Key features of an effective online store

As soon as your store exceeds a handful of products, the way you organize your catalog becomes crucial. Visitors need to be able to instantly identify where the product they’re looking for is located, without having to think or guess.

To achieve this, your catalog must include :

For a small site (50 to 100 products), a simple, clear tree structure is generally sufficient. But as soon as you reach 500 or 5,000 products, catalog organization becomes a real strategic issue. You’ll need to think more deeply about :

• the hierarchy of your categories and sub-categories,
• the way you display and link your products,
• dynamic advanced filters that adapt to the customer’s path and previous choices,
• conditional navigation that automatically adapts to user behavior.

This clarity and ease of use will make all the difference between a site where customers “waste time searching”, and one where they “easily find what they want to buy”.

Product sheets to whet the appetite

First of all, it all starts with an explicit title and a really useful description. Absolutely avoid empty marketing jargon or copy-and-pasted descriptions from the supplier. Your customer wants to know clearly what your product is for, what needs it meets, who it’s specifically for and, above all, what makes it unique.

On an online store, the product sheet plays exactly the same role as a good salesperson in a store: it must captivate, reassure, advise and, above all, convince. A good product sheet is therefore much more than a simple list of information: it must be designed as an experience in itself, clear, pleasant and effective.

Then there are the visuals. In today’s world, displaying a single basic photo is no longer enough. To generate trust, include several high-quality images taken from different angles. Even better: add a zoomable view, a short video, or a visual representation in real-life context (for example, a piece of clothing being worn, a piece of furniture in a room, or an electronic device in operation).

Another key element is the fluid management of variants (sizes, colors, formats…). Here, variation swatches make all the difference: these interactive visual buttons enable the user to choose a variant quickly, without having to reload the entire product page with each click. By reducing the number of steps, you directly improve the purchasing experience.

Finally, an effective product listing is one that actively reassures your customer. To achieve this, you must display :

The payment stage is where everything can change. Your customer has found exactly what he’s looking for, his basket is validated, he’s ready to pay… but a single difficulty at this point can be enough to discourage him for good.

To avoid losing sales at this crucial moment, your payment process must be as smooth and intuitive as possible:

• Multiply your payment methods: classic bank cards, Twint, PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay or even payment by invoice. The more choices you offer, the more you avoid unnecessary blockages.
• Reduce unnecessary friction: never force a visitor to create an account if they don’t want to. Guest shopping is often the quickest and most efficient solution, especially for first-time orders.
• Reassure your visitors: clearly display the logos of accepted secure payment methods, and make the payment screen as simple as possible to avoid confusion.

👉 The aim is simple: to make your payment tunnel so fluid that your customer doesn’t even notice it’s there. They should go effortlessly from the desire to buy to the validation of their order, as if it were a matter of course.

When it comes to delivery, your customers expect the same clarity as at checkout. Nobody likes unpleasant surprises, especially when it comes to the time or cost of receiving a product.

To avoid frustration, here are some best practices to follow:

• Total transparency right from the shopping basket: clearly and precisely indicate delivery costs, expected delivery times, and all available options (standard delivery, express delivery, in-store pick-up or point relais). Your customers need to understand exactly what they’re paying for and when they’ll receive their order, without having to go any further in the process.
• Simplified order tracking: as soon as the order is validated, you automatically send a reassuring confirmation email. Then offer real-time tracking via an easy-to-access customer area or regular email notifications. The aim? To enable your customers to check the status of their order in just a few clicks, without having to search or worry.
• Precise, proactive order status management: too often neglected, tracking order status (“pending”, “in progress”, “shipped”, “delivered”) is essential to a successful customer experience. It’s one of the few points of contact after a purchase, and has a direct influence on the trust placed in your store.

Today, the majority of visits to online stores are made via smartphone, and this figure is growing all the time. Designing your site with a mobile version in mind is therefore no longer an option to be considered, but an absolute necessity for effective conversion and loyalty.

A mobile-friendly online store doesn’t just mean a design that “fits”. It must be entirely designed to facilitate navigation and purchasing on small screens.

