Key Features for a Successful E-Commerce CBD Store – CBD Website Design and Development
In this article, we’ll discuss some of the main features your CBD e-commerce website simply must have if you want guaranteed sales. Whether you’re just setting up your new CBD business and need a new website or already have a site and are looking to improve sales, you’ve come to the right place.
It’s vital to design a website that’s going to highlight what’s special about your particular brand of hemp-based products. Together with this, you need to know the current trends so that you can understand what your target audience is looking for. You can then structure your marketing and product lines according to that. However, while it’s important to stay on-trend, it’s just as important to remain unique. So, you need to find the balance between these two. Being trendy doesn’t necessarily bring better conversion rates or great user-experiences that will keep them coming back to your site.
Keep reading to learn a few of the features your CBD website design simply must have to attract new customers and turn them into loyal users of your brand.
1. Your CBD / Cannabis Website Design Must be Mobile-Responsive
Half of all transactions conducted online take place via a mobile device. In other words, fifty percent of your entire target audience use their smartphones for shopping. Therefore, if your CBD-website design isn’t set up to be mobile-responsive, you’ll probably lose these customers. Your site content and graphics need to automatically adapt to whichever type of device is being used.
Many companies have reported hugely increased sales once their sites were optimized for mobile use. It’s important to have knowledge of your mobile customers’ purchase habits. As a newly launched CBD business, you must have a good grasp of your target customers before designing your website. It must give your customers the right information in the best way on their device of choice.
2. Your CBD Website Design Must Focus on Ease-of-Use
Research has shown that almost eighty percent of customers place ease of use as the most important website feature. Remember, no matter how good your products are, if it’s difficult for the potential customer to see them or order them from your site, they will leave.
When thinking about your CBD website design, aim for simplicity all the way through. As a CBD business with a website, your goal is to help the users obtain what they want quickly and easily. Nothing must block the pathway to their purchase effort. You basically have a couple of minutes to make the sale. Focus on the customer experience as far as possible. To that end, here are a few things you can do:
- Give your customers an autocomplete option
- Ensure efficient visual navigation
- Pre-populate any forms to speed up the checkout process
3. User-Generated Content is Valuable
It’s a fact that with any product, whether purchased online or from a brick-and-mortar store, reviews are read by most shoppers. Having several great reviews on your site can help clinch the deal for potential customers who are unsure. Up to 95% of shoppers read and trust reviews. A little over half of those will only purchase from you if you consistently rate 4 stars or higher. On the bright side, negative reviews tend to give customers a feeling that your CBD products are censored, which increases their appeal. Customers often feel that false reviews are fake and strangely enough, this encourages them to purchase them.
We suggest that you keep a business profile on platforms like Facebook, Google My Business and the like to enhance your business image and gain positive reviews.
4. Include a Frequently-Asked Question Section in your CBD Website Design
Because hemp CBD is a relatively new product (legally speaking), it is still unfamiliar to many customers. Brand confidence still needs to be built before customers fully trust in the products. For this reason, it is mainly marketed as a health and wellness product. Make sure that there is information on your site about the health benefits of using the various products you have on offer. The most user-friendly way of presenting such information is in the FAQ format. Some of the main questions to include would cover side-effects, doses, suitability for the elderly, safety, and shelf life. This section could also be used for common customer issues like payment and shipping queries or forgotten passwords.
5. Don’t Skimp on Good Quality Images
The more visual your CBD website design, the better. Customers are not going to plough through hundreds of words. Having just one or two images and pages and pages of text isn’t going to attract anybody to your site. Having said that, remember that having a lot of graphics means that your product page file size is bigger. This could slow it down when loading and customers won’t wait for that no matter how good your videos are. You need to strike a balance with images that load quickly yet are clear and informative. Images are what will sell your products, not the text. Aim for several photos for each CBD product that have optimized file sizes so that they load quickly.
6. Make a Wish
Customers use and enjoy wishlist features on websites. They bookmark products they’re interested in and go back to them later and even share them with friends and family. They’re probably the modern equivalent of window shopping. A CBD wishlist can generate revenue for you in the long term. It’s estimated that having a wishlist option as part of your CBD website design can result in as much as a ten times higher return to purchase rate.
Hopefully these six tips have given you something to aim at when planning your CBD website design. If you need help, we’re available to assist you with designing an efficient, search-optimized and user-friendly e-commerce website for your CBD products. Contact us here to schedule a consultation or get a quotation.
