5 Elements Your E-commerce Site Needs to Succeed

It’s no secret that the world of e-commerce has changed significantly in the last few years. It’s no longer enough to have an e-commerce website where people can find and order a graphic t-shirt or hoodie.

Whether you’re building your first e-commerce site or improving the one you have, we’ll run down five elements to consider to make your e-store the ultimate destination for your t-shirt and hoodie customers.

Start with a bird’s-eye view of your site. Imagine visiting a store that “just has stuff on its shelves” vs. one that has a clear brand identity and personality. Or, a messy, disorganized shop vs. a spacious, well-organized one. Think of your website as an online brick-and-mortar store. Does that online destination reflect your t-shirt shop brand? Is the site uncluttered and easy for customers to browse and buy from?  

Take an objective view of your website’s overall look, feel and experience. You can also ask friends or even customers for feedback on your site. Review these questions to see where your site might have room for improvement: 

• Does your site design, theme, color scheme and fonts accurately reflect your brand?
•  Do your home page’s graphics and messaging hook prospects into exploring your site further?
• Are your products or product categories easily visible at a glance and is your menu easy to navigate? For example, if a buyer wants women’s t-shirts is there an image or link that takes them to your products page?
• Are your individual product pages informative, with high-quality images and important details about the apparel or design?
• Is your site easy to read, understand and navigate? How quickly can a buyer select a product, add it to their cart and buy? 

Once you’ve identified areas to improve, prioritize the most important ones so you or your web designer can get to work in a timely manner.

Today, most shoppers expect a mobile shopping experience on their phones comparable to one on a laptop. Unfortunately, about 60% of mobile users report issues with websites, like sites that are too slow to load, crash or freeze, have formatting errors or are hard to read. Mobile users expect your site to load within two seconds, and if it takes longer about 40% will head over to one of your competitors. About 80% of mobile shoppers say they won’t return to sites that don’t load quickly or correctly, or which experience a glitch when they try to buy.

Knowing that, it’s essential that you create an e-commerce website that’s also optimized for mobile access. If you aren’t optimized for a mobile device, your site will load slower and not function correctly on a smartphone. This, in turn, leads customers to switch to a competitor, sometimes even before they’ve really browsed your products. 

But it goes even beyond that. When someone searches on Google for a t-shirt or apparel shop, the search engine prioritizes mobile-friendly websites because they load faster. That means if your website isn’t optimized, it’ll sit at the bottom of the list of companies. Most customers aren’t going to search down the list, but are more likely to click on (and do business with) the websites that show up on the top of the search engine results.

The easiest way to see how your site performs is to access it as a prospective customer via a smartphone or tablet:

• How quickly does the site load?
• Does the formatting and design look similar to that on a desktop?
• Can you clearly see the navigation?
• Can you easily browse for products and add them to your cart?
• How about buying the products?

To delve deeper, you can use your email client insight tools or use a third-party software to see how fast your site loads and where you can make improvements.

Yes, your site should be easy to navigate from the get-go. It should also, however, allow you to handle customer questions about your policies or specific products.

Here are three ways to cover all your customer services basics:

Add a detailed FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) section where you answer the  common and most often asked questions. This is a great place to inject some of your brand personality into your answers to warm browsers up so they buy.

Add a chat feature to your website. This allows an AI “chatbot” to respond to questions that your customers often ask. The chatbot should include a feature where a real person can take over more complex questions or handle specific customer service issues.

Add a “Contact Us” page. Many people don’t like or trust a website where there’s no clear contact information. Include multiple ways for people to contact you, whether it’s phone, email or direct messaging. Depending on the size of your shop, you should have a plan (or a staffer) that can help you respond quickly so your customers don’t go somewhere else.

Security is a huge issue today. Website hacks cause a variety of issues with alarming results for both you as the business owner and your customers. Not only will you lose business in the short-term, but customers won’t trust you with their information in the long term as well. 

The good news is that there are many ways to secure your website including:

• Requiring any site administrators to use strong passwords and two-factor authentication (and have customers do this as well);
• Update all of your software and back up your website regularly;
• Use a sitewide SSL (Secure Sockets Layer);
• Use a VPN (Virtual Private Network);
• Hide your web host provider and version; and
• Use secure cookies

Most of all, though, you’ll want to have a secure online checkout for your customers to ensure their credit card information is not stolen. PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) is the global standard of most credit card companies. 

If you ensure your ecommerce ecosystem meets these standards, you’re about as safe as any company’s website can be. It’s impossible to be 100% safe from hackers, but this is the top level of security. It’s always a smart idea to consult an e-commerce security expert to audit your current setup to see if there’s anything additional you can do to secure your data.

If you’re just starting out in the decorated-apparel e-commerce space, you’ve got lots of choices for setting up your first site. You may also be searching for a website hosting vendor with more services. In either case, there are several apparel industry-specific ecommerce vendors you can reach out to if you want to set up your own store: InkSoft, Printavo, OrderMyGear, DecoNetwork and Spirit Sale.

There’s an additional opportunity for you to create, manage and fulfill orders through stores you set up for other customers. For example, schools ordering hundreds of shirts for their athletic departments or booster clubs, or an organization that needs to fundraise can really benefit from their own t-shirt website.

You can use the platforms we mentioned to set up branded ecommerce stores where you receive and fulfill the orders. Your clients give a unique URL to their customers who then go on the site and place their order in one convenient location. You can set these up for all your bulk customers, which would be a great selling point to bring in new business.This service benefits your customers, their customers (or students or members) and of course, your t-shirt business. 

If you want to be competitive, an attractive and functional e-commerce website is a must-have. This is the year to level up your website presence. By optimizing your site so it offers a seamless shopping experience, you can reach new buyers from coast to coast. Once you’ve hooked new customers who love your products – and the experience on your site – they’ll spread the word far and wide.