11 Top Tips for Outstanding Ecommerce Website Design
These days, we do just about everything online—and that includes shopping. Which is why there’s never been a better time to be in ecommerce.
Ecommerce
website design tips and ideas
Nowadays, if you’re selling
anything—whether that’s sneakers, salad dressing, or something in between—you
need to hop on board the ecommerce website train. An ecommerce site offers you
the chance to build your brand, connect with more customers, and sell more
products—but only if you’ve got the right website design.
Web design is critical when
creating an ecommerce website. Good ecommerce web design is all about using the right colors, fonts,
images, words and graphics to convince visitors to make a purchase. Your
ecommerce website design should attract potential customers, provide great user
experience and present your shop in the best light.
So, not only does your site have
to look good and feel on-brand, but it also needs to drive your website
visitors to take action and, you know… buy your products. But how, exactly, do
you do that? How do you design the kind of ecommerce site that will have
products flying off your virtual shelves?
Here are the top 11 ecommerce web design tips
to help you take your shop to the next level:
1. Keep it simple - One of the top rules you should keep in mind
during the ecommerce design process is “KISS”—keep it simple, silly!
When it comes to designing an
ecommerce website, simple is always better. The more elements you have on the
page (Colors! Banner Ads! ALL THE POP-UPS!), the more it takes away from the
entire point of the website—closing a sale.
You don’t need a ton of bells and
whistles on your ecommerce website—all they do is act as distraction. Keep your
design clear, clean, and simple—and keep the focus on the sale.
2. Make branding a priority - When it comes to shopping online, people want
to buy from established brands—not faceless ecommerce sites that look like a
front for trying to steal your credit card information.
If you want to build the trust
you need to drive serious sales with your ecommerce business, you need to put
some serious thought into your branding. Your branding is like the DNA of your
ecommerce business; it’s who you are as a company, what you’re about, and how
you’re different from your competitors—and it plays a huge part in building a
connection with your audience and driving sales.
If you want to get the most from
your ecommerce design, take the time to define your brand—and then infuse that
branding into your design. If you’re not sure who you are as a brand, that’s
ok! You’re just going to want to do a little business soul-searching before you
get designing. Ask yourself questions like:
If my brand was a person, who
would it be?
If I had to describe my brand in
three words, what would they be?
What makes my brand different
from other ecommerce shops out there?
What do we do better than anyone
else on the market?
Once you know who you are, you
can work it into the branding of your ecommerce site. And that branding? It’ll
help build trust with your audience—and drive serious sales in the process.
3. Think like a website visitor - If you want your ecommerce website design to
connect with your audience, you need to think like your audience. Ultimately,
there are just a few things your potential customers want in an ecommerce
experience—a site that’s easy to navigate, well-designed, and makes the process
of shopping easy, straightforward, and hassle-free.
And if you want your ecommerce
shop to succeed, you’d better give them those things.
During the design process, put
yourself in your visitor’s shoes. What kind of layout is going to be easiest
for them to navigate? How can you organize your products in a way that makes
sense for the end user? How can you simplify the checkout process?
When you think like your
customer, you can anticipate what they want from your ecommerce store—and then
design your site in order to meet those needs.
4. Use color to your advantage - Choosing the colors for your ecommerce site
is about more than just saying “Well, red is my favorite color, so…let’s make
all the things red!” Color is an extremely powerful tool—and if you understand
the psychology behind color, you can use it to your advantage (and drive some
serious sales in the process).
Different colors can inspire
different feelings, emotions, and actions from people—so, if you want your
ecommerce site to convert, you need to use those color inspirations to your
advantage.
So, for example, if you want
people to make a purchase, make the purchase button stand out with a bright
color like red. According to color psychology, red inspires feelings of
excitement and passion, which are driving factors behind spending—and studies show
that making a button red can increase conversions by a whopping 34%.
Or, if you want to up your
credibility, incorporate blue into your web design. Blue is not only a
universally loved color, but it’s also been shown to increase feelings of
trust, making it a go-to in the business world (there’s a reason the color blue
appears in more than half of all logos).
The point is, color is one of the
most powerful tools in your design toolbox—and if you know how to use it, it
can have a huge impact on your ecommerce design.
5. Use high-quality images - In the world of web design, it’s common
knowledge that images increase conversions (for example, one recent case study
showed that incorporating more relevant images into a website design increased
conversions by over 40%). And that’s even more true when it comes to ecommerce.
No one is going to buy a product
sight unseen. If you want people to buy your products, you need to show them
what they’re buying via high-quality product images.
