25 Essential Pages for Your E-Commerce Website
If you’re new to the world of online retail and are looking to step into e-commerce for the first time, a lot of learning is required. It’s not immediately obvious what’s needed to get a new online business off the drawing board and into production.
One of the most common errors we see is the belief that simply by listing your products and adding a payment gateway you will have a successful online store. While products and payment options are important you have to consider other essential pages for your e-commerce website.
What Pages Make Up An E-Commerce Website?
Essential pages for your e-commerce website are the home page, product page, shopping cart, and checkout.
But there’s more to an e-commerce website than these.
Over the years of designing e-commerce websites, we put together a master site map of every must-have page that you should include in an e-commerce website. We identified 25 essential pages for your e-commerce website that we believe are very important for any online store to have.
Essential Pages for Your E-Commerce Website
General E-Commerce Pages
1. Homepage
The homepage is essential, no question about that. It’s often the first impression a brand gets to make and usually the first page to tackle in an e-commerce design.
The homepage can include promotions, branded lifestyle imagery, and featured products or categories. Value propositions should be clear, like what makes the brand or products unique, and you should highlight any brand guarantees such as free shipping.
While the homepage is generally the first page your site visitors will see, remember that people don’t always enter through the homepage and may arrive via direct links to other pages.
2. Category Overview
The category page refers to the landing page for a top-level category, such as Women or Electronics. These pages display an overview of what’s within that category rather than list all the products.
You can utilize multiple category overview pages with more than two levels, such as Women’s > Tops > Sweaters.
However, if your categories are only one level deep, you can skip the Category Overview page and go straight to the Category page.
3. Category Page
The Category page is the list view of products for a specific category or subcategory, usually displayed in a grid layout. It often includes filters so users can drill down and find what they are looking for.
The focus of this page is for users to browse many products at once. This purpose is different from the Category Overview, which focuses on promotion and wayfinding.
4. Product Page
Sometimes referred to as the Product Detail Page, this is the specific view of a product with the full product details and pricing. The main call to action is the add-to-cart button.
Adding reviews, related products, and user-generated content from social media to this page can help drive customers to add-to-cart.
5. Search and Search Results
E-commerce sites should have search functionality, especially for sites with a wide range of products. Usually, the search field is part of the navigation menu. If not, you should always place it in a prominent position at the top of the page.
Make sure to consider how the Results page displays the results. This page often follows the Category Page template, or it could have a unique design. Implementing ‘suggested search’ surfaces products while the customer is typing to remove the need to go to a dedicated search results page.
6. Login/Create Account
E-commerce sites with account functionality allow customers to save data such as order history and payment information and can enable other interactions such as wish list management, the accrual of rewards/loyalty points, and special access to deals.
The login/create account form can be an individual page, modal, or dropdown. Make sure creating an account is accessible from the login fields (and vice versa), so when users realize they don’t have a login, they can quickly get to Create Account.
7. Mini Cart
The ‘mini cart’ is technically not a page, but it’s a must-have view to include on your e-commerce site. It’s essential to provide visual feedback when the user adds an item to their cart, and the mini cart does just that.
The mini cart is often a dropdown or flyout coming from the cart icon in the navigation menu or a modal on the page. Keep it informative by recapping all items and updating the cart subtotal.
A mini cart is also an excellent opportunity to get the user to keep shopping by showing how close they are to free shipping and presenting related products.
8. Cart Page
The shopping cart needs to list everything the user has added and have the ability for the user to make changes.
It’s good practice to show the estimated shipping cost and the promo code field at this point. This way, the user can get a good idea of their final cost without going too deep into the checkout process (for shipping estimates to work, the user may have to input their zip code in advance).
You don’t want cart abandonments to happen on the last step of the checkout when customers discover the cost of taxes and shipping and that their promo code doesn’t work–it’s frustrating for both the store and the customer.
The cart page can also be an opportunity to upsell related products.
Checkout Pages
The following pages for the checkout flow are some of the most critical must-haves in an e-commerce site, as these pages are where the conversion (the sale!) happens.
9. Log In/Guest Checkout
After a user reviews their cart is the perfect moment to prompt the user to log in (if not already logged in) for a quicker checkout experience by using the saved information.
The user may not want to deal with creating an account or remembering their password, so provide the ability to checkout as a guest, which will require them to fill out all their
10. Shipping
The shipping page within the checkout should include the form fields needed to gather the shipping address. In addition, there’s often a checkbox to use the same shipping address for the billing address.
11. Payment
The payment step includes form fields to input payment information. This step may consist of fields to enter a billing address, especially if it’s different from the shipping address.
This step can also include entering gift cards, rewards points, promo codes, or pay with rewards points or store credit.
12. Checkout Review
A checkout review is an important step to review all purchased items, the shipping info, payment method, discounts, and extra costs like taxes or express shipping.
Make sure it’s clear that this is a review step and that the main call to action is to submit the order.
