With growing number of internet users, the economic market is rapidly shifting from the physical to the digital. As such, e-stores are quickly becoming the go-to choice for a majority of the urban population to do their shopping. E-stores or eCommerce websites are therefore quickly becoming the connection between the buyers and the sellers and are playing a very significant role in eCommerce. And whether it is an actual market in the physical world or a virtual market in the digital world, it is human tendency to drift towards things that are beautifully designed attractive.
eCommerce website design therefore plays a vital role in the loyal customer base a company builds as well as the profit it gains. Eye-catching web design has always been significant in well designed marketing schemes and higher online sales as it increases the perceived value of the products offered. Keeping this in mind, here are few ways to build better designed eCommerce websites.
Design Ideas For eCommerce Websites
Clean Design
With time being of essence, people rarely like to muddle through a messy site to go looking for products. As such, one of the most important things to keep in mind with web design is clean visuals and an organised display. To ensure this, it is important not to clutter the category and subcategory pages with useless elements and to incorporate only those elements that add value to the site.
Easy Navigation
As important as it is to keep the display of an e-store simple, it is also essential to ensure smooth navigation. Having menus and categories too elaborate makes the site unnecessarily complicated and make for difficult browsing and ultimately fewer customers. Thus it is more gainful to have maximum accessibility throughout the site.
Quality Photography
A picture is worth not just a thousand words but also a thousand bucks! And in eCommerce specially, with the eyes doing the bulk of the assessing and ultimate shopping, it practically a crime to cut corners with regards to the pictures of the products. On the other hand, a wide and diverse range of photos is a sure-fire way to attract more people and more business. It is therefore important so plan a product page layout in advance with plenty of pictures. Also imperative is to ensure that the images are of good quality as undefined or blurry pictures will just bring down the quality of the site.
Filtering Option
People generally go for online stores for easy shopping. And what is the ease in shopping if one is not able to easily choose from categories of products and filter out the unwanted? It is widely known that most products come in different varieties. And the ability to sort out the different types of products in various categories and subcategories with multiple filtering options is what distinguishes and e-retail store from normal physical shops.
Quick Access to Search Bar
Despite the easy visuals and clearly sorted categories and subcategories, when users are unable to find their desired products, it is the search option that comes to their rescue. Besides this, the search option also acts as a temptation for users to go looking for other things and ultimately buy them. Thus a prominently displayed search bar is the key to a good e-store.
Quick Access to Shopping Cart
As with search bars, shopping cart display is also significant in a eCommerce website. Going straight to the page of shopping cart frustrates most users and make shopping a tad inconvenient. It is therefore essential for the shopping cart to be displayed on every page to make it easily accessible. Adding thumbnails and some details also adds a bit of life to the page.
Out of Stock Options
From an SEO point of view, it is important to have the out of stock products also listed on the site. But purely from the point of customer satisfaction, it leaves the customer frustrated to add a product to the cart only to find it out of stock at checkout. Thus it is important to mark the product clearly as out stock on the product page itself.
Product Variations and Alternative Options
Another important design choice for e-websites can be to display some variations of the products alongside the original products. This may include the same product in different colours, sizes etc. Also beneficial may be to add some similar options as alternative on the same page to give the customers a wider option. All this may increase customer satisfaction and increase online sales.
Easy Checkout
Last but not the least, easy checkout options are the demand of the day. And with checkout page, less is always more. Adding more promotions and deals on this page creates unnecessary distraction and may lead to a lower conversion rate. Thus a clean and easy checkout makes for the best e-stores.
Having a successful eCommerce business is all about understanding human psychology. And as humans are attracted towards beautiful things, it is now wonder that good design is good business!
