28 Dec 8 Ecommerce Website Design Best Practices to Follow in 2021
Every eCommerce seller wants more sales. But the question remains how do you achieve more sales?
Your eCommerce website can attract, distract, or repel any customer. Focus on converting more visitors into customers. You can do so by following the eCommerce website design best practices.
The design of an eCommerce website created using any of the top eCommerce website builders today contributes a lot to increase your sales. It is said that 33.9% of the visitors leave the site after only visiting the homepage. You need to implement best design practices to generate traffic and increase the sales in your business as more sales are equal to the happy entrepreneur
How Does a Better Ecommerce Website Design Help?
Here is why adapting good design practices are necessary for your eCommerce store.
Good user experience: An incredible experience relates to making it extremely simple for your customers to purchase items from your site.
Brand Identity: Effective design strategy speaks a lot about your brand. It is another way of developing great communication with your customers.
Boost sales: Extraordinary site design will assist you in converting more site visitors into customers and improving the performance of the business.
Retaining customers: You need to retain customers by convincing them to purchase from your site through your site design.
Customers trust: If your website is designed well with proper security, it can lead you to achieve your customers’ trust within no time.
8 Ecommerce Website Design Best Practices to Follow
Now when you know it’s the significance, let’s dig right into effective eCommerce website design best practices to boost your conversions and impact your sales.
1. User-Centered Design
When it comes to having a user-centered website design, Apple can be an exceptional example of this practice. Not only Apple website’s homepage catches your attention in the very first look but also engages the user into the appealing display of their latest product, iPhone 11 Pro in this case.
The most essential thing when designing an eCommerce website that boosts your sales is keeping your user in mind. Better representation and good user experience is a success for any eCommerce website.
Your design has a lot to do with your customer conversion rate. For instance, your website could easily turn any visitor to a buyer when it includes every necessary minor detail required for a user. Keep yourself in the shoes of your audience and test any ecommerce website so that you get a clear vision of what a visitor sees at first when buying any stuff online. Likewise, your website could also get examined by anyone on the grounds of appearance, usability, and user satisfaction.
Before moving forward, assess yourself by answering these.
- Do you know what are you selling?
- Do you really know who are you selling to?
When you are certain about these questions, it makes it easy for you to get designed a website that matches your product.
2. Effective Product Showcase
Online shopping is growing impressively and it doesn’t appear to slow down at any point shortly.
“In 2018, an estimated 1.8 billion people worldwide purchased goods online (Statista, 2018)”
People love to shop online and the reason may vary from convenience to easy price comparisons. Being an online seller, what you need to make sure is that online shopping experience matches perfectly with in-person experience of shopping.
Your shoppers can not touch or feel your product online but there are ways to let them feel the quality of it by properly and effectively showcasing your product that leaves an awful impression on them.
- Give attention to every detail.
- Do better photography.
- Always show what the latest is.
Choosing a design that highlights the product well is very crucial. If you miss a product image or description, you are persuading the visitors to get off the website. Write product descriptions that offer complete information and answer the following questions:
- Who is this product for?
- How does this product work?
- What is this product used for?
- Why is it different?
- Why should anyone buy it?
The features and benefits of the product should be evident. You need to tell them how the features are useful to them and what benefits they are going to get from them.
According to research, the content that has relevant visuals receive 94% more views than the content that does not include visuals. When it comes to an ecommerce website, your product image communicates to your visitors more than the description.
Follow these tips for your product images that can boost sales and conversions:
- Use high-resolution images
- Click multiple images from different angles
- Images that can be zoomed in or out
- Big and clear product images
Since we’re moving forward, so people believe that the latest is always better than the past and the cutting edge items are better in quality and that’s how it becomes one of the ways to capture the attention of your shoppers.
3. Mobile-Responsive Design
Research from Google shows that 73% of shoppers will move from an inadequately structured mobile website to one that makes buying simpler. Mobile responsive design is a must-have for ecommerce businesses since the number of mobile users is increasing rapidly.
Higher readability and ease of use is going to benefit your website a lot. Make sure that the mobile experience for your user is up to the mark. You can do this by asking your family or friends to test the responsiveness when they purchase from their mobile phones.
If you want to boost your sales and become a top-ranking ecommerce website, make improvements on your mobile design because the search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo prefer the websites that have a responsive mobile design and put their user experience above all.
4. Show Site Security
Source: Sandbox
If you own a physical store, you ensure to hire security guards and put your resources into cameras or alarms to guarantee that you are providing your customers an environment where they can shop safely. In the same way, you should be careful about the security of your ecommerce website as well.
