E-commerce is still growing, and more and more are trying to get into this business. To start, of course, there’s a need to come up with a user-friendly and easy to access e-commerce site. Your e-commerce site represents your store so you should design it well.
Your e-commerce site’s design plays a big part in whether a customer will end up purchasing with your or with another provider. So give your web design the importance it needs.
To help you come up with a great design for your e-commerce site, here are 8 proven web design practices that you should also implement:
Web Design Considerations
Your e-commerce site’s design forms a big part of your customers’ experience. You must keep in mind that it can really spell the difference whether a customer would buy or not. The following are basic design considerations that you should pay attention to:
- Come up with a design guideline where you can standardize certain elements of your design such as font faces, color schemes, use of logos, and many more
- Promote an organized look with the proper use of whitespace
- Back away from anything too flashy (and too heavy at that)
- Limit the text you’ll use a readable length
- Know what’s enough and what’s too much
Useful reads: How to start your own ecommerce website – an in-depth guide that can help you get started with an e-commerce website.
Mobile Responsiveness
With more and more online shoppers using handheld devices instead of desktop computers, it is best to design your e-commerce site to be compatible with mobile. You will definitely lose out on a lot of potential sales if your site will not work properly on mobile devices.
It is also worth to note that Google takes into account websites’ mobile-compatibility as a ranking factor. With both sales and SEO on the side of going mobile, you really should spend effort in ensuring that your site works great on mobile.
Ease of Navigation
While ease of navigation is more of a user experience issue, design plays a huge rule in it. You have the say as to how you’ll design the menus which basically determines how easy or how difficult it is to browse through your site’s product offerings.
It should be structured in a way that shoppers can easily browse through your products. There should be various ways to do this like by providing a way to look into specific product categories, or by browsing through new products, or by what’s selling most.
With lots of products to choose from, ease of navigation should definitely be given consideration as you design your e-commerce site.
Search Bar Visibility
To further improve visibility, implement search functionality in your e-commerce site. This is very helpful for the user who already has something in mind and would not need to scour all your product offerings.
Place your search bar in an easy-to-find location so that those that would want to use it can easily see it. Make sure, however, that you are able to make your search bar very handy. You’ll need to label your products correctly so that they can be found when users search for products.
Implement relevant product filters
Aside from basic product categories, it’s also important to provide shoppers a way to filter products more specifically. Provide options to filter products using brands, sizes, colors, and prices, and you’ll definitely help shoppers find the products they want.
Nowadays, product ratings should also be integrated with product filters. Shoppers are keen to know how actual users assess the products that they are thinking of buying. So make sure that you provide an option to rate products, as well an option to use such rating as a product filter.
Painless Checkout Process
Your goal is to ensure that your customers complete their purchase. However, cart abandonment is still quite high. One of the reasons that contribute to this is how hard it is to check out with various sites.
One good way to make your checkout process easier is to remove the need for them to sign-up before being able to check out. Checking out as a guest should be allowed. Also, ensure that you are able to provide your shoppers with various payment options. Most importantly, ensure that checking out is secure. While these are not exactly design issues, make sure that your shoppers are made aware that your site offers different secure payment options.
Credibility and Transparency
You should also integrate into your site’s design how you can promote your site’s credibility and transparency, important factors to earn potential shoppers’ trust. This is especially helpful nowadays because of countless cybercrimes going on. However, make sure that it’s not all talk and that you really do provide a safe online shopping environment for your customers.
In your design plan, the following should be incorporated so that you can earn trust:
- The contact information of your business such as necessary addresses and numbers that they can reach out to.
- Notable persons from your business so that shoppers can put a face on your brand.
- Testimonials and reviews from customers in order to provide an avenue for sharing unbiased comments regarding your business and your products.
Marketing Considerations
Your design should also work for your marketing objectives. And one good way to do it for your site to tell your brand’s story. Come up with a unique business plan that you can implement. Provide a catchy slogan and don’t forget to include this in your design, as well as in your content.
Also, layout ways for shoppers to connect with you using social media buttons. You can then reach out to them with your social media marketing campaigns.
Must read marketing resources:
- Facebook advertising for ecommerce entrepreneurs – A very handy guide on how to use Facebook in marketing your products.
- 50 ways to make your first sale – Awesome list of ways on how to make sure that you get your first sale in your online store.
- Beginners guide to online marketing – For beginners, it’s important to learn how online marketing works.
- How to sell on Amazon – Master your way in to one of the biggest online marketplace in the internet, Amazon.
Design Your E-commerce Site for Success
With the above best practices for designing your e-commerce site, you are 8 steps closer to being successful in this thriving business. E-commerce takes a lot of effort, and this is just the beginning. There are more aspects to it that you should also consider. But for now, design your site well, and it will be easier for your business to inch its way to success from hereon.
