Because of advancements in technology as well as the proliferation of the Internet, there’s been a steady increase in the volume of business conducted online over the course of many years. It is much simpler and more enjoyable to place orders using our smartphones while sitting back and resting on the couch. However, the benefits of this growth are not equally distributed among all the people. Because of this expanding pattern, the level of competition is likewise rising at a very rapid rate. And certain sites are very inadequate in certain areas.
Your eCommerce website’s layout is tied to the factors that impact conversions and can make or break the success of your business. It is all up to the online store design as to whether or not it is simple to locate the information you want or whether or not it conveys a trustworthy picture of the company. You cannot overlook any component of the trip that the user takes. The user’s journey through your website, from the very first landing page all the way through the checkout process, should be thoughtfully developed with the end goal of making a purchase in mind at every stage.
Today we are going to talk about the best practices in online store design, which are things that you can utilize to step up your game and get closer to the goals you have set for your company.
Keeping the online store design simple
Take into consideration the needs of customers while designing an e-commerce website. Are you able to discover what you require fast or with a reduced number of clicks? An excellent website for online shopping is straightforward to navigate, simple to comprehend, and gives each component a specific function. Maintain a clean, uncluttered, and uncomplicated online store design, with the primary goals being the closing of a transaction and the creation of a satisfying shopping experience for the customer.
Make use of white space, keep the number of colors on each page of your website to nothing but three, and use typefaces that are straightforward and easy to read.
Make content scannable. In order to draw attention to the most important information, you should make use of headers and organize the text into a structure that is simple to scan by including bullets, short paragraphs, as well as strong typography.
We propose that, when showing items using a grid layout, you restrict each row to displaying no more than 3 or 4 products only in order to optimize the aesthetic appeal of the arrangement.
Eye-tracking research of website visitors has revealed, traditionally, that when people are looking at a website, they often form the letter E or the letter F as they move across the page. Make use of this as a foundation to guide users to the major conversion points on your website, such as call-to-action (CTA) buttons or navigation menus.
Make payment options easily visible
The available payment methods are one aspect that needs to be improved upon immediately. There are always so many online payment options and services available that it can be difficult to wrap one’s mind around all of them, both for oneself and for a potential client or customer that one is trying to attract. Visa and PayPal are the most prevalent payment methods, but you should accept as many of the other options as feasible if you want as many users as possible to be capable of paying. To put it another way, if they do not find it simple there, they will go somewhere else where it is easier for them. From the very beginning, you should make it quite clear which payment providers you will be supporting. No one is going to go looking for them; it’s not pushy, and it’s just information that your reader needs that’s valuable. Make sure that it can be easily understood on the online store design, and also include it at the bottom.
Minimize Choices
According to a theory known as Hick’s Law, the number of options accessible to a person causes an increase in the length of time it takes them to make a choice between those options.
A decent website for online commerce would not overload the user with an excessive number of options in order to boost conversion rates. The option that you would want customers to select should be the one that is highlighted the most.
Hick’s Law may also be used in your checkout form in some cases. Instead of requiring the customer to fill out 30 fields on a single page, split up your checkout form into different parts, such as asking for the user’s name and email address on the first page, the user’s address on the next page, and then the user’s payment information on the last page.
It’s possible that you’ll observe a lower rate of abandoned carts if you split up your automation into phases that are simpler and easier to handle. Because the user has already started the checkout process, they are more likely to feel committed to making the purchase at this point. Imagine you are buying a shirt at a store while glancing at the line at the pay register while you are there. The odds of you walking away from the sale before you even get in line is far higher than the odds of you waiting in line and then departing when it’s practically your turn.
Clear conversion path
Make use of color to direct your clients to the pages and navigation pathways that are most significant to your online store. Think about the contrast; a light call-to-action button on a light page won’t make itself seen.
If a particular button or a CTA is somewhat inconsequential, you should give that button or CTA a color that isn’t particularly noticeable to convey this. If you want a button to result in a conversion, give it a color that will help it stand out over the page and attract people’s attention at the same time.
It is possible that your organization possesses a style guide in addition to brand standards. Therefore, when you are selecting a color palette for the online store design, you should strive to select the colors from your corporate style guide that are the most captivating.
If your style guide doesn’t include any colors that stand out, you might want to think about extending it or modifying it so that you can boost the number of people that convert from your website.
Make it mobile-friendly
We are all aware that an increasing number of people are accessing the Internet through their mobile phones at an unprecedented rate. There are some people who do not even possess computers or laptops anymore; the only device they use to access the Internet in their mobile phone. Mobile browsing is very popular among younger clients, particularly those who fall within the Gen Z age bracket.
You are going to experience a decrease in sales if your website is difficult to use on mobile devices or if it does not load at all. People will eventually become frustrated and go on to another website.
When loaded into a smartphone, your website must automatically resize to fit the smaller screen, but all of the photos should load correctly. It is expected that navigation links but also buttons would operate just as well but in the same logical manner on mobile devices as they do on desktop or laptop computers. Particularly on the checkout page, you really would like to make sure that your mobile website has the same user-friendly features and uncluttered appearance as your desktop site.
Your website should also load very quickly. People will form opinions about your website and maybe your business even before they have seen a single product if the page they are seeing is slow to load. When your page finally loads after waiting for four seconds, you will already have lost one-quarter of your visitors.
