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Choosing from the endless amount of ecommerce hosting solutions that are available online can be an intimidating task.
However, once you take a step back and decide what features and functions are truly important, you will be able to make a much more informed and targeted decision.
What to Expect From Ecommerce Hosting Solutions
A quality ecommerce hosting solution will provide you with everything that you need to effectively run a successful online storefront.
This includes protecting sensitive customer information, managing products and product searches, and creating a user-friendly shopping experience. In order to do this, a number of features are commonly included.
This includes a variety of shopping cart applications, an SSL (Secure Socket Layer), the necessary digital certificates, security support, and PayPal integration.
Additional features that are becoming more common include live customer service chat, polling, guestbooks, email marketing support, and customer review/feedback.
While all of the these features are an important aspect of creating a successful ecommerce website, there is one over-arching factor that determines which ecommerce hosting solution is right for you.
Ecommerce Integration
Ecommerce integration is critical for a successful online store. You need more than just a shopping cart in order to create a successful store.
The ecommerce aspect of your website must be seamlessly integrated into the rest of your website. This creates the best experience for potential customers and allows them to order items with ease.
Products need to be “browsable”, and sorted into logical groups. Every product must also have accompanying information that will help the consumer make their decision.
Many successful ecommerce websites added the storefront after the website was already created, but did an excellent job of ecommerce integration.
When you choose an ecommerce hosting solution, you need to ensure that they provide you with all of the tools that you will need in order to present your products in the best light possible.
A great way to see ecommerce integration in action is to look at the shopping cart itself. Some studies have indicated that at least 60% of all shopping carts are abandoned by the customer before they complete the checkout.
This means that they had chosen their products and started to check out, but never completed the process. This could be because the shopping cart was confusing, and it could be because they were not committed to the product, or an array of other reasons.
By creating good ecommerce integration, website owners can remove these barriers, and make it easier and more comfortable for potential buyers to finish the purchasing process.
