In 2018 we do pretty much everything online – banking, socialising and even shopping. With our entires lives online, now is arguably the best time to be investing in the world of online retail.
Whether you’re selling shoes, food, or even road lining equipment ecommerce allows businesses the opportunity to reach larger audiences, connect with customers, create brand awareness and ultimately increase sales.
But what’s the catch?
In the world of ecommerce, competition is fierce and nothing but the best will cut it with consumers, in fact, the design and functionality of your ecommerce site is crucial when it comes to running an effective ecommerce store. Not only does your website need to look great and feel on brand, but it needs to drive sales, interactions and traffic.
So how do you build a website that sells your product?
Building an ecommerce website that converts doesn’t have to be difficult, let’s take a look at the design tips you need to take on board in order to create a next level ecommerce website that offers both a great experience and still moves your products.
Think Like Your Audience
If you want to connect with your audience you need to think like your audience. In order to create an enjoyable experience, you need to place yourself in their shoes and gain an understanding of the type of experience they want from your website. Your audience wants a few things – a fast, straightforward, easy to navigate website that offers them a hassle-free experience.
Before you even start your website you need to figure out the little things, for example how your layout is going to affect the experience, how products will be organised, which content will be included and how your checkout experience fairs compared to the competition. By thinking like your potential customers, you can determine what they expect from your website, meaning you can develop a site that meets those exact needs.
Branding Is A Priority
Brand awareness is huge, especially when it comes to online shopping – most consumers want to buy from established, known brands, not small websites that look unreliable and possibly even fraudulent. If a website visitor has even the slightest doubt about the trustworthiness of your ecommerce store they likely to head elsewhere, possibly straight into the arms of your competition.
If you’re looking to build trust you need to drive serious sales, you need to put some real thought into your branding. Your brand is the personality of your business, it’s who you are, what you’re about and the message you’re looking to share. If you haven’t already, you need to define your brand, incorporating your brand identity into your website design, from your colour scheme to your images, to the text content – it all adds up.
Speedy Checkout ProcessÂ
We’ll just throw it out there, nothing kills a sale faster than a slow, clunky checkout process. In fact, if your checkout process is too difficult to understand or even just too slow, your audience is going to get inpatient and inevitably give up on their purchase. The reality is if you want people to buy from your website you need to offer a simple, straightforward checkout process that works!
Your checkout page needs to be clean, simple and easy to comprehend, it shouldn’t have any additional features that might distract customers or make them feel like they need to leave the checkout page. If possible it’s a good idea to include just the basics – payment details, shipping details and returns information, before taking customers to a confirmation page. Keeping it simple can be all it takes to optimise the checkout process.
Keep It Simple
Following on from the previous point, one of the top rules for an effective ecommerce website is to keep it simple. When it comes to designing for online retail the more elements you include on a page, the more pop-ups, colours, ads etc, the more it distracts from the actual purpose of your website – to sell your products!
While this rule applies to the design of many websites, no matter the function, it’s even more important to remember when it comes to the development of ecommerce websites. Keep your design clear and simple, encouraging customers to complete their purchase by providing as few distractions as possible – keeping the focus on your products and your checkout.
It’s also worth noting that there’s no point in having a website that looks amazing but doesn’t function, so be sure to continue testing and monitoring your website in order to figure out what works well and what isn’t working as effectively.
Designing an ecommerce website can be tricky, however, once you know the basics you can develop them and incorporate them into how you design or even how you plan the build of your ecommerce store.
So what’s stopping you? Now is the time to take your ecommerce business to the next level.
