E-commerce has made business lucrative and profitable. The market size is huge enough and is projected to hit $4.88 trillion by the year 2021. Many consumers now prefer to purchase goods online due to various reasons. You can expand your market base and become a global seller by having an e-commerce website. Regardless of the size of your business, you can get to sell your products online when you create a website for your store. You need a great website for your store to realize high conversation rates. Designing a great e-commerce site can be a complex task since you have to follow certain considerations. It goes beyond the site outlook. However, you should be able to develop a great website for your store after reading this article.
You need a great website for the success of your online store. It should be impressive, functional, optimized and offering good user experience. You will get to attract global customer and retain them when you draft an excellent e-commerce website. With the best practice of e-commerce web design, you can be sure you will attract rather than distract customers. Here is how you can go about it.
Keep it clean and simple
Before setting out to design an e-commerce site, you should establish the niche in the market and decide on the products that you are going to trade online. Determine whether you are getting to business with a single product or multiple products. The number of products intended for the website will influence the design process since the website should be as simple as possible. The site can get messy with many products and hence you will need pages to ensure that you have a clean website. Busy design is a turn-off to many customers and you should remove the less important elements without shifting focus.
The simple design of an e-commerce site will allow you to concentrate on branding and passing the intended message without irritating the visitors. You can use colors to your good but overusing them can be a significant distraction. Furthermore, the colors and themes should have an association with the product on sale since this will inspire emotions in the visitor. A simple e-commerce website doesn’t mean you will have a dull website. You can decide to feature product categories on the homepage and set leads to the actual product, this way you will have a broad and simple site. Therefore, you won’t miss any opportunity.
Use high-quality and attractive images
Images give an impression that will guide buyers to the product that they are buying. Photography is critical to your online sites since it gives the first impression of the product. One will be excited to see the product that they want in attractive images. High-quality images can attract customers to buy your products online since it is the first touch point of contact with the buyer. As a designer, it is crucial that you optimize images to get the best from your website.
Having high-quality images will help customers visualize the products and make a decision whether to buy or not. You should include several images as well as videos of the product from different angles in the website. Many buyers will look at more than 6 images before purchasing the product. It will be appropriate if the images meet the expectations of the consumers to avoid returns.
Make the products easy to find on the website
The primary role of having an e-commerce website is to make sales. You can only buy what you see, but sometimes it is difficult to make all products conspicuously visible whenever one opens the website. You should, therefore, seek ways to make the products easy to find in the website irrespective of their location. You can enhance the navigation of the website to enable users to easily access the items that they want. You can include intuitive search functionality on the website to enable users to find the desired goods in no time. Besides, categorizing products will also improve accessibility.
Make the products compatible with comparison and review features
Many consumers will do some research before settling on a product to purchase. It will be unfair to deny your visitors that opportunity to subject you to test. The products should be clearly labeled and with detailed product description attached to build trustworthiness. Sometimes it is prudent that you include a short review section that allows customers to rate the products and give their review. Additionally, including links to comparison sites that are showing the product with best reviews will help build confidence on the website. External reviews are vital in building a reputation for your brand. Positive criticism and comparison will help you build an indomitable brand.
Make shopping seamless and simplify the checkout
Online shopping should be easy and convenient otherwise it won’t meet its objectives. Your website should allow users to shop anytime and anywhere. As such, it should be responsive to mobile devices. You can make the website user-friendly for it to make the online trade successful. The site must be designed to allow for easy shopping. You can include a cart feature for buyers who require to buy more than one item. The process of purchase should give the user full control over their spending.
The site should also include contact information for customer care where buyers can get support making transactions in the site. It is also essential that the site integrates a smooth payment method that doesn’t limit any prospective customer. To ensure comfortable checkout, you can incorporate several payment methods and allow for features like guest checkout options.
Approach the website as a visitor to assess the user experience
The e-commerce website is focused on the clients. You should work on the site to ensure that the site is proper for the user by the buyers. The site should be designed and optimized for it to load readily on request. The user interface is of significant value to the e-commerce website and thus the designers have to enhance user interaction with the site. You should make the site personal and responsive to the needs of visitors.
The best way to ascertain that the website you’re a building will be simple to use is by trying to use it. You can also subject the site to various test in confirming ease of use. If you notice any flaws, you can seek expert advice in correcting them.
