Electronic commerce, or ecommerce is a fast-growing and highly competitive industry. Despite this, so many people are thinking of starting a business online on their own.
One of the most important parts of online business planning revolves around choosing the right place to sell your beautiful product. While you can simply start posting your digital products, goods, or services on platforms like social media, many still consider a dedicated ecommerce website to be the best option.
However, making an ecommerce website is not as simple as social media postings. Website design requires careful planning and consideration to make good online stores. To guide you through this, here are some helpful tips for designing an ecommerce website.
Ecommerce Website Design Tips
Think from the customer’s POV
Source: Pexels
When it comes to building a website for ecommerce, it is important that you look at it from the customer’s point of view (POV). Think about and prioritize their experience while shopping on your website. Can customers find products easily? Are all important information readily available to them? Is it easy to search for a specific product or category?
These are some design elements that you need to take into consideration when building your ecommerce website. Make sure that your website is navigable, straightforward, and easy to follow. Learn how to anticipate what your customers want and need and design your website accordingly.
Create easy-to-scan content
According to recent research, most visitors don’t read full texts when browsing through a website. Instead, they only scan and look for key details and information.
Taking this into consideration, it is essential that you make your website design and content compatible with this practice. To do this, break your content into smaller, more scannable chunks. Avoid long paragraphs and huge text blocks.
Instead, keep titles, tags, and descriptions short and precise. Use bulleted lists or tables to summarize blocks of text. Also, use different font styles and formats to highlight and emphasize important and key details.
Utilize color to your advantage
The use of color in website design is more than just a matter of aesthetics. Unbeknownst to many, there is actually a psychology behind the use of particular colors for design and marketing purposes. Color theory is a set of principles, rules, and guidelines that help designers utilize appealing color schemes and combinations
Science says that different colors can evoke different feelings, emotions, and actions. Color psychology believes that there is a universal connotation between colors and emotions. Using these color psychology principles when designing to better relate and connect with your audience. Here’s a brief rundown of colors and what they are associated with.
- Red – passion, strength, excitement; draws the most attention.
- Orange – confidence, bravery, success; stimulating effect, especially on appetite.
- Yellow – creativity, warmth, happiness; feels uplifting and illuminating.
- Green – nature, freshness, quality; evokes security and prestige.
- Blue – peace, loyalty, competence; universally favored color related to trust and honesty.
Other than color psychology, there is also another principle of color theory that every designer should know. Use complementary color schemes to create a harmonious visual interface. Highly contrasting colors can be distracting and even create unintentional effects such as text blurs and the like.
Keep it professional
As an online business, your ecommerce website serves as your storefront. This is where customers and potential customers would spend most of their time browsing and possibly leaving sensitive information if they decide to complete a purchase.
Taking this into consideration, it is critical that your ecommerce store evokes a sense of credibility, security, reliability, and honesty so that customers would be comfortable conducting business with you. You want them to take you seriously and have no doubts when transacting with your website. Aside from that, a professional-looking website can help establish trust.
While there is no harm in adding a bit of humor, your website design should still be able to establish your credibility as a brand and business. Avoid simple mistakes such as typos and misspellings, keep your design elements uniform and consistent, and invest in high-quality images.
Make buying hassle-free
Source: Pexels
Online shopping is meant to be easy. So if your website’s checkout process is unnecessarily long and tedious, you might be turning customers off and away from completing a purchase.
When designing your ecommerce website, each step and process should be as simple and straightforward as possible.
This includes organizing your products properly and making sure visitors don’t have to click around several different menus and categories to find what they are looking for. Manage your product listings and make it easy to search for products through keywords and filters. Allow customers to customize their searches by product size, color, type, and so on.
Aside from finding and choosing products, it is equally important that checking out is as easy as one-two-three. Make your checkout page clean and easy to follow. Avoid any distractions such as banners, pop-up ads, and the like. It is important that your customers are able to focus on following the instructions and providing the right information.
Keep your customers informed of what they are doing and what each step is for. Provide as many shipping and payment options as possible to cater to different customers.
Once they are done, include a confirmation page to let them know that their transaction has been completed and is going through the necessary process. Furthermore, add links and contact to your customer service in case they have any questions that need to be answered.
Publish customer testimonies
One of the most challenging parts of running an online business is building and establishing yourself as a reliable brand and business. And according to recent reports, people are more likely to purchase a product or service that has received good reviews and feedback from past customers.
Taking this into account, consider adding ways to show potential customers some of the feedback and reviews you have received from existing customers. Include product ratings and a customer review section on the digital products, goods, or services available on your website.
You can also allow customers to add photos or videos that help establish your brand’s quality and reliability. As more of your website visitors see these customer testimonies, the more likely they are to trust your brand.
Be mobile-friendly
Source: Pexels
Mobile commerce is a fast-growing facet of the ecommerce industry. According to recent reports, mobile commerce grew substantially through the Covid-19 pandemic.
However, experts expect m-commerce to continuously grow and even reach a worth of roughly $710 billion by the year 2025. Taking this into consideration, creating a mobile-ready and mobile-friendly is essential for any ecommerce business.
When building your ecommerce website for mobile, make sure that utilize a responsive design that is compatible with devices of all shapes and sizes. Use big fonts for better readability and large buttons for easy navigation. Optimize your web design for mobile use and adjust images, texts, and buttons for a better user experience.
Bottomline
In this digital day and age, there is no doubt that online shopping is here to stay. More and more people are finding it easier, more accessible, and more convenient than going to malls or shopping centers.
But just as important as it is to have a well-designed mall store, it is also essential that you have an aesthetically pleasing and functional ecommerce website. To do this, keep customers in mind and prioritize their needs. Ensure good customer experiences by anticipating their needs and designing your website to respond accordingly.
Aside from that, design your website in a way that will help your brand and business. Maintain a professional design to establish trust and credibility. Even including customer feedback and reviews can be used as a marketing strategy to encourage customers and boost sales.
Want more tips about running an ecommerce business? Sidekicks is an on-demand virtual company, and we’re eager to help visionaries and entrepreneurs like you. Get a free ebook and learn more about how we can help you by signing up for our newsletter. We also offer a free 30-minute consultation if you prefer something more personal.
