In today’s market, creating an eCommerce store is readily accessible to everyone. There are many eCommerce platforms which to choose from. In fact, there’s so many, if you are new to the eCommerce game, you’ll find a dizzying number of options available. If you’re not a do-it-yourselfer, you can sign up for a company like Wix.com and within a couple of hours, have a workable platform from which to showcase your products. Or, you might want something a bit more robust, like Shopify. Shopify offers many templates to help give your website a professional look/feel. You may also consider having one of the thousands of web design agencies create an eCommerce store for you. Whichever route you take, there are a few proven fundamentals to eCommerce design that you’ll want to keep in mind during the build-out process.
In today’s market, creating an eCommerce store is readily accessible to everyone. There are many eCommerce platforms which to choose from. In fact, there’s so many, if you are new to the eCommerce game, you’ll find a dizzying number of options available. If you’re not a do-it-yourselfer, you can sign up for a company like Wix.com and within a couple of hours, have a workable platform from which to showcase your products. Or, you might want something a bit more robust, like Shopify. Shopify offers many templates to help give your website a professional look/feel. You may also consider having one of the thousands of web design agencies create an eCommerce store for you. Whichever route you take, there are a few proven fundamentals to eCommerce design that you’ll want to keep in mind during the build-out process.
1. Build Trust with Your Customers
This seems like a no-brainer. Yet, you’d be surprised at how often this key to selling online is overlooked. Once a user arrives to your website, they should immediately get a sense of trust
from your brand. How can trust so quickly be gained? A few suggestions:
- Clearly showcase links to your return policy, privacy policy, contact information, warranty return process, terms and conditions
- Your website should be secure using an SSL (https) protocol
- Clearly display Trust Seals, Security Badges, Antivirus Icons
2. Intuitive Navigation
Your site navigation should make sense to your customers. Customers should be able to easily go from the homepage to the product they are interested in with minimal clicks. A couple things to keep in mind:
- Complex navigation with lot’s of nested sub-sub-categories translates to more clicks and a higher bounce rate
- Clearly defined shopping categories take away the need for customers to think
- Category names should be short and to the point
- Your site should utilize homepage banners funneling customers to your most important categories
- Important categories should appear again in the website Footer
3. Smart Design
Visual appeal may seem obvious. However, many first time eCommerce websites will ignore, and fail to follow, some simple guidelines for overall aesthetic appeal.
- White backgrounds are generally the easiest to read text from
- Lifestyle photos are the most relatable. Too many stock photos make a site uninteresting and cookie cutter in appearance
- Use clear, professional quality images for banners and products
- Your website should have clearly defined content blocks. Don’t clutter your store with all sorts of colors, banners and links. Allow your various content blocks the ability to “breathe”
4. Usability
This is one is quite important. The good news is that if you haven’t created an eCommerce store yet, chances are that your new store will be mobile friendly. Or… it had better be! If you’ve had your website for the last 10 years and you haven’t done much in the way of upgrades, it’s definitely time to review your store’s mobile usability and overall site responsiveness.
- 63% of all retail website traffic is… you guessed it, mobile! Make sure your eCommerce store is mobile friendly
- Customers will stop engaging with your website if they cannot effectively navigate/use/see elements of your website. This applies to both desktop and mobile
- 57% of internet users won’t recommend a business with a poorly designed mobile website
- Google is forcing eCommerce stores to provide a good mobile experience by penalizing websites that don’t perform well in this category
Paying close attention to these fundamentals will go a long way towards making sure your eCommerce store looks and acts like the kind of website people want to buy from. While it is hard to nail the perfect eCommerce store design in one fell sweep, the more attention you pay to these tips, the better off you’ll be. If you’re interested in having an eCommerce store created for your business, or looking to redesign an antiquated, non-performing store, we’re always looking for new and exciting projects. You can contact C Dev Web Design online here or by phone at 800-508-9896.