eCommerce website design and building is easy with the tools and techniques available today.
However, there’s much more to eCommerce website building than just creating an online store and uploading the products.
With so much competition on the internet, only the best stand a chance.
Therefore, here are some of best eCommerce website design tips and tricks to make sure your website is never less than the best.
1. Mobile optimize your eCommerce website
The best thing about eCommerce is that you get access to all the products online, right at your finger tips. However, a mobile friendly website makes shopping fun for your visitors.
Mobile friendly websites facilitate the visitors using mobile devices to find the products or pages of their choice easily. When your website is specially optimized for mobile devices, it will load faster and will reduce the exit rates.
Mobile optimized eCommerce websites also result into better user experience for those using mobile devices for browsing your website.
2. Design your website with users in mind
Ultimately, what matters the most for your website is how the visitors/buyers feel about their experience on your website. Therefore, you must take their choice into consideration.
But how can you know what the visitors like:
- Try testing your website as a buyer with a product in your mind
- Conduct A/B testing to know what works best
- Monitor the exit rates and analytics to find the problematic pages/areas & improvise it
- Ask your clients and visitors to leave the feedback
- You can even hire people to check the usability and accessibility of your website
- CMS like WordPress is ideal for creating small eCommerce websites
Think like a visitor looking for a certain product on your website. This will help you evaluate how easy to use your website is. Or you can use any other option to find out the pros and cons of your website.
When it comes to website building and user experience, only experience can help. Over time, you will naturally have more idea on what works for you and what doesn’t.
3. Keep it simple
On your eCommerce website, avoid complications wherever you can!
A complex website will only confuse your buyers, or cause them to feel indecisive. So it is advisable to avoid unnecessary complications in term of design, functions, navigation, etc.
However, simple doesn’t mean you have to create a boring old fashioned and plain website. Your eCommerce website can have a simple and modern design that pleases the visitors and make them want to explore more.
4. Good product images
When selling online, the visitors rely on the product images a lot. This is why you should insist on uploading multiple high quality images on your product pages.
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The images make your website more interesting. They leave the first impression on a buyer’s mind when buying the products through your website.
If you are avoiding too many images on your website to save the space or avoid slow down of website, you can use one of the image optimizers. They will automatically optimize the images as per the requirements of your website as soon as they are uploaded.
5. Reviews help
A large number of buyers will spend a considerable amount of time researching the product they want to buy. To come to a conclusion, reviews can help.
Reviews also help you improve the SEO value of your page by including more keywords and relevant content. Review helps your buyers connect with the opinion of other buyers.
On the other hand, you can even list testimonials of the happy buyers on the homepage or other prominent area of your website. It helps build trust!
6. Clear pricing
Again, confusion of any kind should be totally avoided on your eCommerce website. Especially with the pricing because it is one of the most important information on your page.
You can use smart pricing and other psychological pricing practices to attract more buyers. There’s also a trend to mention both: the actual price and the sale price to indicate the advantage to the buyers.
Whenever you use such techniques on your eCommerce website, make sure that the visitors are not confused or misled. Mention if the price is inclusive of taxes or if you are going to calculate the taxes separately. If you are going to charge shipping or any other cost, then mention that too. Mention anything about the price that you think the buyer should be aware of.
Surprising the buyers on the checkout page will leave them confused for the further processing.
7.Easy Navigation
One of the best qualities of successful website is it’s accessibility and ease of use. And navigation plays a very big role in how easy your website is to browse through and find the right page.
For an eCommerce website, ease of navigation means how quick and easy is it for the visitors to find the product they came looking for.
Therefore, to make your website easy to navigate, you need proper menus. Choose an eCommerce website design that has great menu design. A mega menu is great to show a variety of categories into the menu.
Whether it is a mega menu, or a simple drop down menu, you should make sure that they cover all the important links. Other than that, you can create beautiful sections on your website that connect to the prominent categories as shown in the image. Have a look at the best eCommerce website examples that can help you.
8. Search bars & Filters
Again, these features add up to the ease of use and the overall user experience. With a search bar, and proper filters, the buyers are facilitated to find the product of their interest easily.
Filters are infact essentials for eCommerce websites. They make it easy for the visitors to get the results that match their preference. It saves their time and makes their experience a pleasant one, and also effortless!
If you are using social media like Instagram, etc. to promote your products, then the search bar can help the visitors directly find the product of their interest by using the search id no.
9.Simple checkout
One of the worst place to lose the buyers is at the checkout page. The payment processing part of your eCommerce website should be simple and easy.