In concrete terms, this means :

• Intuitive one-handed navigation: all key areas (menu, filters, search bar) should be easily accessible with the thumb.
• Large, easy-to-click buttons: on a small screen, every click counts. Your action buttons (purchase, cart validation, payment) need to be large enough and well spaced to avoid accidental clicks.
• Text that’s legible without zooming: nothing is more discouraging than a site that requires you to zoom or scroll horizontally. Your texts need to be clear, uncluttered and easy to read immediately.
• An optimized purchase tunnel: minimize the steps needed to complete the purchase, by integrating simplified mobile payments like Apple Pay or Twint.

But above all, it’s not enough to design a mobile site: it’s absolutely essential to test it in real-life conditions, from your customer’s point of view. Too often, a site validated only on the computer becomes complicated to use on a smartphone. So take the time to go through your entire purchasing tunnel from a phone: from the home page to the final validation, via the product sheet and order confirmation.

When visitors arrive at your online store, they should be able to answer three basic questions immediately:

1. What exactly does this site sell?
2. Can I trust him?
3. How can I buy quickly and easily?

Your objective is simple: to provide him with these answers without him having to search, hesitate or ask himself unnecessary questions. To achieve this, you need to focus on :

• a clear, structured menu for quick access to the right categories and sub-categories,
• effective product pages, with useful, hierarchical and immediately understandable information,
• intuitive filters (price, size, color, availability) and a visible breadcrumb trail to guide your user through each step.

But guiding your user is not enough: you also need to be able to convince at the right moment. Several effective techniques come into play here:

• Suggestions and cross-selling (“You might also like…”, “Related products”), which suggest relevant complementary products, naturally increase the value of the average basket and improve the user experience.
• Strategic upsells (“Add this accessory for CHF 9.-” or “Upgrade to the next version”), judiciously placed before the final shopping cart checkout or directly on the product sheet, can increase your revenues without forcing the customer’s hand.

Finally, never forget the power of customer reviews. They are essential for immediately reassuring your visitors: a visible average rating, authentic comments and the easy possibility of leaving one after purchase immediately reinforce trust in your store.

What’s more, these reviews represent real SEO leverage: they enrich your product pages with natural, regularly-updated content – exactly what Google appreciates when it comes to referencing your site.

Transactional e-mails are often seen as a mere “technical detail”. And yet, they are what maintain the customer relationship once the order has been placed.

A good e-mail system automates sending:

• order confirmation,
• shipment tracking,
• of the invoice,
• but also post-purchase messages.

Among them, one in particular deserves to be better exploited: the abandoned basket e-mail. It’s a highly effective conversion lever. A customer who has added a product to the shopping cart was clearly interested… but perhaps distracted, hesitant or interrupted.

→ Sending him an automatic message a few hours later, with a direct link to finalize his purchase, often recovers the sale.

Add a reassuring reminder, or even an incentive (e.g. free delivery or limited stock), and the recovery rate climbs.

Another strategic moment: the “order completed” e-mail. This is the ideal opportunity to :

All these mailings can be automated via tools like Mailchimp, Brevo or a CRM connected to your store. They enable you to maintain an effortless presence, while offering a smooth, proactive customer experience.

A well-designed online store is not only pleasing to your customers: it must also be intuitive and easy to manage on a day-to-day basis. The administrative interface is often underestimated, but it’s essential to save time, avoid errors and efficiently manage your business.

An efficient administration interface lets you :

• Easily manage your orders, products and inventory: you need to be able to quickly access key information, easily modify products or statuses, and manage your stock levels without wasting time.
• Apply precise filters: date, category, order status… these filters should enable you to find the information you’re looking for immediately, even on large volumes.
• Easily export strategic data: orders, customer information, PDF or CSV invoices. Fast, reliable exports simplify your accounting and sales follow-up.
• Receive automatic alerts: products soon to be out of stock, blocked orders, pending payments… These notifications enable you to act quickly and avoid unpleasant surprises.

