Ensuring your online store stands out from the crowd is of utmost importance in today’s competitive marketplace. Fortunately, there are some basic and yet essential elements to your ecommerce website design that can help you stand head and shoulders above the competition.
Easy-to-Navigate Interface
Ecommerce website designs can be notorious for bad user interfaces. With vendors trying to include as many options and as much information as possible, the end user’s experience can often be forgotten.
A truly excellent and effective website design should feature navigation that is intuitive for any visitor to work out and easy to use. The quicker and easier a visitor is able to find the product they are looking for on your ecommerce platform, the more likely it is that they will click ‘Buy’.
Use a simple and clear navigation menu so that your website’s structure is apparent and easy to understand. The menu labels themselves should be descriptive and informative so that visitors know exactly what sort of products and content are on each page.
Avoid using industry terms that are technical or other jargon that may make sense to you but do not necessarily mean anything to your potential customer(s).
Mobile Device Usability
It’s always important to remember, especially for ecommerce website design, that an increasing number of online shoppers use their mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, to surf through the internet.
If your ecommerce website is not optimised for mobile viewing you’re going to be turning off a huge proportion of your potential target market. Mobile-friendly websites offer all users as premium an experience as possible.
Moreover, there are other benefits to ensuring your website is sufficiently adaptable for phone/tablet access. Many search engines, including Google, use mobile-friendliness as a significant factor in determining search rankings. Keeping your ecommerce site mobile-friendly will go a long way to optimising your website for best performance.
Use High Quality Product Images
When it comes to website design in general, but especially for ecommerce platforms, product images are one of the most crucial elements. High quality, enticing and appealing images of your offerings can effectively make or break a visitor’s decision to actually make a purchase.
Similar to the element above, high quality images are also an important factor for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). When people search for your product online, Google and other search engines prioritise the websites with high quality images.
Pro tip: Remember to use accurately descriptive file names and alt tags when uploading and using images on your website.
Response Times
Like it or not, but customers are often in a hurry. They may be browsing for a particular item or just surfing through your website. Either way, your ecommerce website must have a quick response time and load fast in order to be competitive in the market.
Slow loading websites frustrate customers, negatively impact search engine rankings and make your ecommerce platform difficult to engage with.
Some tactics for improving the loading time of your website include:
- Optimising your images.
- Caching, i.e., storing frequently accessed data in a temporary storage location.
- Minimising the number of HTTP requests.
Use Social Proof and Trust Signals
The ecommerce marketplace is highly competitive and in many cases over-saturated. To ensure that customers trust and end up choosing to purchase from your business, your website needs to really ‘sell them’.
Some of the best methods for doing just this is through social proof and trust signals. Social proof, such as customer reviews, testimonials and the like, go a long way to reassuring customers that making a purchase is the right decision.
Moreover, trust signals such as security badges or industry awards indicate that your product and business are reputable, quality and known in the industry.
Again, as with many of the other essential elements on this list, both social proof and trust signals can positively contribute to a website’s Search Engine Optimisation. In other words, by including these elements on your ecommerce platform you’ll be benefitting from both higher/more exposure and more conversion of website visitors once they have found their way to your webpage.
Need assistance? Contact your local digital marketing agency in Brisbane
Ecommerce website design is a crucial factor for the online success of your business. While some of the elements can be implemented and improved by anyone, if you need some professional, technical assistance make sure to turn to a ecommerce website design and digital marketing agency with the knowledge and experience to ensure your site performs!