According to the CEO of Walmart, Joel Anderson:
You can’t just open a website and expect people to flood in. If you really want to succeed you have to create traffic.
This statement is true for every single e-commerce website out there in the marketplace.
When you hire PHP developers and aim to build a custom e-commerce website, it isn’t always enough for entrepreneurs nowadays. But paying attention to e-commerce website design best practices is equally important for transforming a site into a sales machine that has the potential to generate leads and quickly convert them into customers.
In this article, let’s explore the nine crucial design features that can make your e-commerce site an ideal weapon to increase sales and ultimately the profit.
#1. Understanding Your Buyer Persona & Incorporating Relevant Content
First of all, it is mandatory for you to clearly understand your buyer personas such as all the details like age, gender, wants, and needs of your target audience. This will definitely help you in increasing the sales because you are not giving any clear hint for whom this store is.
Website visitors can be classified into three categories in accordance with their digital journey: potential customers who have a problem and figuring out how to solve it, those who are analyzing available alternatives and comparing them to each other, and those who have made the decision to buy.
This classification makes it significant for you to understand the behavior patterns and specific requirements of the audience of all these three categories and your web app design should also provide them with solutions to the problems they are facing.
For instance, you can take a look at the home page of Sektashop. This site has increased their conversions up to four times just by understanding and focusing on their buyer persona and their specific needs.
#2. Place Product Information In An Effective Manner
In order to grab potential customers’ attention, it is vital for you to showcase the products and their details in a visually appealing way. It is always a good practice to put high-quality, real images of your products because they can build trust and generate a harmonious bond between your brand and its customers.
In addition, it is also important to place customer testimonials in your e-commerce site, especially in the form of video feedbacks. This will add credibility to your brand and will be helpful in removing customer concerns and issues.
#3. Seamless Product Search & Clear Categories
You should never confuse your potential customers by providing them with a complex navigation. Instead, you should make an effort to speed up their entire searching process by offering them an easy way to find the products they need and compare them instantly. Also, it is a good idea to incorporate a product catalogue so that to grab customers’ attention. It is observed that designing the search process that includes product images in the search bar have the capacity to boost your conversions up to 100%.
In addition, you should also make an effort to let your potential customers compare different products and their features easily. For example, you can summarize the characteristics of different products by presenting them in the form of a comparison table.
Incorporating a comprehensive product catalog is also equally essential to provide the customers with details about different items along with their high-quality pictures. For instance, you can use a content block to present a product catalog on your e-commerce site. It can serve as a mini-homepage for your site that is fully loaded with CTA and good imagery. Let’s take a look at the urban outfitters and explore the way in which they have presented their product catalog.
#4. Smooth Purchase Process & Cart
In order to convert a lead into a customer, you have to offer them an easy purchase form and process. It is advisable to design an intuitive and straightforward purchase process so that the customers don’t get scared. Also, you should try to complete the entire process in a few steps. You should include the order tracking section so that the customers can easily monitor the exact location of their parcels.
It is also necessary to add a section through which customers can review the products they have recently viewed. It will remind them about their preferences and simplify the overall decision-making process. Also, you can incorporate a provide them with a list of similar products on the product page so that they have more options to choose from and won’t get forced to leave the page.
#5. Three Basic Rules Of A Product Page
In order to keep customers delighted, it is significant for you to offer them a variety of goods in a well-organized manner. Also, it should be easy for them to get rid of those items that are not their favorites at a moment of time. For this, you have to follow three basic rules, which are as follows:
- Add filters so that the potential customers can narrow down their list of preferred products. Providing too many options on one page can confuse them and they can give up on your website.
- Keep the page layout of your e-commerce site as simple as possible. It should be easier for the customers to spot crucial information. Do not keep the screen occupied with lots of visual information, especially in the case when a customer is going to make a purchase. Remove all the extra and unnecessary piece of information.
- In order to keep customers engaged, it is better to follow some conventional design patterns such as the menu structure, the CTA button location, etc. It is not a good idea to experiment with these elements otherwise the user can get confused.
#6. Precise Visibility Of Call-To-Action
To achieve the expected objectives, it is mandatory for an e-commerce website to add a prominent CTA (it can be a button or a form to gather leads). It guides the potential customers to take the step which is expected out of them. Also, it helps them with how to react and what to expect from your e-commerce site.
#7. Include Special Product Pages
It is also a good idea to add some product pages that are meant for special products. It can be a superb tool to get potential customers to familiarize with all the specific features of a particular product such as description, price, pictures, reviews, etc.
In addition, you can use this page to spot a specific pain point of your potential customers and how it can be solved with that product. Also, you can include interactive sections that can let the users understand how beneficial and easy it is to use that product.
#8. Add Product Videos & GIFs
Apart from high-quality product pictures, product videos are also essential in order to drive sales rates up. It is been proved that the human brain perceives visual information much faster than the text. Therefore, interactive product videos can make a user stay for a long time and keep coming back for more.
You can include GIFs, such as animated design pieces on the homepage or product page of your e-commerce site. These files will make images less boring and provide the potential customers with the action they need.
#9. Design With Empathy & Emotion
The website design of your e-commerce site should be powerful enough to affect a user emotionally. Try to focus on making your web design evoke positive emotion and keep potential customers occupied. This is specifically true in the case of women, they are highly emotional and if you want them to take a particular action, then you have to strike a chord with them so that they can easily connect with your brand.
The usability and credibility in your e-commerce website design determine that whether a customer is going to visit you again in the future. Appropriate web design can definitely help you in increasing the sales figure for your business and let you build a loyal global customer base.