Nowadays, we do almost everything online, including shopping. So, if you’ve been thinking about joining the eCommerce bandwagon, now is the best time to do it! Today, having an eCommerce website allows you to reach more customers, build a brand, and sell tons of products – but this is only possible if you have a great website design.
A good online store design is a combination of using the right images, colors, words, graphics, and fonts, all to persuade your visitors to buy from you. Your design should attract customers, provide a great UX, and show your online face in the best light possible.
Of course, building an impressive eCommerce store requires a lot of patience and effort, so if you think this is not exactly your area of expertise, you should consider hiring a professional web development company.
While choosing a web design company, there are multiple factors to consider, like your UX goals and the eCommerce platform. For instance, if you use BigCommerce, it will probably be wise to choose a BigCommerce partner company certified by BigCommerce for their excellent track record and technical knowledge.
However, if you want to do things on your own, here are 7 tips that will help you take your online store to the next level.
- Think Like Your Customers
If you want to create an online store that connects with potential customers, you’ll need to think like those customers. At the end of the day, shoppers want only a few simple things when they visit an eCommerce website: simple navigation, good design, and a straightforward shopping experience.
So, when designing your site, try to put yourself in your customer’s shoes. What layout would be the easiest to navigate? How to organize the products in categories that make sense for them? How can you make the checkout simpler?
Thinking like your customers enables you to figure out what they want from your online store and design it to meet their needs.
- Keep Things Simple and Professional
One of the most important rules to keep in mind when designing an online store is simplicity. The more elements you have on the page (pop-ups, banner ads, colors…), the more distracted and confused your visitors will be.
Next, if you want shoppers to take you seriously, your web design needs to be professional. What does this mean? To begin with, your site should be without any misspellings and typos. Also, your color palette, footer design, and font should be consistent from page to page. Finally, all your product links and buttons should work properly, and your images should be high-quality.
Keep your design clean, simple, and professional to help potential customers stay focused on what matters—making a purchase.
- Make It Easy to Navigate
Nothing makes a shopper more frustrated than cluttered and confusing product pages. If your visitors need to click on a dozen menus to find the product they are looking for, they will get annoyed and leave.
That’s why navigation should be one of your top priorities. Make your product pages and product categories easy to navigate. Allow customers to search for products and to filter them by size, color, and product type. The easier you make your navigation, the greater the chances for your customers to make a purchase.
- Use Great Images
In the web design world, the images you use can make a huge difference. In fact, studies have shown that incorporating images into a web design can increase conversions by more than 40%. And this is especially true for eCommerce. Why? Because nobody is willing to purchase a product they cannot see.
Getting professional photos of your products, having photos that show your products from multiple angles, and adding a zoom option is a great way to build trust and confidence in shoppers. And if your customers feel confident, they are more likely to buy from you.
- Pay Attention to Your Copy
So, you’ve spent hours writing long, detailed descriptions for your products? Too bad nobody is going to read them! Research has shown that most people read only 20% of the copy on any web page. In other words, they don’t read the entire content but only scan the copy. So, to convey the most important product features and lure people into making a purchase, you should focus on making your copy scannable.
And this doesn’t refer solely to product descriptions. You should break up all your content, including your “about us” page, blogs, etc., into easily scannable bits of text. Keep paragraphs and sentences short and use bullet points to break up big chunks of texts.
- Make Your Checkout Simple
Did you know that the average shopping cart abandonment rate is 68.81%? This means that 70 out of 100 shoppers are just dropping their carts.
If your checkout is too long or too complicated, you are going to lose sales. Start by making sure that the design of your checkout page is clean and simple to navigate. Customers should know right away what information you require, the available shipping options, and what they should do if they need to return an item.
People want to buy what they want quickly and easily, so your checkout process needs to be as simple and as straightforward as possible.
- Make Your Site Mobile-Friendly
You are probably already aware that mobile has surpassed desktop as the most popular way to surf the web and shop. No matter how impressive your online store is, it will mean nothing if it is not optimized for mobile.
If you want to capture all those people who like shopping via their mobile devices, you need to ensure your site is fully responsive, i.e., it functions and looks well on all screen sizes.
Final Thoughts
Designing an impressive eCommerce site isn’t easy, but now that you know the top design tips, you have everything you need to create an online store that not only looks great but also makes sales!
