Ecommerce Website Design – How To Create an Online Store That Sells

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What’s the purpose of eCommerce website design? Online store owners aim to sell products to a growing number of return customers. But then how do they increase their customer base? Should a business owner focus on only marketing the products? Besides marketing, can the eCommerce website design help to increase the number of buyers?

Before creating an eCommerce store, you should have already decided what platform to use for your website, chosen the products to sell, and started sensitizing your potential customers about your business. For your online store to sell, it requires a combination of product sales, marketing the right products, great customer service, and providing an excellent customer experience. 

🚀Read: Customer Experience Guide: How to Put your Customers First? 🚀

The design of your ecommerce store site is integral to the success of these elements. It can make or break your e-commerce business by reducing prospects’ conversion into paying customers or skyrocketing sales and increasing Average Order Rate (AOR).

How then do you design a site that achieves its primary purpose – to ensure a smooth and fast sales process? What are the specific details you need to incorporate into the design?

7 Design Tips That Boost Sales for Your E-Commerce Website

Your Website Should Have a Professional Look

You wouldn’t want to do the hard work of attracting prospects to your site only to have a high bounce rate, would you? To keep your target customer in your online store, ensure it looks professional and has a high quality. 

You’d need to tailor your product images and website copy to the nuances of customers in your niche. What’s the proper product arrangement? How can you add the right Call To Action (CTA) that will attract prospects and turn them into leads? Consider asking these questions and more to build a site that satisfies people in your target market.

However, ensure that the website design does not outshine the products. For every e-commerce site, the purpose is to make the customer click and buy the goods displayed, which means that the product arrangement and look should be the focus of the design. Unprofessional designs also have a clutter of categories, CTA buttons, and images that hinder navigation.

Read Creative vs Functional Design

Design Search and Navigation Functions That Help Customers

Like real-life shopping, people who shop online want to see several options before making their choice. If you’re going to buy a movie, you would want to search by genre or go through the films that feature a favorite actor. If you’re up to buy a custom essay, you’ll have to start with searching the categories.

As such, it’s vital to group your products into broad categories and subcategories and make sure that the customer can easily find them. Also, consider creating a search bar where prospects can look for products.

Create features that are similar to how people shop online. Your store’s navigation and search functions should lead to more conversions and increase your AOV. That way, a higher number of people will spend more money and add more items to their cart when they shop. Your bounce rate will also reduce, thereby helping your site’s Google ranking.

Create Great Customer Experience

Besides search and navigation, every other aspect of your ecommerce website design should be tailored to your customers’ needs and satisfy them. Your ultimate aim is to turn visitors and prospects into buyers who become repeat customers.

Every aspect of the store’s design contributes to user experience and their decision to purchase the product or not. The contact form, product images, and even the check-in process can attract or deter buyers. 

What’s the usability of your online store? Is your e-commerce site visually-appealing, yet not too beautiful that it overshadows the product? Can a prospect that’s not internet savvy use the website? And, are there identifiable buttons and texts that will make the purchase process faster?

Read User Experience (UX) in the Digital World

Picture 1. Visually appealing ecommerce website design by Milani

Simplicity is the Key

While a complex design might make people admire your eCommerce site, it will most likely not achieve its aim of selling products. Design simplicity is the best way to optimize your online store and turn prospective customers into buyers. 

Having too many elements on your product page can distract a visitor and detract from closing a sale. Avoid using too many banner ads and pop-ups, as they might make a visitor leave your site. For faster transactions, ensure your online store doesn’t have information overload. Instead of cramming all your products into one page, put up the top product images, and create a clickable text to other available items.

Your eCommerce store should have a simple design and focus on making your target customer buy your products. Some owners use a minimalistic design to give them a clean and clear website that draws the reader’s eye to the available products.

Picture 2. ETQ website is a great example of a simple design 

Prioritize Your Branding

Your eCommerce website is the touchpoint between you and your prospective customer, and their first impression will determine if they become long time buyers. It’s essential to know your target market, understand their buying behavior, and decide what will make them choose your goods over others. Then, you should incorporate that knowledge into your store’s design.

Branding is an essential part of an online store’s design. It’s the DNA of your eCommerce business that separates you from your competitors. With the right branding, you can build a relationship between you and your visitors and turn buyers into loyal customers. Branding forges a connection between you and your target market and drives sales.

You can brand your business by asking the following questions: 

• What specific problem do we solve?  
• What differentiates my eCommerce business from others in this niche? 
• If I had to describe my brand in seven words, what would they be?

Give Your Ecommerce Website Design a Personality

Beyond branding, ensure your online store has a personality. What emotions do you want it to evoke? How do people feel when they visit the website? 

Online stores can feel sleek, chic, homely, trustworthy, or supportive. A restaurant’s website can look homely or sophisticated depending on if it caters to families or high-end business executives. A clothing store can go for the chic approach, while a college paper site might choose a studious or serious look. 

When your eCommerce business offers financial products, you can choose a trustworthy look. On the other hand, a store that provides rehabilitation products or exercise materials might look supportive.

The website’s personality will determine aspects like the color scheme, layout, type of photography, text arrangement, style of writing, and even placement of CTA buttons. Ensure that your store stays true to its personality. Don’t make it flashy and bold or use a specific color because you like it and think that’s how an online store should be.

Have Great Pictures

Imagine going to a physical store to buy a laptop. On entering, you don’t see any gadgets or electronics. The sales rep starts telling you about the distinctive features of different brands – HP, Mac, Lenovo, and Acer. What would you do? You would ask to see the laptops or leave the store.

Just like looking and touching a product are integral to the purchase in a physical store, images will help customers determine what to buy in your eCommerce site. You wouldn’t want to display a dented gadget in a showroom. Likewise, you shouldn’t use images with poor quality and lighting. 

Make sure your images have a high resolution and arrange them aesthetically. A blurry or pixelated photo might make customers think that your product is cheap. Creating a photo gallery for each product will ensure that customers get to view it from different angles. You might also want to use a pop-up or zoom feature to portray the item in detail.

Ecommerce Website Design Example: A Clothing Store

First, a model should wear it. That makes it more lifelike and enticing than when it is on a mannequin. Besides, customers can identify with the picture of the model and imagine how that clothing will fit their body shape.

The model should wear the dress in different poses. Such pictures enable the viewer to see the item from various angles.

Provide a close-up of the clothe or a zoom-in feature that helps prospects examine it thoroughly. That way, customers can view the intricacies of what they’re purchasing.

Put up a picture of your product in the context they’ll be used. You can pair up beach clothes with a casual bag or have a model wear a business suit, black, sleek office shoes, and an appropriate suitcase. 

There are several services that offer photography. Use them to get suitable image quality. Despite that, your picture size should be moderate. Remember to balance image quality with size to ensure fast page loading.

Picture 3. Verge Girl online store has high quality images with models in various poses, a product description and a size guide

Conclusion

With the plethora of eCommerce websites online, having an effective design that boosts sales is compulsory. Your design should not only be aesthetically beautiful, but it should also increase conversions and drive product purchase. A professional and functional design improves user experience. It should also showcase your branding and the personality of your eCommerce business. 

Don’t forget to design a simple website interface and prioritize product images to give your customers an awesome online shopping experience.

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Leon Collier writes about marketing, traveling and self-development. He loves reading books and playing table-top games on Saturday with his friends. As a UK freelance writer, he also provides professional writing services and help with dissertations at best essay writing service 2020. Follow him on Twitter.