Ecommerce website best practices are mostly small, unglamorous fixes that stop shoppers from leaving before they pay. A product page that takes too long to load. A shipping charge nobody mentioned until the final step, which is exactly when people close the tab.

Baymard Institute's running average puts cart abandonment at around 70%. Plenty of those shoppers were only ever browsing. Plenty weren't, and they left over things you can actually change.

We've grouped the 35 practices below by where they show up in the shopping journey, starting with page speed and ending with the emails that bring people back. A few you could knock out before lunch. For bigger jobs, like rebuilding checkout or moving platforms, our ecommerce website development services usually come in.

Speed and Performance

A Google and Deloitte study found that a 0.1-second improvement in mobile site speed lifted retail conversions by 8.4%. Of all the ecommerce website best practices on this list, speed is often where the easiest money hides.

1. Hit Google's Core Web Vitals

Start here, because Google measures these whether you check them or not.

• Largest Contentful Paint: under 2.5 seconds

• Interaction to Next Paint: under 200 milliseconds

• Cumulative Layout Shift: under 0.1

Test a product page, a category page, and checkout separately in PageSpeed Insights. The homepage tends to be the fastest page on the site, so it's the least useful one to test.

2. Compress and resize every image

Big images are one of the usual suspects when a store feels slow. Switch to WebP or AVIF, resize each image to the size it's actually shown at, and lazy-load anything further down the page. Shopify handles most of this for you. On WooCommerce, a plugin like ShortPixel or Imagify will do it.

3. Audit your apps and scripts

How many apps does your store run right now? If you'd have to go and check, that's a sign.

Each one loads its own scripts, and they add up. Go through the list every quarter and ask one question about each: would anyone notice if it disappeared tomorrow?

4. Use a CDN

On Shopify or BigCommerce, you already have one. If you self-host WooCommerce, Cloudflare's free plan is a reasonable place to start. A CDN serves your files from servers closer to each shopper, which trims time off every page load.

5. Stop layout shift

This one's easy to check on your own phone. Load a product page and watch closely. Does the "Add to Cart" button jump when a banner or review widget appears? If so, reserve space for those elements in your theme so nothing moves while the page loads.

Navigation and Search

Shoppers who head straight for the search bar usually know exactly what they want. These five fixes help them find it.

6. Keep the main menu short

Quick test: could a first-time visitor guess what's under each menu item? If not, rename it. Your buying team might say "Outerwear," but shoppers type "jackets." Five to seven top-level categories cover most stores. Bigger catalogs can use a mega menu, as long as the labels pass the same test.

7. Make search forgiving

Good site search still works when someone types:

• a typo, like "sneekers"

• a British word, like "trainers"

• a plural, a singular, or a synonym

Built-in search on many platforms struggles with this. If yours does, tools like Algolia or Klevu are worth a look.

8. Never show an empty results page

Search your store for something you don't sell and see what comes up. If it's a blank page that just says "No results," that shopper is probably gone. Show close matches or best-sellers instead.

Then pull your zero-result search report once a month. It's basically a list of products people want and can't find.

9. Add filters people actually use

Size, price, color, and availability are obvious. Your search logs will tell you the rest. If "waterproof" or "vegan" keeps showing up, it probably deserves a filter.

10. Use breadcrumbs on category and product pages

Home > Women > Boots > Chelsea Boots. That little trail shows shoppers where they are and lets them jump back up a level in one tap. Google uses it to understand your site structure too.

Product Pages

Most buying decisions get made right here. It's also where experienced ecommerce website designers spend a big chunk of their time, because small changes on a product page tend to show up in revenue quickly.

11. Show products from every angle

Shoppers can't pick the product up, so your photos have to do it for them. At a minimum:

• several angles, plus zoom

• one shot in context, like on a person, on a shelf, or in someone's hand

• the details people ask about, such as the inside of a bag or the sole of a shoe

12. Add short product videos

A 15-second clip shot on a phone answers things photos can't. How does the fabric move? How loud is the blender? Does a 15-inch laptop really fit in the bag? None of it needs a production budget.

13. Write descriptions for scanners

Put the main benefit up top in a sentence or two. Specs go underneath as bullets: materials, dimensions, care instructions. Long paragraphs about a phone case just don't get read.

14. Put shipping costs and delivery dates on the page

Compare "Ships in 3–5 business days" with "Arrives by Thursday." The second one sells. Baymard's surveys also list extra costs like shipping, taxes, and fees as the top reason shoppers abandon a purchase, so show the shipping cost on the product page as well.

15. Display reviews prominently

According to Northwestern's Spiegel Research Center, products with even a few reviews get bought far more often than products with none. Put the star rating next to the price. Let people sort by lowest rating too, since plenty of shoppers go straight to the one-star reviews before deciding.

16. Include size guides and fit notes

Fit is a big reason clothes get sent back. A size chart right next to the size picker helps, and so do notes pulled from reviews, like "runs small, go up a size."

17. Show real stock levels

"Only 3 left" works when it's true. A shopper who comes back a week later and still sees "Only 3 left" will stop believing anything else on your site.

