One of the best ways to improve an e-commerce website is to pay attention to various design elements.
If you want to improve your online store’s user experience, then you’re in the right place. Here are nine ecommerce design practices that can help improve your site’s user experience:
1. Choose a minimalist design
There are thousands upon thousands of choices to choose from for your ecommerce theme or overall design. If you’re still undecided, you can’t go wrong with a minimalist design.
A minimalist design is clean and doesn’t require much design experience on your part. It will make your ecommerce shop look elegant, and the whole browsing experience for a customer will be smoother. Of course, you can customize your e-commerce web design to fit your branding, but since it’s minimalist, it’s a lot easier to emphasize the parts you want to highlight.
Also, if you don’t have a web designer just yet, a minimalist pre-designed theme is much easier to play around with and won’t confuse you as much.
2. Show clear Calls to Action
Calls to Action are parts of a webpage that direct customers to the desired action. For example, the “Buy Now” button on a product page is a Call to Action.
When designing your website for improved user experience, you have to consider what your CTAs are. Different parts of the site have different CTAs, so take note of that.
Once you know what your CTAs are, you want to ensure that your CTAs are clear and more noticeable than other parts of the web page. That’s because these are the actions that you want your customers to take.
What that means is that you want these to be very eye-catching without being too out of place.
3. Use quality images
At Sytian Web Developer Philippines, we recommend investing in high-quality product images when starting an online store.
For one, your customers have no other direct means of seeing the quality of your product differently than through your product images. If your product images are blurry, have poor lighting, or can’t encapsulate the details of the product, a customer might not want to purchase them. Therefore, it’s in your best interest to only use high-quality product images from multiple angles.
It might also be ideal to add videos if possible to showcase how the product works and operates.
4. Prioritize ease of navigation
Nowadays, when people are browsing a website, speed is a critical factor.
If your webpage loads too slow or looking for a product proves to be a challenge, a customer will gladly leave your site as fast as they came into it. Thus, you have to ensure that you work on the ease of navigation of your site.
Aside from loading speed, make sure that all significant web pages on your website are easy to find. The best way to improve your online store’s loading speed is by putting them on the navigation bar.
For example, if you have different categories and subcategories of a product, make sure that you include that in the navigation bar. Having a good quality search option is critical for your ecommerce site as well.
5. Position your search bar
Speaking of the search option, make sure that your search bar is easily noticeable. In ecommerce stores, search bars are an essential feature so that a customer will be able to find what they’re looking for immediately. Therefore, you want to position your search bar noticeably.
Aside from making your search bars easy to find, you might want to incorporate other features into it.
For example, an autocomplete feature can help, mainly if you include image suggestions as well. This feature helps reduce the work that a user has to do while also giving them visual signifiers and suggestions that can be more compelling.
6. Use faceted search
If a customer on your ecommerce site wants a more in-depth search, you should include a faceted search feature. This feature allows users to narrow down search results based on specific attributes they either check or uncheck.
A faceted search can be beneficial if they don’t know precisely what they’re looking for but have some ideas on what they want it to be.
7. Make it scannable
People aren’t as attentive on the Internet as they were before. Thus, you want to ensure that your website is scannable.
If someone is scrolling through your website, you want them to understand the vital parts of the webpage they’re on. Structuring your page when designing it can help with making your web pages more scannable.
8. Simplify the checkout process
When a customer is trying to checkout, you want to ensure that the process is as smooth as possible. Therefore, you should make sure that you simplify the checkout process. There are different ways you can do this.
First, make sure that the information is clear and understandable, and straightforward. Next, make sure that you incorporate as many payment options as possible.
Don’t forget to add a sign showing that their purchase has been completed.
9. Highlight product reviews
Getting customer feedback on your website is critical for its continued improvement. That’s why it’s vital to offer surveys and offer discounts to figure out how well your site overall is doing.
Another basic form of customer feedback that you should highlight would be customer reviews. Other customers will often consult the reviews to see how other people feel after finding a product they like. The customer reviews can attract other potential customers and convince them to purchase the item.
It would be even better if you allow customers to upload photos or videos of the product.
A customer review can include more information about the product. But it can also highlight other aspects of your business, like the quality of customer service or shipping and delivery.
The design practices listed above can help improve the look of your e-commerce website. They make your site more appealing and easy to use for your customers. Ensure that you apply these design practices so that you can improve your sales.