You must keep in mind that not all the people coming to your website are technically skilled people. Most of the buyers are going to be general buyers who just want to make the payment and know that their product will be delivered soon.
Thankfully, most of the payment processing today is effortless, and improvements are being introduced day in day out.
On your part, you just have to make sure that the checkout page is distraction free, and the process is simple.
10. Fully Utilize the description section
Apart from images on your product page, you have a chance to explain the product using textual description. So just make the best of it.
When mentioning the products through your eCommerce website, you don’t actually have to brag about the product. But just include the basic information a visitor would like to know.
If the product dimensions are something that a buyer would like to know, mention it. This will be different for different type of products.
For example: If we’re talking about a mobile phone, you should mention the dimensions, battery life, Network abilities, sim card support, weight, etc. If we are talking about a dress, you can mention the fabric type, the size, the wash instructions, etc. If it’s a food article, there should be a mention about the use, weight, some basic ingredients, expiry date, etc.
11. Optimize sales
There are a lot of different ways you can optimize the sales of your eCommerce website. For that, you can run different offers and seasonal discounts.
Try A/B testing, different offers, page designs, product page tactics. Keep experimenting to find out what helps you with more traffic and more conversions.
Take a small survey of your visitors to improve their experience and know their opinion about various aspects of your online store.
Moreover, there are different tools available as plugins or services, specially designed to help you optimize the sales of your eCommerce website.
To attract more buyers, you can use the Thank you page offers, purchase points, email outreach, etc.
12. Categorize properly
This is one of the most important step in website building, when it comes to eCommerce. Generally, an eCommerce website will have variety of products under different categories.
The key is, to properly categorize the products and organize them as parent as well as child categories. This helps the visitors to easily find the products of their choice. Whereas, for the website admin, it helps with easy inventory management.
Not just proper categorization, but you should also pay attention that the important categories are put in the front and highlighted properly.
13. Make it easy for visitors to contact you
A contact form on your eCommerce website enables the buyers to get in touch with you should they have any questions.
Contact forms are infact one of the most essential elements for any kind of website. They make you reachable for your end users. Through these forms, the visitors can voice their opinions, suggestions, concerns, queries, as well as complaints.
Today, there are a lot of contact form software options that you can use to create and connect fully functional contact forms on your website.
With the contact forms active on your website, also make sure that the queries received by the contact forms are regularly & properly addressed.
14. Interesting design
Design does play an important role. After all, why create a boring or unorganized website when you can create a beautiful and organized one.
Today, the eCommerce platform provide you ample design options. There is no ideal design style, but you can choose one depending on your niche. You must have a look at these product page design optimization to design pages with more conversion.
Ultimately, you should keep in mind that not just the features but even the design plays a vital role. A good, clutter free, clear and pleasant design with relevant images will leave a lasting impression on a visitors mind.
With a great design, the visitors would like to stay and browse more. Use attractive, click-worthy images to direct visitors to attractive spots on your website.
15. Include delivery, returns and refund information
When it comes to an eCommerce website, where transaction are involved, trust plays a major role. You must totally avoid the chances where a buyer feels tricked or cheated.
Whatever you display on your website, make sure it is portrayed with complete clarity. If you are charging for product delivery, mention it clearly. Mention the warranties, guarantees, etc.
Moreover, the return or replacement policy about all the products should be clearly stated so as to avoid any conflicts at a later stage. Even the refund policies, from complete refund, return window, partial refund, etc. should all be clearly mentioned.
What we should strive for is a descriptive and detailed product page, that leaves no chances of confusion for the customers.
Bonus Tips:
There can be a million tips on how to improve your website. But it’s only experience and experimentation that can help you find the flaws and pros of your website.
For better sales on your eCommerce websites there are many other things you can do. First of all, people expect sale and discount. So run offers as well as seasonal discounted sale for your products and promote them properly.
One of the most effective things to do, is show a series of related products below the product page. Mostly all the eCommerce platforms will let you do this very easily. Moreover, there are smart services as well as plugins that can detect the user behavior and find out the relevant products to be displayed in this part.
A healthy competition analysis can help you find a lot about the market and current trends. A careful watch on the analytics can help you find the problem areas as well as the pages that are already performing well and can be improvised.
On the other hand, you can even use other analytics tools to get the reports and analyse them to get an idea of what is happening behind the scenes and derive important decisions.
Also, make sure you use the social media to reach more people. How effectively you promote and market your website also makes a big difference.
Further reading: How to create an eCommerce website and start selling online quickly?