When your catalog exceeds a few dozen or a few hundred items, manual management quickly becomes impossible to maintain without errors. This is when it becomes essential to integrate your store with more comprehensive management tools, such as :

• An ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), capable of automatically synchronizing your stocks, orders, deliveries and suppliers, thus avoiding costly human error and time lags.
• Accounting software such as Bexio or Crésus, to automate invoice management, simplify your bookkeeping and ensure smooth, reliable tax management.

These technical integrations make day-to-day management easier, improve data reliability, save valuable time and free you to focus on growing your business rather than managing the details.

The customer area must also be simple, clear and intuitive. After a purchase, your customer must be able to :

• Easily track the status of your order, from validation to delivery.
• Quickly download your invoices, so you have a clear view of your past purchases and can easily manage your personal or business accounts.
• Update personal information, such as delivery addresses or contact details, without having to contact customer support.
• Access to a complete order history, to simplify repeat purchases and reinforce confidence in your store.

👉 A good customer area is one that anticipates and naturally eliminates unnecessary questions. It contributes directly to strengthening customer satisfaction, building loyalty and encouraging future purchases.

When running an online store, you can’t afford to improvise on legal and security issues. Today, complying with standards like the RGPD (General Data Protection Regulation) is no longer just a constraint reserved for large companies: it’s a responsibility that concerns every store, big or small.

In concrete terms, this means that your site must integrate :

👉 Beyond the legal obligation, RGPD compliance is also a matter of trust: a visitor who feels respected and safe is far more likely to buy and return to your site regularly.

Since the recent directives issued by the EDPS(European Data Protection Committee), the use of audience measurement tools such as Google Analytics 4 must meet specific criteria:

• IP address anonymization should be enabled by default to protect users.
• Explicit consent to cookies is required before any user tracking.
• Visitors must be able to easily deactivate tracking at any time.

Specialized plugins such as Complianz or Cookiebot make compliance much easier, and enable you to manage these legal aspects without any particular effort.

Billing is another crucial legal aspect that is often overlooked, but essential. Your invoicing system must be perfectly automated, clear, compliant and easy to manage:

• Automated PDF invoicing, with clear indication of VAT, adapted to each geographical zone (Switzerland, EU, non-EU…).
• Anticipating legal changes: VAT regulations change regularly. For example, Switzerland changed its rates in 2024. If your store doesn’t anticipate these changes far enough in advance, you risk costly mistakes or legal problems.

To avoid this, opt for a dynamic VAT management system: you need to be able to easily modify the applicable rates directly in your WooCommerce system, so that the transition is immediate, fluid and error-free.

👉 Compliance and security aren’t just technicalities: they protect your business, boost customer confidence and improve the overall experience of your store.

Your visitors don’t come to your online store to admire your technology or your technical choices. They’re not interested in your payment plugin, the number of steps in your order tunnel, or the intricacies of your review system.

In concrete terms, your customers want to :

• know exactly what they’re paying for, right from the start, with no nasty surprises;
• know exactly when they will receive their order;
• and know immediately who to contact in the event of a problem or question.

They want to order without asking themselves unnecessary questions, without having to search for a hidden button, or having to reread an incomprehensible error message several times.

What they really want from your store:

• simple, fast and intuitive navigation ;
• a seamless experience, from the first click to receipt of their parcel;
• accessible, responsive customer service when they need it.

🎯 If you can anticipate these expectations and meet them naturally, you haven’t just won a sale – you’ve won a loyal customer, ready to recommend you to others.

In Switzerland, as elsewhere in Europe, a multilingual website is not an optional luxury. It’s often an absolute necessity, right from the start of your online business. Whether you sell in Geneva, Zurich or elsewhere, your customers naturally expect to be able to browse and buy in their mother tongue.

Creating a good multilingual site isn’t just a matter of “translating”. It’s about anticipating structure and user experience from the outset:

• Use clear, distinct URLs for each language (e.g. /fr, /de, /en) to improve your SEO and user experience.
• Integrate correctly set “hreflang” tags right from the start, so that Google can index each language version efficiently.
• Offer intuitive, easy navigation between languages, via a clear menu, a visible selector or well-placed flags.
• Always choose professional, high-quality translations: an approximate translation is just as damaging to your credibility as a technical problem.