Lean on minimalist online store design and also be conscious of the things you’re utilizing to reduce the likelihood of experiencing poor loading times. It’s important to remember not to clutter up the page of your online business with a number of irrelevant text blocks or visuals that interact with users. They will make it take longer for the page to load. Make use of high-quality photographs, but check to see that they are not saved in the most space-consuming file formats. On the web, photographs of high quality that were saved as JPGs appear without any problems; however, large PNG files take longer to load.
Easy email signups
Always check to see that your website makes it simple for clients to sign up for your newsletter so that you can continue to provide them with relevant information. If you have a sizable number of subscribers, you should offer them as much appreciation as possible. Send them emails, including the promo codes and unique deals you have for them. Email marketing is often regarded as among the most efficient strategies for increasing the number of conversions achieved by an online company.
By including a module at the foot of your online store design, you can find it a lot easier for clients to register for marketing emails or newsletters and keep up with your business. Customers may quickly enter their email addresses to sign up for special offers and receive information directly in their inboxes. Another method for accomplishing this is to incorporate a checkbox for email subscription within calls to action (CTAs); moreover, you may offer a promotional coupon to encourage people to sign up for your email list.
Keep the search results as minimal as possible
People may search for items on your website, making it one of the simplest methods for them to locate what they’re looking for. Because of this, you should absolutely add a search bar on your site such that people can search for what they need. However, merely offering a search function isn’t enough; you also need to optimize it to be useful.
To be more specific, you should strive to keep things as straightforward as possible. There are certain e-commerce websites that have search result pages that seem to have a variety of interesting things going on at the same time, and it may be very overwhelming. Streamline the search process for your customers by improving the results.
Make the product page more descriptive.
Your product page has to offer as many facts as possible in order to make up for the fact that you can’t actually touch and feel the item before you buy it. If it is appropriate to do so, you should keep the zoom capability activated for your item so that visitors may get an up-close view of it.
To continue along this line of thought, to assert that pictures are significant would be the understatement of the year. The quality of the item photographs you provide is vitally crucial to the overall success of your shop. They need to be spotless, expertly lit, and bright, and they must have photographs of products in addition to lifestyle shots.
And last, customer feedback plays a significant role in buying decisions. It’s funny because if you’re at a store purchasing a soap container, it’s quite unlikely that you’ll ever have the opportunity to hear anyone else’s opinion on the soap container. If, on the other hand, you are looking at the soap container on Amazon, for example, you are probably scrolling down and reading all of the reviews before deciding whether or not to buy it based on what other customers have said about it.
Ensure branding is consistent
The typical behavior of customers in today’s society is to quickly navigate from one website or app to the next. An intriguing figure reveals that 85% of clients begin the buying process on one gadget and then switch to another to finish it. This implies that you are responsible for ensuring that your brand identity and the experiences you provide throughout all devices and platforms are consistent with one another.
For instance, if a client is browsing your website and then navigates to your business’s Instagram profile, the colors as well as the message on all platforms have to be consistent with one another. The tone that is used on your website should be comparable to the tone that is used when customers interact with your customer care staff.
In addition, if you have a physical store, your clients should have the same experience there as they do when they visit your online store, and vice versa.
Add Testimonials
Customer endorsements may be an effective means of persuading users who are on the fence about becoming paying clients, particularly new users who are not familiar with your brand. Customers are unable to personally contact your items; thus, having customer testimonials as well as reviews may increase consumer confidence and the integrity of your business. Online purchasing has made this interaction impossible. In addition, customers may utilize reviews to decide whether or not a product will meet their needs, which helps reduce the number of items that are sent back. Your site’s search engine optimization (SEO) will benefit from product reviews that are indexed by search engines and appear on those search engines.
It is essential to maintain open lines of contact with clients in a timely manner if one wants to inspire people to provide feedback and testimonials. After they have received their order, there should be a prompt in the form of an email asking them to provide feedback in the form of a product review. You could want to explore offering consumers coupons, discounts, or loyalty points in return for their comments as a means of further incentivizing and encouraging them to submit feedback on your website.
Create urgency
The importance of time is mostly determined by special discounts and limited-time offers. As can be seen in the image to the right, Best Buy draws attention to enticing deals by placing them in the upper portion of their webpage. But are there any other ways to instill a feeling of the criticality of the situation?
Customers are likely to leave their shopping carts for a variety of reasons, but one of the most common causes is the high cost of shipping. As a result, this presents an opportunity to monetize by advertising discounted shipping rates and other incentives.
Brands such as Best Buy use this strategy as another one of their marketing strategies. And everyone is familiar with the Amazon Prime program. Users who subscribe to Amazon Prime are eligible for free delivery on practically all purchases. You may also offer consumers a free shipping rate in exchange for their spending a particular amount of money on your store, which is another way to drive user spending.
One such method of creating a sense of urgency is to restrict the quantity of a certain product that is still accessible.
Do A/B testing
Let’s wrap up this list by talking about A/B testing because we’ve reached the very last section of our guide on online store design.
Utilizing two distinct website layouts at the same time for the purposes of A/B testing is required. Version A is one interpretation, whereas version B is another.
Conclusion
After an appropriate amount of time has elapsed, you will be able to compare the metrics for every version on their own. You may monitor metrics such as conversion rates, accessibility, and general interactivity for various elements of the layout. These are all examples of metrics.
Even little design tweaks can have a significant impact on how actively users engage with a product. In a similar vein, experimenting with several color variants and other design elements may provide you with a much better notion of which aspects of your future online store design to concentrate on.
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