E-commerce Website Features: 20 Checks Before Launch

Short answer: an online store is ready when a first-time buyer on a phone can find a product, see the full price with delivery, pay the way they expect and know when the parcel arrives, all without creating an account. The 20 checks below cover product pages, cart and checkout, search and filters, trust pages and speed. Each has a pass mark you can test yourself before the store goes live.

Two figures frame the list. Baymard Institute's running average across 50 studies puts cart abandonment at 70.22%, and the top reasons it records are extra costs (40%), slow delivery (20%), distrust with card details (19%), forced account creation (18%) and a long checkout (17%). Statcounter puts mobile at 56.86% of Singapore web traffic in September 2026. Run every check on a phone first.

Product page checks

The product page is where the decision is made. Five checks.

• 1. Full price shown once. The price on the page is the price in the cart. If GST applies to your store, show prices with it included, so the number does not change at checkout.
• 2. Stock and delivery estimate on the page. "In stock, delivered in 2 to 3 working days" beats a surprise at the cart. Baymard lists slow delivery as the second reason for abandonment.
• 3. Photos that answer size and finish. At least 3 photos per product: the product alone, in use or on a body, and a close-up. A size chart or dimensions in centimetres where it matters.
• 4. Variants without reloads. Colour and size switch the photo and price in place. Out-of-stock variants are visible and marked, not hidden.
• 5. One add-to-cart button, visible without scrolling. On a phone, the button stays within reach as the page scrolls. Nothing else on the page competes with it.

Cart and checkout checks

Checkout is where Baymard's abandonment reasons stack up. Six checks.

• 6. Delivery cost visible in the cart. Before the buyer enters an address, the cart states delivery cost or the free-delivery threshold. Extra costs are the top abandonment reason at 40%.
• 7. Guest checkout. No account required. Google's own checkout guidance advises enabling checkout "without the need for users to create an account" and showing the final total before payment is invoked.
• 8. Address form matched to Singapore. Six-digit postal code, unit number field in the #05-01 format, and postal-code lookup that fills the block and street.
• 9. Payment methods local buyers use. Cards, PayNow and at least one wallet or buy-now-pay-later option. Fees differ by provider; our payment gateways guide lists them.
• 10. Order confirmation on two channels. Email at once, and WhatsApp or SMS if the buyer opted in. The confirmation states the order number, items, total and the delivery estimate.
• 11. Fewer than 10 fields from cart to paid. Count them. Name, email, mobile, postal code, unit, card. Everything else is optional or auto-filled.

Search and filter checks

A store with more than about 30 products needs search that works. Three checks.

• 12. Search box on every page, and it tolerates typos. "sneeker" returns sneakers. Search for a product code returns that product first.
• 13. Filters that match how buyers choose. For clothing: size, colour, price. For electronics: brand, spec, price. Filters apply without a full page reload and show the count of matching products.
• 14. No-results page that helps. Shows the nearest category and the contact button, not a blank screen.

Trust, policy and legal pages

Baymard records 19% of abandonments from buyers who did not trust the site with card details. These pages are the fix. Four checks.

• 15. Returns and refunds page, linked from every product page. Window in days, who pays return postage, how refunds are paid. One screen, plain English.
• 16. Delivery page with real figures. Couriers used, cost by option, cut-off time for same-day dispatch, and what happens on public holidays.
• 17. Contact that answers. A WhatsApp button and an email, with the hours someone replies. A registered business name and UEN in the footer.
• 18. Privacy notice and consent. Say what you collect, why and how long you keep it. Our website PDPA checklist covers the clauses a Singapore store needs.

Speed and mobile checks

Google ranks the mobile version of your site and measures speed on real visits. Two checks.

• 19. Core Web Vitals pass on product pages. Run PageSpeed Insights, Mobile tab, on the home page, one category page and one product page. Pass marks from web.dev: Largest Contentful Paint 2.5 seconds or less, Interaction to Next Paint 200 milliseconds or less, Cumulative Layout Shift 0.1 or less.
• 20. Thumb test on a real phone. Add a product, change its quantity in the cart, enter an address and reach the pay button one-handed, on 4G with Wi-Fi off. If any step needs pinch and zoom, it fails.

The 20-point table

Score it. 18 or more, launch. 15 to 17, fix the checkout and trust items first, then launch. Below 15, the store will lose most of the traffic you send it. For a wider audit of a live site, use the website audit checklist.

What the list leaves out on purpose

Wish lists, loyalty tiers, live chat and multi-language switches are features a store can add after it has orders. They do not change whether a first order happens. Add them when the data shows a reason: repeat buyers for loyalty, non-English search queries for a second language.

What cense does

cense builds e-commerce sites in Singapore and Hong Kong with the checkout, forms and order records built in-house, so every order and enquiry lands in the client's own database, with S$0 monthly maintenance. See e-commerce website design in Singapore.