designing e-commerce websites

There is nothing more important for online sales conversions than designing  ecommerce websites. Ideally, the web design should encourage visitors to browse the catalog, and make the transaction process as painless as possible.

Successful Tips for Designing E-commerce Websites

Even if you have got your SEO and digital advertising and marketing right and are able to attract a lot of visitors, you could be losing a lot of them if your website is not optimized properly for the transactions to go through. Some useful tips for designing e-commerce websites that encourages conversions:

  1. Stay Focused on the User

    The entire website, right from the product page and images to the contact forms and design of the shopping cart plays a crucial part. It is therefore critical for web designers to stay focused on the user from the beginning to the end when designing an e-commerce website. The most important factor that turns visitors into customer and encourages them to visit again apart from the quality of your goods is the user experience.

  2. Keep the Website Design Simple

    E-commerce websites that have a simple and functional design are universally liked more by users who consider them more trustworthy. Unnecessary information, photos, videos, infographics, links, etc. can only serve to distract and confuse; hence, adopting a minimalistic design with plenty of white space is the most effective e-commerce website design principle. Desist from using popup either to advertise or to promote newsletter signups as the users will generally find them annoying and even provoke them to abandon their visit.

  3. Be Honest

    It is extremely important for e-commerce websites to be honest about all the aspects of their business ranging from product features, photographs, pricing, warranties, shipping, and return policies, etc. Users do not like e-commerce sites that try to lure visitors with products that are apparently very cheap only to discover that the final price is subject to many hidden terms and conditions as well as steep shipping costs.

  4. Be Transparent

    It is important not to display product photos that are misleading regarding the features, colors, and size; being upfront regarding these aspects is critical. The main navigation menu should invariably have a link to all the store policies that are expressed in simple and easy-to-understand language.

  5. Use High-Quality Photos

    Since customers are not able to get the same touch-and-feel experience of brick-and-mortar stores, e-commerce websites need to pay particular attention to the inclusion of high-resolution photos giving users 360-degree views and the various colors available. All photos must be professionally shot and have an option for being zoomed to enable users to see the finer details. Videos of the product in action or the way it is to be installed are especially helpful in promoting conversions.

  6. Include Social Media Links

    You can encourage customers to share the information of interesting offers on the social media by including social media buttons on the e-commerce site. Customers can even screenshot a story in IG and in the process build long-term brand relationships.

  7. Organize the Products Properly

    An integral part of good e-commerce design is organizing all the products into meaningful and specific categories so that the user can easily try and search for products within that category. The product categories should be easily locatable inside a menu bar that acts to streamline the search process. Arranging the products into categories has multiple benefits; not only can users find the products of their choice more easily but also allow them to discover the other product categories that may be of potential interest to them.

  8. Providing a Search Bar

    Many times, when users have specific products that they would like to buy from the website, they do not want the bother of exploring the product categories or even dozens of product pages with a single category. Making a search bar available to them for feeding in the name of the product and accessing the product directly can make the process very quick and easy thus promoting sales. Placing the search bar in a prominent place on the web page, usually, the top right-hand corner makes it easy for it to be spotted by users.

  9. Allow Filtering of Products

    Another search feature that can promote e-commerce sales is product filtering. Users should be allowed to use filters like size, color, price, and brand to any product they are looking for. This ensures that they are able to find the product of their exact choice quickly so that that they can add it to the shopping cart and complete their purchase in the fastest possible time. It also prevents frustration of the shoppers because they can easily check out if a particular product is in stock or not, without checking the entire website.

  10. Include User Reviews

    According to the Spiegel Research Centre’s 2017 study (http://spiegel.medill.northwestern.edu/online-reviews/) of customer behavior, nearly 95% of shoppers read online reviews before making a purchase. Even as different studies report different figures of this aspect of customer behavior, what is indisputable is that there is an overwhelming tendency for customers to seek out the opinions of others before committing themselves to an online purchase decision. As a smart e-commerce merchant, you should include as many as possible customer reviews on your site itself for each of the products so that customers don’t need to leave your site to conduct research.

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Conclusion

While the number of tweaks that you can make to encourage sales on your e-commerce sites is virtually endless, you should place great emphasis on making it as easy as possible for users to find products they are looking for and also to make suggestions regarding viable alternatives and complementary products. Ensuring that the designing e-commerce website follows that natural flow of the eye is a clever technique to encourage visitors to discover more products. Heat-map studies have revealed that visitors typically tend to view the contents of the websites in an E or F formation so it can be a good idea to use this insight to guide eyeballs towards the main conversion points and CTA.


Bio

John is a Business Tech Analyst. He is very responsible towards his job. He loves to share his knowledge and experience with his friends and colleagues.


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