Cart and Checkout

Someone has picked a product. This is the worst possible time to lose them. Our guide to the ecommerce checkout process goes through this part step by step, so here are the essentials.

18. Offer guest checkout

Baymard's research lists forced account creation among the more common reasons people abandon checkout. Let shoppers check out as guests, then offer to save their details on the confirmation page, once they've already bought.

19. Cut form fields to the minimum

Go through your own checkout and question every field:

• Do you need first and last name as separate boxes?

• Could "Address line 2" sit behind a small link?

• Does anyone outside B2B ever fill in "Company"?

While you're there, set the right mobile keyboard for each field, like a number pad for ZIP codes.

20. Turn on address autocomplete

Typing a full street address with your thumbs is nobody's idea of fun, and typos mean failed deliveries. Turn on autocomplete, and you'll get fewer "where's my order?" emails as a bonus.

21. Add express payment options

Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, and Shop Pay let people skip the forms completely. Put those buttons at the top of the cart and checkout, where they're seen first.

22. Offer buy now, pay later where it fits

Klarna, Afterpay and Affirm can help with pricier items like furniture or electronics. They charge fees, though, so run a test before switching them on across the whole store.

23. Keep the cart editable

If someone wants a medium instead of a large, let them change it right there in the cart. Sending them back to the product page for a size swap is an easy way to lose the order.

24. Show a progress indicator

Shipping > Payment > Review. On a multi-step checkout, a simple bar like that tells people how much is left. Make each step clickable as well, so going back doesn't wipe what they've already typed.

Trust and Security

Would you type your card number into a site you'd never heard of, with no phone number and no returns policy? Your shoppers won't either.

25. Make your returns policy easy to find

Link to it from the footer, product pages, and cart. Then write it so a first-time buyer gets it in thirty seconds: how long they have, who pays return shipping, and when the refund lands.

26. Show real contact details

Phone number, email, and, ideally, a physical address. A store with only a contact form can look like it might vanish next month. If you add live chat, make sure someone actually answers it.

27. Use recognizable payment badges

Show logos for the cards and wallets you accept near the payment step. Skip the generic "100% Secure" shields. Shoppers have seen too many of them to care.

28. Keep HTTPS and your platform up to date

An expired SSL certificate triggers a browser warning that scares people off fast. Outdated plugins are a security risk too. Put updates on a monthly schedule and try them on a staging site first.

Mobile and Accessibility

For a lot of US stores, phones bring in most of the traffic. These ecommerce website best practices are about making sure that traffic can actually check out.

29. Design for one-handed use

Hold your phone in one hand and try to buy something from your own store. Can your thumb reach "Add to Cart" without stretching? Big tap targets and a sticky add-to-cart bar on long pages help a lot. It's one of the first things good ecommerce web designers check on a new store.

30. Build to WCAG 2.2 AA

Ecommerce sites are a frequent target of ADA website lawsuits in the US, and accessible stores are easier for everyone to use anyway. Good places to start are color contrast, alt text, keyboard navigation, and labeled form fields. Building to WCAG 2.2 AA helps, but it isn't a legal guarantee on its own.

31. Test on real phones

Emulators miss things that real phones don't. Before any big release, try the store on an older Android and a recent iPhone, using cellular data instead of the office Wi-Fi.

Retention and Post-Purchase

A repeat order is usually cheaper to win than a new customer. That work starts the moment the first order goes through.

32. Send useful post-purchase emails

Order confirmation, shipping updates, and a check-in after delivery cover the basics. After that, send something useful, like a care guide or a tip for getting more out of the product, before you ask for a review.

33. Make reordering easy

For things people buy again and again, like coffee, skincare, or pet food, add a "Buy again" button and think about offering a subscription. Three fewer clicks for a regular customer adds up over a year.

Measurement and Testing

This is where the "data-driven" part of ecommerce website best practices really comes in. The most useful data you have is your own store's.

34. Track your funnel step by step

Set up GA4 ecommerce events for view item, add to cart, begin checkout, and purchase. Find the step with the biggest drop and start there. Microsoft Clarity is free and shows you recordings of what people did right before they left.

35. A/B test the changes that matter

Change one meaningful thing at a time, like the product page layout or the number of checkout steps. Let the test run until the result is reliable, and keep a note of what you learned, including from the tests that lose.

Where to Start: Quick Wins vs Bigger Projects

Some of these take a day. Others take a few weeks. Roughly:

When to Bring in an Ecommerce Design Agency

Plenty of these fixes take an afternoon. Rebuilding checkout or moving to a new platform is a different story.

An ecommerce design agency is worth calling when traffic is steady, but sales have flattened, or when your platform can't do what your customers need. Good ecommerce website designers look at your analytics before they open a mood board, and they test changes rather than guessing.

When you compare ecommerce website design companies, ask for links to live stores they've built and go through the checkout yourself. Our ecommerce web design services cover design, development, and the testing that keeps a store getting better after launch. You can see how we approached a luxury fashion brand in our Behno case study.

Conclusion

Don't try to fix all 35 this month. Open your analytics, find the step where the most shoppers drop off, and pick the three practices here that fit it. Ship those, see what changes, then move on to the next step.

Want a second pair of eyes on your store? Talk to our team.

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