10 Tips for Outstanding E-Commerce Website Design
According to a recent study conducted by Dubai Police, Dubai Economy and Visa in the UAE, 68% of people who participated said that they have reduced shopping at physical stores since the start of the outbreak while 49% are shopping online more.
“Your online store is one chance to prove your brand value to your customers”
Design is a chance to make a good first impression for an e-commerce website. It has a direct effect on how much time users are going to spend there and how much they are going to buy. It shows like no other how important all the design aspects are: from the beautiful UI to the elaborate UX. With e-commerce website design, it’s not just about how the website looks but how it works. Basically the website design shows the personality of the product and Brand.
According to a recent study conducted by Dubai Police, Dubai Economy and Visa in the UAE, 68% of people who participated said that they have reduced shopping at physical stores since the start of the outbreak while 49% are shopping online more. These figures surely say a lot about the future of retail. This number is rising with every passing month, as more and more businesses recognize the importance of having a website. The situation with COVID-19 coronavirus only intensified it. Online shopping has skyrocketed and business owners can’t ignore it any longer.
This is why it’s important to know how to design good e-commerce websites that sell. Let’s look at the main factors to consider when designing an e-commerce website.
1. RESPONSIVE AND FAST WEB DESIGN
Mobile has surpassed desktop as the most popular way to surf and that includes shopping. 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.
- Fast browsing and uploading
- Easy zoom in and out
- Responsive texts and design
- Easy to checkout
- Easy to place order through web and mobile
Bonus tip: allowing people to pay for your products using PayPal One Touch or Apple Pay can boost conversions by up to 12%!
2. CONSISTENT BRANDING, STORY PRESENTATION
While it is wise to use popular ecommerce web design conventions to optimize your website, you also want your site to stand out from your competitors. Consistent branding across all pages of your site makes standing out easy
Make sure your logo is visible on every page of your site and keep color schemes and fonts consistent and on brand. No one likes clicking onto a page of a website only to wonder if they are on a new website entirely. Maintaining the same navigation menu and design scheme across all pages displays a consistent and trustworthy image.
Citing Story of the brand, let the user to know more about your company and product. This instills a trust in brand.
We can use such story building for niche market products.
3. QUALITY IMAGES
“FOCUS ON THE QUALITY OF THE PRODUCT PICTURE”
“WHITE BACKGROUND AND NEGATIVE SPACE ARE IN TREND TO HIGHLIGHT PRODUCT”
Quality content, pictures, video, animations, graphics representations of the product and the website are everything a visitor has to rely on. This is a point where the offline-stores have an undeniable advantage. That is why for modern e-commerce website design it’s vital that photos and videos should be of quality. The better this representation is, the more users will like the particular online store. This includes high-res photos, 360-degree views, 3D-models, and videos.
Bad quality leads to page abandonment. People feel weird having to scrutinize over pixelated photos. Low-quality photos spoil the impression made by the products. However fine the products are, bad photos will make them look equally bad. Also, people feel that low-quality photos signify that a store doesn’t care about making an effort to sell, so they are likely to go search for another one that respects them more.
Another thing that’s becoming the new norm is the ability to zoom photos. The main idea is to have a satisfactory level of zoom to let users get all the necessary information.
4. MINIMALISTIC APPROACH
“DON’T MAKE A RAINBOW”
Be innovative, distinct and catchy to not let customer think instead create a wow feeling with ease of use and quality of the product
Follow the steps to create a minimalistic design for efficient, accessible and trendy website:
- Negative Space- to create focus on quality product and highlight icons
- Large and Vivid Photography- create an emotional and contextual connection and set the atmosphere for the media they are a part of.
- Typography- sharp, clean, readable texts with consistent styles and colors
- Color & Contrast- should match the vibes of the brand and text
- Simple UI/UX- easy navigation
5. NATURAL FLOW DESIGN
You want to make it as easy as possible for visitors on your site to find the products they are looking for and make a purchase. Keep in mind the natural flow of the eye when designing your ecommerce site.
Studies and heat maps have shown that people tend to view websites in an E or F formation, starting at the top-left corner and working their way horizontally across the page, then down the left side, horizontally again, so on and so forth. This is why navigation menus typically appear horizontally across the top of each page of a website. Utilize the E formation in your ecommerce web design to guide visitors’ eyes towards main conversion points.
6. CLEAN NAVIGATION AND CATEGORIZATION
Navigation is another crucial aspect of a clean and neat website design. A professional design will always tend to have intuitive navigation, filters and searches that guides the website visitor. In order to maintain a clean website design, navigation should be
- Consistent – Consistency brings ease of access
- Distinctiveness – Mark multiple sections into different categories and subcategories
- Clickable Links – All the categories and subcategories should be clickable
- Mind the Menu and Footer – Always place the menu on the top and structure each section in it accordingly. Similarly consider placing other important elements like social media, FAQs, contact in the footer section.
- A neat website is easier for a human eye to scan
- A website with a neat interface helps to maintain user’s maximum focus and reduce cognitive workload.
- Conversion rates and loading speed is way better in a clean website design
7. CUSTOMER REVIEWS
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.
Adding the customer review and chat bots not only help customer make decision but also brand to grow in terms of SEO, product review management, new product development and real time customer engagement.
It also helps in text analytics and data mining where the product analysis can be done to improve product and brand position in the market.
8. SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS
You may have noticed that most popular ecommerce stores have buttons that link out to their social media on their website. Including social icons in your ecommerce web design invites customers to keep in touch and encourages more long-term customer/brand relationships.
Having social media links on your website is the great way for customer engagement, entertainment and is a factor for making decision for purchasing.
9. RIGHT VIBES AND COLORS
Right colors and combinations are very important in design.
Being creative, one must choose right colors and texts to highlight what brand is into and what they provide. It sets mood and affects psychologically the customer for the purchase.
Example- https://www.blissworld.com/
10. ADD FAQ, LOCATION, STORES, CHAT BOTS, CONTACTS
For a better customer engagement and satisfaction, it is important to provide BOTS, to solve real time issues of the customer whether from booking to placing order to checking out to return or giving feedback.
Apart from that a list FAQ should be maintained for the insights.
If companies have their physical stores, then it should be easily accessible from web incase customer wants to visit, this creates a trust of the customer in the Brand. Google my business is being listed to find nearby stores these days for better customer satisfaction and that is why adding location and distributors gives a great advanta
Final Thought
A great design for ecommerce website is very important. We now want to purchase products with just a click from home with no hassle. As the market is growing so is competition in the market growing. AlKaf Information Technology, provides them the best strategies, technicalities and designs wherein you can stand out in the market to generate trust, visibility in market. Right from software development, website development, app development to maintenance, analysis and real time market engagement we provide complete digital solutions.