A creative, immersive and aesthetically pleasing web design turns usual website visitors into loyal customers. The website should allow quick, easy and stress-free purchase thus encouraging buyers to return while bringing new prospects.
In case a website hasn’t been optimised for sales, you’ll lose valuable customers even if your online advertisements are exceptional. Besides, it’s also a waste of ad investment should visitors leave the website almost immediately.
If you truly want to nail the audience with a winning eCommerce website, read the amazing design and development rules explained below.
User-Focused
Every single website detail including product images, contact forms and other such potentially contributes to user’s buying behaviour and purchase decision. This is eCommerce web design should focus specifically on the audience since user-experiment is the core factor to win loyal, profitable and long-lasting customers.
If you’re unsure about a good user-experience or development features, a second opinion from a friend or professional web development agency is preferred. Let them rate your existing website against usability, the element of visual appeal, seamless and smooth navigation, overall satisfaction.
Keep it Simple
Simple or minimalist websites are comparably rated higher, visually appealing and more trustworthy than others. If you wish to optimise your e-commerce website design for greater and more organic conversions, consider simplifying it for human appeal. It’s possible by removing all unnecessary information, utilise a minimalistic theme with abundant white space.
That said, simple design helps raise more conversions without any diversification such as links, images or videos so on. Call to action is defined clearly whereas the design itself elaborates professionalism yet minimalistic feel. If you wish to choose a web design platform to move in the right direction from the start, consider professional web design services and witness growth to your e-commerce store.
View Cart Button
Almost all e-commerce web stores have a small basket-like cart icon on every page, mostly placed on top-right of the page. On clicking it, customers can easily view the total items they’ve added to the cart, which is one of the most significant e-commerce web design strategies. A visible button at all times increases conversion rates but you’ll have to make sure the icon is recognisable, like a shopping cart or bag.
For an e-commerce website, this button is more important than anything so you’ve to make it right and stand out. Do so by applying bright colours that distinguish the shopping cart or icon from the background and keep the size comparably larger than other buttons for easy view.
Honest Pricing
Being candid and honest about the products or services you’re providing via your eCommerce website is the key to long-term success. Hiding or falsifying the product information and its cost would only leave an impression of deceiving and betrayal that can put an end to your brilliantly designed eCommerce website.
The same rule’s also applicable to shipping where you should be clear on the transportation cost on the products as well as policies customers may need to know beforehand. Survey of eCommerce websites revealed that hiding or revealing the shipping information too late during the purchase process increases cart abandonment rates.
High-Quality Photos
One of the basic website design rules is using high-quality images, optimised for the best of user-experience against both desktop and mobile devices. If online shoppers are unable to see the products clearly, they’re likely to jump to a more appealing e-commerce website or even a traditional brick-and-mortar store. To avoid getting caught in such a situation, level up your e-commerce web design with high-definition images or even videos, depending on the product.
Use lifestyle and real images wherever possible to make the products more interactive. Take for instance apparels that are far more enticing when worn by a model instead of laying them flat or over a mannequin. That said, some of the products look far more appealing when displayed against a particular action, like sportswear.
Let the Reviews & Testimonials Do the Talking
Around 70% web buyers prefer reading customers reviews and testimonials to base their decision and if the endorsement is from a celebrity or influencer, it can really make a big impact. The statistics are quite advantageous backed by honest reviews aimed at speeding up the sales promotion and conversions. Product or service-specific reviews are considered highly reliable as long as they’re given by actual users. Some of the e-commerce stores also develop a separate page where customers can post reviews and testimonials.
The Navigation Menu
A user-friendly website allows visitors to easily find their preferred products. This is where menu bars come to play and there has to be a separate one for each page depending on the type of products or services to further streamline the navigation and buying process. Format of the menu display that can be dropdown, forward slide, hover appearance so on is a personal preference however must complement overall website design, product and page features.
If your website has too many product categories, no need to include everything in the menu which disrupts the design as well as confuse buyers. Include four-to-five categories with a clickable “view more” button used as a redirecting URL to a detailed product and/or services page. Just be careful not to stuff the website menu with items that cause sensory overload while overwhelming a user at the same time.
Organise the Products
A friendly and appealing e-commerce website is defined by-products that are organised, easy to find and located under their particular categories in the menu bar thereby streamlining the search process. It also introduces products or services to users they didn’t know you had. On selecting a category, the search narrows down to more relevant products for maximum user convenience.
Don’t Be Afraid to Display Out-of-Stock Products
Brand’s best-sellers are the first to go out of stock. A well-designed and honest e-commerce web store should thus mention scarce items for buyer’s knowledge and do make it clear should they’re all sold-out. Being clear right from the start would persuade buyers to return for more, fresh and new stock.
- The Search Bar
Most of the visitors are likely to crawl your website after searching for a particular product or service. Having a search bar is thus another important and a must-have element of an e-commerce website to conveniently narrow the product search instead of sifting from a page to another. Remember that a jumbled-up website with unorganised products would make a visitor leave without converting into an actual buyer.
Product Filter
You can improve the website’s search features by introducing product filter options. Take for instance a user searching for a pair of shoes only to realise that the store doesn’t carry their size. This is where a filter helps to further refine the product as per the buyer’s preference in terms of size, colour, build-material, brand and so on.
The Grid Layout
Grid style is one of the most important features for e-commerce as well as other websites. It’s all about allotting rows and columns per the products in a professional and organised way. Just be careful not to stuff too many items in a single row thus keeping up the element of aesthetical appeal. Keep plenty of white space around each of the items, letting users breathe while clearly differentiating a product from another.
Contact Details & Social Icons
Customers always have a particular query or concern while crawling through the website. For e-commerce store, in particular, after-sales service and customer support are most important which is why yours should include reliable and accurate contact details.
Make sure the information is easy to find that can be done either through a separate contact-us page, a pop-up form and redirecting URL in the header and footer section of the website. A website’s contact-us page must have the phone number, email, geographical location (Google Map Pin) and a message box.
Social media icons nowadays can truly lift-up a website which connects to official social pages of the e-commerce store.
Convenient Checkout
A complicated checkout process would put an end to your e-commerce store. To make it simple, unambiguous and friendly, leap forward with a highly convenient guest checkout option for a typical buyer may become suspicious if you’re asking for too much information only to proceed with the sales.
That said, creating a whole new account would surely make buyers leave quicker thus increasing the rate of “cart abandonment”. In-case your cart abandonment rates are high, convince people to come back and complete their purchase through a well-targeted, carefully crafted and effective retargeting campaign or a full digital marketing suite for greater and long-term gains.
Thank You Pages
Now that your e-commerce website is successfully selling products online, wrap up the deal with a friendly thank you a message. A ‘thank you’ page may seem insignificant to some but can serve extremely important purposes such as order confirmation and additional function to track the order.
Now that we’re clear with the rules to create an exceptional and super powerful e-commerce website, make sure yours is developed precisely as can be from professional web design and development services by Digital Express.
