CBD Web Development
You have decided to launch your CBD brand, I’m sure you have an optimized ecommerce CBD e-website design with an online store, and a branded theme and story that will resonate with your target audience. Now I’m sure you are looking for ways to maximize sales and improve your brand’s credibility within the CBD space.
This CBD website feature checklist will help you increase sales if your hemp business is a startup or an established online brand. It is important for your brand to stand out from all of the others, but before you focus on the flashy mainstream features like augmented reality, animation, and dynamic search it’s important to check off the basics to ensure your target audience has the best shopping experience possible.
Here are 10 standard features you CBD website must include inorder to maximize you CBD sales online
Mobile Friendly CBD website
You cannot ignore mobile users because they make up half of the market. If your website is not mobile friendly, or if your website is not user friendly on the mobile versions then you are losing revenue from each site visitor.
However if your CBD brand is equipped with a responsive website where your website images, copy, and products are automatically optimized to fit any device, then your audience will have an improved experience and your sales will likely correspond.
Compliance and Lab Test Results
The Hemp industry is strictly regulated, so it can be challenging for CBD brands to remain compliant. Website hosts have CBD restrictions, so it is important for companies to stay up to date with their web host policies; furthermore, It’s critical to select a web host that allows the sales of CBD and hemp products.
Age verification is a key feature that will help CBD brands remain in compliance with law. CBD has age restrictions, so this feature will ensure that your website is prohibited for minors. This element of a CBD website will help protect it from legal issues regarding age limitations.
It’s important to provide your certification of analysis for your lab results for your CBD products. The CBD industry is not regulated as strictly as Cannabis THC products because CBD is protected under the 2018 Farm Bill. Your brand’s credibility will increase dramatically and instantly build trust with customers. It’s important to CBD customers to get clean and safe products.
Engage Customers with a User-Friendly Experience
The most important element of a website is ease of use. 76% of online shoppers put precedence on website usability. CBD brands must make it easier for customers to shop for products online.
When creating a CBD website it’s crucial to create a clear path to checkout. Make the selection process as simple as possible. Stay away from complicated designs such as carousels because they kill conversion rates.
Streamline the purchasing process with CBD categories, filters, and comparison capabilities to make it super easy for customers to buy your CBD products. Remember that your CBD store, as well as your competitors, are dealing with just minutes if not just seconds to make the sale. Keep the customer focused on getting what they need quickly without distractions.
Lets go over some real examples of ways CBD brands can improve their usability.
High Resolution images and videos
Keep it clean! Be sure to optimize CBD product images. Low resolution images are all over the internet. Don’t be the brand that doesn’t use high quality images, it will negatively affect sales.
Some CBD website developers go all out on product images by uploading multiple images from different multiple angles. They might even use models to create images of people using their products. Engaging shoppers with a variety of images is important
However cannabis and CBD marketers can’t forget that the larger image file size can be a result in having too many high definition images on your product page. This can significantly increase your site’s loading speed.
Therefore it is important to consider technical elements for each image that is featured on your website. Website conversion rates drop by an average of 4.42% with each additional second of load time, According to Hubspot.
3D view is a great way to spice up your CBD product pages. Interactive engagement hooks shoppers in and improves the overall shopping experience. Treekit is a software tool that helps developers implement interactive 3D product images to websites. Treekit optimizes website speeds by:
- Utilizing WebP image formatting
- Using speedy video assets
- Pre-rendered visuals
- Responsive mobile friendly design
- 360 product viewer
Don’t want to break the bank on expensive software tools? Using instagram images is an affordable way to use high resolution images on your website.
{provide an example of instagram product images}
CBD User-Generate Reviews
Online reviews are highly beneficial to retailers and ecommerce websites alike because shoppers will always read, and potentially trust reviews. Reviews help to sell products and services.
In fact Nine out of ten customers read reviews before buying a product, and according to Podium 83% of customers say reviews must be relevant and recent to be trustworthy. Brand reputation is all about establishing trust with customers. Positive reviews will improve your CBD brands credibility – which will in turn increase sales.
However, having negative reviews can also benefit your business. Shoppers trust a brand with some negative reviews more than a brand with only positive reviews. No entity or organization is perfect. People will assure that the reviews are being manipulated or censored if there are no negative opinions of the product or service.
It’s important for CBD and Cannabis companies to have an optimized and active business profile on popular review platforms like Yelp, Foursquare, Facebook, Google My Business, Leafly, and weed maps.
Include a FAQ section
There is a huge need for high quality CBD and cannabis education. Prohibition has set humans back a few hundred years with incredible research and false information. It is important for CBD brands to compile a list of frequently asked questions to keep new CBD users informed about the cannabinoid.