In the past 10 years, many cyber-attacks have occurred. The contact and credit card information of more than 110 million of the customers was compromised in 2013 of retail giant Target. In another incident, it was reported that the encrypted passwords or IDs of 38 million users of Adobe were accessed by the attackers. Data breaches are responsible for creating a negative effect on the reputation of any brand.
Do you now see the importance of securing your ecommerce website? No one will ever shop from your website if it seems to be untrustworthy.
You need to make all the essential modifications and adopt a strong strategy on your site for its security. The checkout page should have a lock icon in the address bar or at the bottom of the page. This is an indication that the page contains sensitive information and is secured.
What else can you do to prove that your site is secure and safe?
Make sure to display the security badges that your website has. But you do not have to be fraudulent just to gain the trust of your customers. Only use those badges that you have, otherwise, you may get involved in a legal issue in case of misleading your visitors.
5. Contact Information
If your customer has something to ask or is getting confused while making a purchase, he is probably going to go to the contact us page. And this is the part where you can make your customer service process very smooth.
Your contact information should be easy to find for a customer. Do not ever forget to put your email address or phone numbers on your homepage if you do not want to lose a customer. You can add plenty of options to help customers contact you without any hindrance:
- Email address
- Phone numbers
- Contact form
- Widget to send a direct message to your Facebook page
- Live chat feature
When you provide complete customer support and contact information, you indirectly get these key advantages:
- Increased sales
- Efficient and fast communication
6. Easy Checkout
Source: Skullcandy
The checkout page is considered to be the most important page of any ecommerce website. It needs to be given proper attention by the designers.
Imagine a scenario where your customer is proceeding to a checkout page after adding a few items into the cart and has got perplexed by a lengthy form to be filled. You certainly do not want to make the same mistake. Do you?
This page converts your visitor to a customer only if the design provides a smooth transition for everyone. If you have not convinced your buyer then he would probably leave your site having a complicated checkout method. This is the reason 7 out of 10 carts get abandoned. There are specific elements of the simplicity of checkout page, now let’s take note of these:
Minimal form design: Keep the design of the minimal and do not annoy your customers by asking too much information that never seems to end.
Step by step process: You need to direct your customers through every stage such as personal information, billing, and shipping details.
Customizing orders: Allow your customers to update or customize their orders if they want to make any changes to their shopping cart after they have visited the checkout page.
Account registration: You do not have to force the users to create an account before completing their checkout process. It can be irritating for a very first time visitor.
Moreover, to cater to a wide range of shoppers you have to provide numerous payment options. Payment solutions should not be restricted. This can give a boost to sales and conversion rates.
7. Reviews or Testimonials
Source: Trustpilot
There is a survey by iPerceptions showing that customers are 63% more likely to purchase from a website that has their customer reviews.
You can go for testimonials or reviews, it depends on your website structure or choice.
It is not enough to sell a product backed by your words only. Every ecommerce site should clearly show their product reviews to provide a better shopping experience for their potential customers. Furthermore, replying to your customer reviews also gives a good impression on your visitors as it shows that you care about what they say. You can always improve your product or service through your negative or positive reviews.
8. Simplified Navigation Bar
Source: Bliss
It is a critical part of an ecommerce store. Simplified and better navigation is a source of good user experience leading to more sales. Poor navigation can easily frustrate the user increasing the bounce rate.
Are the products on your site easier to find?
When your visitors are unable to locate their desired items, it can affect your current and future sales.
Let’s now look at the good navigation tips for your ecommerce stores:
Prominent parent categories: Your customers should be able to see the parent categories at top of the page.
Subcategories: Using subcategories make your site more specific with filtered options creating the opportunities for better conversions and metrics.
For example, ‘Chewy’ pet supplies website, has a parent category of ‘Shop by Pet’ which leads to a drop-down menu of all the subcategories under it such as cat, dog, fish, bird, etc.
New arrival category: You can also add the category for new arrivals or latest items which can make new product browsing smoother.
Search bar: Have a prominent search bar on the homepage.
Designing simple yet perfect navigation on your eCommerce website shows that how invested your store is in the shopping experience of its customers.
Conclusion
We’ve had a look at various eCommerce website design best practices and it’s clearly established that an effectively designed eCommerce website can amplify your conversion rate and thus your business overall. If you’re missing these particular features in your eCommerce website, your design is pretty out-dated and probably low converting as well.
In today’s virtual age, a business owner can sign up for proficient eCommerce website development services. And choosing the right eCommerce platform i.e. Shopify, WooCommerce, or Magento one can get his eCommerce website designed efficiently without any hassle.