Getting professional images of
all your products (and having images of your product from multiple different
angles) goes a long way in building confidence and trust in your customers. If
they feel confident that they know what they’re buying, they’re more likely to
make a purchase. But if there are no images of the product they want to buy (or
just a single, low quality image), they’re going to feel more hesitant to make
the purchase—and your conversions are going to tank as a result.
Do yourself a favor and have
plenty of high-quality images of whatever you’re selling on your ecommerce
site. Your conversions will thank you.
6. Make your content scannable - You can spend days crafting long descriptions
for the products on your ecommerce site, but we’ve got news for you—no one is
going to read it.
Research shows that most website
visitors only read about 20% of the text on any given web page. Instead of
reading content word for word, they simply scan the text looking for key
information—so, if you want to get your point across (and drive sales in the
process), you need to make your content scannable.
Break up your content—whether
that’s product descriptions, blog posts, or an “about us” page—into an
easy-to-scan format. Keep sentences and paragraphs short, use bolding to call
attention to key information, and use bulleted lists to break up large blocks
of texts.
The easier to scan your content,
the more likely your audience will absorb your key messaging—and the more
likely you’ll be able to make a sale.
7. Make it look professional - The basis of an ecommerce site is that you
are asking your website visitors to purchase something from you. And, as a
result, you’re asking them to turn over sensitive information, like their
credit card information. Which they’re not going to feel comfortable doing if
your website doesn’t look profesh.
Investing in a professional
website is a must if you want to build trust with your customers—and developing
that trust is a must if you want your ecommerce store to succeed.
What do we mean by professional?
Your website shouldn’t have any typos or misspellings. Your font, color
palette, and footer design should be consistent from page to page. All your
product links and buttons should work. Your photos shouldn’t look like you
snapped them on an old iPhone 5 and your overall site design shouldn’t look
like you swiped it from Geocities circa 1997.
The point is, if you want your
customers to take you seriously, you need to show them you take yourself
seriously—and the only way to do that is with a professional web design.
8. Use social proofAnother way to build that
oh-so-important trust? Social proof. - When
you’re designing your ecommerce site, look for ways to show your potential
customers the positive feedback you’ve gotten from your existing customers. Add
a ratings section where people can rate your products (and then get as many 5
star reviews as you can). Add a testimonials section where you feature customer
photos with a quote or two about what a great experience they had working with
you. Ask customers to review your products—and what they like about them—and
then add them to your blog.
The more your website visitors
see that other people have had a positive experience shopping on your site
(whether that’s through reviews or testimonials) the more trustworthy you’ll
appear—and the more your conversions will go up as a result.
9. Make categories easy to navigate - Nothing—and we mean nothing—will kill a sale
faster than clunky product pages. If your website visitors have to click around
ten different menus before they find the product they’re looking for, they’re
going to hightail it out of there fast—and click their way right to a
competitor’s site.
Make your product categories and
product pages easy to navigate. Make it easy for your customers to search for
products and to filter products by things like color, size, or product type.
The easier you make your categories and pages to navigate, the easier it will
be for your customers to find what they’re looking for—and the easier it will
be for them to make a purchase.
10. Make checkout a breeze - Remember how we said nothing kills a sale
faster than clunky product pages? Well, a clunky checkout is definitely a close
second.
If your checkout process is a
pain in the you-know-what, you’re going to lose customers. If you want people
to buy from you, you need to make the process of buying as simple,
straightforward, and pain-free as possible.
Make your checkout page design
clean, simple, and easy to navigate. Give your customers the option to register
for your site or to check out as a guest. Make everything about the process
crystal clear: what information you need to process the purchase (and where
they need to enter it), the different shipping options available (and how much
they cost), and what to do in case there’s a problem with their order or they
need to do a return. Once the purchase is complete, direct your customers to a
confirmation page so they know everything went through.
In a nutshell, if you want people
to buy from you, make the checkout process as easy as possible.
11. Make it responsive - It’s official—mobile has surpassed desktop as
the most popular way to surf the interwebs... And that includes shopping.
We’ll keep this short—if you want
to capture the customers who want to shop on their phones or tablets, you need
to make sure your website design is fully responsive. Otherwise you might not
convince those valuable mobile visitors that your site is where they want to
make a purchase.
Conclusion
Designing an ecommerce website
can be tricky—but now that you know the top web design tips for ecommerce, you
have everything you need to design a site that not only looks amazing, but
converts like crazy.
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