So, what can you do to make your online store customer-friendly? Here are 15 tried and true ideas:

1. Allow visitors to easily navigate your web shop

A website structure directly impacts user experience and conversion rates. Are your products clearly displayed or buried on some shelf in the darkest and farthest corner of your shop?  The best practice is to create a website structure in which a visitor can reach each and every product page in only 3 clicks from the site’s homepage. Provide your users with website breadcrumbs to help them find their way around your site.

2. Let users search your web shop

A search box is a must-have feature for every website, especially for a web shop with hundreds and thousands of pages. Add the search box in a prominent place on your website and let your users quickly search your site from each and every page.

3. Describe your products accurately and elaborately

Product descriptions are very important in web-based shops. Potential buyers can’t touch the shoes or furniture that you are selling, so they rely on the text you use to describe products. Most shopping websites simply copy the manufacturers’ generic descriptions. That’s faster and easier, right? But savvy online businessman go the extra mile and write detailed, informative, accurate and unique product descriptions to help their shoppers to get the right feel of the product and to add their personal touch, which so often makes all the difference to people and search engines.

4. Suggest related products

If you visited Amazon at least once in your life, you have probably come across the “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought…” section. Help your potential customers to discover similar products and make decisions on what to buy by linking from your product pages to other products with similar characteristics. Make sure to suggest additional products and accessories. For example, help the customer who is buying a laptop to quickly find a proper bag, cover or mouse.

5. Enable customer reviews and comments

Customers often like to share their experiences with the products they use as well as suggestions and even usage tips. Not only that, but most potential buyers like to read reviews of the products they are interested in purchasing. Enabling customers to write reviews and leave comments on product pages builds trust, fosters interactivity, increases sales and provides relevant, on-topic content.

6. Enable product comparison

The ability to compare products is a very customer-friendly feature. People like to compare products with similar features and prices. This helps them to make a decision.

7. Use multimedia

Images and videos have taken over the Internet. If you have any doubts, just think Pinterest, Instagram and YouTube. High quality, rich, authentic and compelling product images, as well as videos of products in action, will improve customer experiences and increase interaction, time spent on the site, and most likely, boost sales.

8. Make sharing easy

The Web has long gone social. People enjoy sharing the products they like, want or use with their friends. Add social buttons to your web pages and encourage visitors to spread the word about the store.

9. Enable and encourage users to contact you

Offer your visitors and customers multiple ways to contact you – by email, phone or live chat. Adding live chat to your ecommerce website is like saying: “Hey, we are here for you – tell us what we can do for you right now.” Of course, making sure that someone is really available for chatting with website visitors and potential customers goes without saying. It’s just a great way to show that the eShop is alive and bustling.

If you have a physical address, include it on your website as well. Offer your visitors a chance to visit your brick-and-mortar shop.  This also sends a message that you are a serious and established business. It is also helpful to add a map of your physical location along with pictures of your offline stores. These little things help you to build trust.

10. Provide help and support

Create and maintain FAQ and support pages to help them find answers to their questions and learn how to use your products. Also provide user guides in multiple formats, like video tutorials, PDF manuals, etc. Update support pages and documentation as often as necessary.

Consider setting up and running user support forums.

11. Educate, inform and update always

Regularly create content around the interests of your target audience to keep them updated on the latest trends and news. Share usage tips and tricks that can improve their experiences with your products and ensure that money spend on your site is money well spent.

A regularly updated blog is a great way to keep your customers and users in the loop.

12. Use special offers, discounts and coupons

13. Provide different payment and shipping methods

14.  Add a Print button

Some people prefer to print out pages with product descriptions and detailed info.

15. Offer value-added functions

Enable your users to add products to their wish list; offer to let them know when the product becomes available, etc.

These are some of the most important features that will transform your online store into a more customer-friendly place – a place where shopping feels just right. In turn, search engines will most likely take notice and reward your efforts.

And remember, people always come first.

1. Boost visibility

It’s no secret that Google and other search engines love SlideShare. SlideShare is an authoritative, trusted and established domain, and therefore enjoys high credibility with Google. SlideShare transcribes uploaded presentations and documents so search engines can easily crawl, read and index the text. Creating high quality slideshows can help you to significantly increase the visibility of your professional skills and expertise. Actually, it is more likely that a slide presentation or document uploaded to SlideShare will rank better and easier for certain keywords than a piece of content posted on a new blog or website.

To make the most of this opportunity, optimize presentations for search engines and users just like any other piece of content that you post and share online. When uploading your work, make sure to fill in all possible information about each presentation. Write relevant, keyword-rich titles and compelling descriptions which correspond to the Title and Meta Description tags. Categorize and tag presentations. The more tags you add, the more people will be able to find your slideshows. Investing the time and effort in building links to individual slide presentations will bring you even more exposure and visibility.

2. Connect and build your business network

SlideShare is a vibrant community of thought leaders, decision makers and experts in any field. You can discover and follow other presenters, and engage with their content by favoriting and commenting on slide presentations. Discovering people of interest and initiating conversations opens up the door to building advantageous business connections and networking with masterminds in your area of expertise.

3. Learn and expand your knowledge

SlideShare is an online repository of high quality content. It is a huge library with free access to published works, research, white papers and learning resources on any imaginable topic. Explore its treasures and arm yourself with more knowledge. After all, knowledge is one of the most valuable assets a professional can have.

4. Conduct research and generate ideas

In line with being a great learning resource, SlideShare is also a powerful tool for conducting research and generating content ideas. You can research and explore hot presentations in your niche and draw inspiration for your next slideshow, speaking event or blog post. SlideShare additionally allows you to download, remix and reuse content.

5. Show off your expertise and build a personal brand

Sharing your professional writing, presentations and videos is an excellent way to showcase your expertise and strengthen your personal brand. SlideShare basically gives you an opportunity to publish your work on the Internet for free. You can create public bookshelves loaded with professional white papers, presentations and other publications.

It is easy to boost visibility and extend the reach of SlideShare content with the SlideShare app for Linkedin or the SlideShare app on Facebook. Moreover, displaying presentations in your Linkedin profile is a powerful way to reinforce your professional identity and reputation.

You can also use the embed code to showcase slideshows on your blog or website. There is the SlideShare Google+ Hangout app for presenting slides live with real time video.

Simply said, branding is made easy with SlideShare.

And all this is just the tip of the iceberg. There are many more reasons to integrate SlideShare into your business and marketing efforts.  If you are a business owner or marketer, you can use it to build awareness of your business, products and services, drive traffic to your website, generate leads, educate and inform customers, and more. Business consultants, web-designers, bloggers and other freelancers can drive more eyeballs to their blogs and online portfolios. Recent grads that are just starting their professional careers can significantly increase their chances of landing a job, and so on. Basically, the sky is the limit.