

When visitors click on View Offers, they will get additional offers and coupon codes to apply at checkout, and also because there will be a coupon code expiry date, the customer will hit the order without delay.

21. Product Availability Filters

Product search filters are absolutely top features of an e-commerce website as they allow customers to find the products they are looking for quickly and with ease.

An AI-powered search engine will be even better as your website will be able to predict a user’s query. Filters help shoppers narrow down product lists and focus on the products they’re actually interested in, skipping over the pages and products they don’t need.

You can give your customers an item availability filter that will filter products based on their preference (color, size, brand, price, etc.), and same-day delivery. shipping, or in-stock availability.

This will give you the best chance to convert customers based on fast availability.

22. Loyalty Program

Who doesn’t want to increase customer retention rate? One way to do this with your e-commerce platform is to offer a loyalty program.

These are generally free or paid programs where customers get private or early access to the best deals and discounts.

Many retailers allow customers to collect points as per purchase that lead to various rewards, such as a specific amount off your next purchase or a free product.

So you can also provide a rewards program for your loyal customers. They can join for free and earn points redeemable for products and services online and in-store.

23. FAQ Page

You have return information on your site, which is great, but what if the shoppers cannot easily find it? It’s useless. You can use the FAQ page to display this critical information.

A frequently asked question page is a must-have feature for every e-commerce website. On this page, you can not only showcase the return policy information but also answer potential questions that your customers might have.

For example, they might also want to know about your shipping time and offers. If you don’t answer these questions, most visitors will leave.

When you design and develop your e-commerce website, you should have a detailed FAQ page, too.

24. Support/Help Center

In addition to the FAQ on product pages and stores, a help centre can be added.

This must entail any general shopping-related questions, such as online data privacy, payment security, shipping charges, return policy, etc,

Etsy also supports many of its top customer issues in its help centre and helps sellers on the network.

It saves the support team's time at Etsy from answering generalized questions and has more time for solving complex ones.

25. Personal Data Policy

The last one in this list of top features of an e-commerce website is related to cybersecurity.

Based on where your e-commerce store is established and the target audience it serves, your site may need a policy that notifies visitors of the data that is collected about them on your website using cookies from the website and other analytics tools.

Security plays a significant role in online shopping, so you should pay attention to this. By offering transparency about the data being collected, you’ll be able to build trust with your customers.

Read Next: How to Choose the Best E-commerce Website Development Agency

Wrapping Up!

The best features of e-commerce websites are not limited to the abovementioned list; you can add to them based on your business budget and scope. Still, these 17 features of online business will help you start building an unforgettable customer experience.

If you want to build fresh or you're already running a website that lacks these essential features and wants to redesign, contact Arramton.

Our team of web developers and designers has helped more than 100 e-commerce partners achieve what they deserve. We aim to build e-commerce websites that don't just look appealing but also convert visitors into loyal customers and click into sales.

So, if you want to become our client and get the best solution for your business requirements, Get in touch with us today!

FAQs on Features of E-commerce Website

Q. What are the main elements of an eCommerce website?

Ans. The main elements of an e-commerce website include a user-friendly interface for browsing, high-quality product descriptions & images, secure payment options, a clear shopping cart & checkout process, and robust search functionality for easy navigation.

Q. What are the 5 C's of e-commerce?

Ans. The 5 C's of e-commerce are:

🔘Company (your brand identity),

🔘Collaborators (partnerships),

🔘Customers (understanding their needs),

🔘Competitors (analyzing their strategies), and

🔘Context (market trends).

Q. How to make an eCommerce website unique?

Ans. To make an e-commerce website unique, you can offer personalized customer experience, exclusive products or bundles, implement loyalty programs, and incorporate engaging content like product stories or tutorials.

Q. Can I build my own eCommerce website?

Ans. Yes! There are website builders with e-commerce functionalities. However, if you want a more comprehensive platform, consider hiring a professional e-commerce website developer.

Q. What are the main functions of an eCommerce website?

Ans. E-commerce websites allow product display & browsing, order processing, secure online payments, customer account management (orders & wishlists), and order fulfillment functionalities.

Q. What are the 3 pillars of secure e-commerce?

Ans. The three pillars of secure e-commerce are:

🔘Data security (encryption for customer information),

🔘Payment security (PCI compliance for transactions), and

🔘Fraud prevention measures to protect both customers and businesses.