Including blog marketing on your website is essential because the people should be educated by the experts. Use this section of your website to feature the FAQs. Providing Education through blogs and webinars is a great way to engage your customer and impact their purchasing decisions.
CBD oil buyers often ask about product specs, shipping, legal compliance, and more. An additional benefit to having an FAQ section as part of your CBD e-commerce website design is that FAQs can provide a self-help area to address common customer problems.
Include a CBD Wishlist Feature
Amazon’s Wish List feature is surprisingly a must have for CBD ecommerce websites. Customers love to save products they wish to buy in the future. This powerful feature inctivies customers to remain connected to a product even after they choose not to purchase in the moment.
CBD brands that are not using a wishlist could potentially lose out on all of the additional revenue features can generate if implemented correctly. Some ecommerce brands have a large variety of products. micro cannabinoids like CBG, CBC, and CBN are becoming more popular on top of all the different delivery methods like vapes, oils, tinctures, patches, and cosmetics. This feature helps to promote personalized experience for customers which any forward thinking CBD brand should consider.
Additionally this feature can be a data analytics gold mind. Track the items in the wishlist to better understand your target audience and improve your marketing efforts. This feature can be integrated with your email strategy to measure your email follow up campaign.
Additional Cannabinoids – CBG, CBC, CBN, THCv
The resin is hemp and cannabis flowers are extremely sticky. When referring to digital marketing stickiness refers to anything about a website which increases the amount of time a visitor spends browsing. There are many elements that may increase stickiness which may not be the original reason for the website visit.
Blog marketing, FAQ sections, and wishlist as described earlier, are features that hold the customers attention. For example your ideal customer could be shopping for CBD capsules, but they stumble across your CBG capsules and become interested in your micro cannabinoid article that dives into the benefits of CBG. In the end that customer takes action and purchases CBG with their CBD.
Offering a variety of cannabinoid products will help drive sales. You can track the journey your customers take to the checkout page. Lead them with phrases like “you might like this” to generate excitement when you recommend similar products to attach to the sale. Personalization is essential to understanding your target market. Stickiness will be achieved by using similar products to draw in your customers.
POS and Order Tracking
A huge decision that cannot be overlooked when creating a CBD website is choosing the perfect payment processor. Getting payments for CBD sales can be challenging because of the strict compliance regulation. For example, PayPal and Stripe don’t have any options available for CBD sellers.
To sell CBD, the main requirement is to use a payment processor that’s not dependent on traditional banks. This is why bitcoin and other blockchain forms of payment will be critical for the future of online payments.
CBD companies must use a high-risk payment gateway to complete CBD transactions. You’ll probably won’t be able to accept payments from all credit cards. For example, Visa has stopped doing any business with CBD companies, so you’ll be able to accept payments only from Mastercard and Discover.
These options are solid for CBD e-commerce businesses to use.
- USA ePay (must be using Paysafe as your merchant services provider)
- NMI
- Worldpay eComm
Don’t forget to optimize your checkout page on your website. Most shopping carts are abandoned after the customer reaches the checkout page. Remember to ask for as little information as possible. Get shipping information and payment methods – make sure your return policy is clear on this page as well.
It is proactive to allow your customers to create a personalized account to save payment and shipping information in order to limit the time the customers has to spend on the check out process.
Providing order tracking and status will lower the chances of order cancellation. Don’t allow your website developer to skip this step.
Background Analytics
Most CBD website guides leave this important information out. How can you expect to make informed decisions for your website if you have no data to go off of. Digital marketing is all about collecting data and using it to make informed decisions.
Ensure your CBD website has clear KPIs to track so you can continue to improve your website over time. Include an admin panel where your developer can go in and make easy adjustments to your website. It’s also important to have a custom dashboard to track those KPIs as well.
Google Analytics is a free tool that will help you better track your website data. You can use it in combination with your custom dashboard that’s available in your admin panel. This might be the most important addition to your CBD ecommerce website.
{Example of Admin panel and Custom analytics Dashboard}
Need a CBD Website?
If you’re in search of a brand new CBD ecommerce website, or you’re in need of an update, then Dagga can help you with that.
We understand that it can be challenging to find a website developer that understands the challenges within the highly regulated CBD and cannabis industry. We are a 1 stop shop for all of your digital needs. If you’re interested in building a SEO friendly website that incorporates all of the features we discussed above, then what are you waiting for?
Our marketing team has nearly 15 years of experience creating and optimizing websites, and then combine that with nearly 5 plus years of cannabis experience, then you will have the ultimate online compliance team.
Let us take your CBD brand to the next level! Contact us so we can learn more about your brand and mission.