13. Order Confirmation
Once the customer submits the order, please give them a nice thank you message and confirm that they submitted their order successfully. In addition, displaying the order details and info on how to modify the order if the user catches a mistake after submission is helpful.
If this was a guest checkout, take the opportunity to prompt the user to create an account to save all the information they just submitted.
Stores may use confirmation pages to display a message other than a thank you. However, as the system processes the order, something could go wrong, and the site will need to return an error page instead of confirmation to explain that an item sold out by the time the buyer submitted the order.
Account Pages
14. My Orders / Order History
The Orders page lists any current orders as well as all past orders so the user can reference previous purchases.
15. Individual Order View
This page is like the receipt for a given order. It should include complete details for that order – from what they bought to where it was shipped. Depending on the e-commerce platform and its integration with shipping/fulfillment software, orders may also include a tracking number.
16. My Profile / Account Settings
Whether labeled as “My Profile,” “My Settings,” “Account Information,” and so forth, this page includes all the primary account fields, such as name, email, and change password details. It’s common to show any additional information collected from the user, such as demographic information.
The customer’s Account is also a great place to offer them access to their saved Wishlist items. Unfortunately, most companies incentivize account sign-ups by only allowing a customer to save an item to a wishlist if they have an account.
Rewards and loyalty program details can also live within the profile page, allowing customers to see their rewards balance, learn how to earn, and apply their rewards to their order.
17. Payment Settings
The Payment Settings (or Manage Payment) page lists saved payment info (gathered from previous orders) and allows customers to update or delete that information.
18. Addresses
The Addresses page lists saved shipping addresses (also collected from previous orders), with the ability to edit or delete.
19. Email & SMS Sign up
Email and SMS are critical lifelines of e-commerce. It’s a sure way to guarantee return customers and market to interested prospective customers.
E-commerce sites should make it easy for interested visitors to sign up. This doesn’t have to be a dedicated page – you can opt for a simple field in the footer or a pop-up modal. Provide an incentive for signing up, like a free shipping discount, and give a short overview of what type of emails they’ll be getting.
Don’t forget to consider the confirmation message that comes after submission. This message can also be a separate page or load into the modal/footer area.
20. Returns
Returns are an essential part of shopping online, so there should always be a clear link to the returns page in the footer. This page should also be accessible during the checkout flow, as cart abandonment may happen when a user is unsure about the return policy and can’t confidently complete their purchase.
The best return pages lay out the return/exchange process in an easy-to-understand way while addressing common questions and concerns.
21. Shipping
A big question in online shoppers’ minds is the shipping time and cost, so an easy-to-find shipping information page (often in the footer, like returns) is essential. Also, include information about international shipping policies and any particular holiday shipping schedules.
22. Help / Contact Us
Give your customers a centralized place to find ways to get in touch with customer support, whether with an email address, phone number, form, or live chat with a Help or Contact Us page. Many sites combine FAQs with Contact Us to answer questions that may have come up many times in the past (and also to save time).
Don’t underestimate the importance of the Contact Us page – customer service is a huge driver of business growth. Making customer service accessible and easy will provide a superior experience to users and get people to spread the word about the store and brand.
23. Store Locator / Where to Buy
When you have physical store locations, some visitors will come to the site to find a store near them. Likewise, if your brand doesn’t have a physical store, but other retailers sell its products, it’s essential to provide a page for users to find who stocks the brand and where they can buy it.
24. Store Details page
As you drill down from the Store Locator page, provide complete details about a particular store, like a map and business hours.
25. Terms and Conditions, Privacy Policy, and Web Accessibility Policy
As with all sites, don’t forget to include the legalese.
If your site is compliant, it is essential to include an accessibility statement, which serves as an acknowledgment and commitment of accessibility, provides customers information about the accessibility of the company’s content, and shows customers that your business cares about them.
Wrapping Up (Your Sales)
The above list covers everything needed on a core level, but an e-commerce site may need much more based on the type of products it sells and the unique goals of the brand and the store.
You may want to consider additional pages and features like the About page, Blog, Wish Lists, Careers page, and more.
Are You Building an E-Commerce Website?
Are you interested in selling your products online but unsure how to build an e-commerce site? Our team of professional e-commerce designers will be happy to help you with this. But, first, look at our portfolio and read our case studies.
Then, if you believe we are a good fit for your e-commerce web design needs, let’s talk! We offer a full range of consulting and design solutions for businesses and product brands.
And if you are still unsure what pages you need to include in your online store, let’s talk! We will listen to you, answer your questions, and determine the best e-commerce solutions for your company or product brand!
Are You Selling Online?
Do you have anything to add to our list of essential pages for your e-commerce website? Maybe you have created additional e-commerce pages for your online store? Feel free to add your comments below so our audience can benefit and grab our feed so you don’t miss our next post! And feel free to share our post with your audience!
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By PixoLabo
Not Your Average WordPress Web Design Agency
@pixolabo