Tools such as WPML or TranslatePressperfectly integrated with WooCommerce, will help you to manage your multilingual catalog efficiently, even when your store contains several thousand items.👉 A well-translated site is one that inspires confidence, facilitates navigation, increases sales and builds lasting loyalty among your international visitors.

We often hear the common misconception: “My e-shop only offers a few dozen products. Is it really worth doing SEO?”

The answer is quite clear: yes, without a doubt.

Every product listing, even in a small online store, represents a unique opportunity to capture qualified visitors via Google. And in highly targeted, local or specialized markets, a good SEO strategy can literally change the game.

Here are the SEO basics you shouldn’t neglect for your e-shop:

• Optimized titles with precise, natural keywords adapted to your target audience.
• Unique and useful descriptions, structured to be easily read by your visitors and well understood by search engines.
• Optimized meta tags (title, meta description) for each product and category.
• Simple, short and clear URLs, avoiding obscure structures (such as /product/abc123), to ensure good indexing by Google.
• Fast loading speed: Google strongly favors fast sites, especially on mobile.
• Intelligent internal linking: relevant links between your categories, products and editorial pages strengthen your store’s overall SEO.

An additional asset to exploit: customer reviews. They naturally enrich your product sheets with fresh, relevant content, considerably improving your visibility on search engines.

🎯 WooCommerce is particularly effective in this approach: open, easily customizable and perfectly integrated with the WordPress ecosystem (blog, marketing tools, CRM, analytics…), it lets you optimize every element to sustainably improve your positioning on Google, even with a limited catalog.

At Pyxa, the majority of our stores are designed with WooCommerceand this choice is far from accidental.

We prefer WooCommerce because it’s exactly what our customers want:

• Open and flexible: with WooCommerce, you always retain total control over your store, your data and your technical choices. You’re never stuck in a closed system or limited by the rules imposed by an external platform.
• 100% customizable: you can fully adapt the design, functionality and user experience to your precise needs, and especially as your project evolves.
• Reliable and scalable: ideal for getting started with a small store (10 to 50 products), WooCommerce is also perfect for supporting your business as it grows to thousands of items, without the need for complex migration.

Native integration with WordPress also opens the door to a rich and powerful ecosystem:

• Blog and SEO-optimized content: take full advantage of WordPress’ advanced SEO tools to naturally attract more qualified visitors.
• Simplified multilingual management: WPML or TranslatePress integrate seamlessly, making it easy to manage a high-performance multilingual site right from the start.
• Integrated automation and CRM: automate your internal processes, manage your marketing campaigns and improve customer follow-up directly from your WooCommerce store.
• Efficient B2B or B2C sales management: WooCommerce easily adapts to the specific needs of professional or private markets, with extensions tailored to each use case.

🎯 In short, whether you’re launching your first store or looking to upgrade an existing platform, WooCommerce provides a solid, sustainable and totally controllable foundation to support your growth.

Creating an effective online store isn’t just about piling on technical features or choosing an aesthetically pleasing theme. It’s about designing a true ecosystem that tangibly improves your customers’ lives and simplifies your day-to-day management.

A high-performance store is a tool designed from start to finish to :

• Ease of purchase: with smooth browsing, easy payment and delivery with no surprises.
• Inspire confidence: through total transparency on prices, delivery and accessible customer service.
• Intelligently automate everything that can be automated, to free up your time and avoid costly errors.
• Evolve with your project: by remaining flexible, open and easily adaptable to your future needs.

At Pyxa, we design simple, robust and truly scalable WooCommerce stores that are entirely focused on the essentials: helping you sell better and more efficiently.

🎯 Whether you’re just starting out or looking to optimize an existing store, our team is here to listen, advise and build the best possible solution with you.

Want to talk about it? We’d love to hear from you!