“The first impression is the last impression.”
Since time immemorial, the adage signifies human behaviour, and it is time we add eCommerce store designs to the list.
An eCommerce website looking to grow needs to make an impactful first impression. Everything from colours to layout and images to videos should be unique, attractive, simple, and functional to gain more traction. Therefore, the first look at your Shopify store must include all the essentials elements required. It has become even more important with decreasing human attention span and high competition in the digital world.
It is suggested that an eCommerce store owner uses the right font, colour, images, words, and graphics in the website design. This strategy helps convince a visitor and build trust, which helps convert him into a customer and a loyal brand ambassador in the future.
Table of Contents
How Design Impacts the Look of Shopify Store?
A study by the Missouri University of Science and Technology found out that a website user formulates his opinion within the first few seconds of viewing a web page. The eye-tracking software observed participants’ eye movements as they scanned web pages. The data collected revealed interesting user behaviour.
Participants under observation were seen reaching the most important part of the website within the first 2.6 seconds. Those who stayed longer indicated a favourable impression implying that the first impressions matter. Since the participants were shown screenshots of webpages, the impression was based purely on design.
So, if an eCommerce business owner can arrest it through his store design, he makes the right start in the right direction.
Here are some statistics to further our cause:
- 94% of first impressions are related to design. In research, it was found that 94 % of users like to note the look and feel of a website before navigating it, signifying the importance of visuals in designing.
- First impressions last many years. Medical students from the Loyola University Chicago Stritch School evaluated 16 professors to come to a conclusion.
- Positive first impressions increase user satisfaction. The study discloses the impact of positive expectations on rating post-experiment.
5 Design Tactics to Enhance Your Shopify Store Presence
As the statistics indicate, first impressions can make or break your business. So, should pay attention to your Shopify store design. Research the market to collect data from your actual users who will use it in the future. Design accordingly to fulfil their requirements. Use the right combination of colours. Apply human psychology. Keep it minimal, as too many elements confuse the user.
Here is a list curated to discuss five design tactics you can use to enhance your Shopify store. Stay tuned till the end. We will discuss all the factors in detail.
Know your target market – humans first
Human matters first. This should be your primary concern. Every detail of your eCommerce store design, from product pages to their related images and from contact forms to the checkout page, contributes to a user’s decision to buy or not buy a product.
Usually, it is your online store’s home page responsible for providing the first impression. Make sure it is a good one. Note that the user experience is paramount to turning visitors into customers. When you are well aware of your users/audience, you can list the relevant information according to their needs and create a great storefront.
It is recommended to monitor your eCommerce store’s user experience from time to time. If you cannot gauge it yourself, ask a friend or hire somebody to look at it. Have them rate your site on usability, visual appeal, navigation ease and overall satisfaction. Accordingly, work on the elements you’re lagging.
For market research, either do it yourself or hire someone for the purpose. When going DIY, do customer surveys, customer reviews, contextual inquiry and in-depth customer interviews. Secondary research is easier; look for case studies, publications and research reports.
Consistency is the key – brand guideline
Consistency should be uniform throughout your website to build a ‘visual brand’ easily recognizable. It would be best to keep this factor in mind while designing an eCommerce store on Shopify.
Unfortunately, many small business owners feel that they don’t need to worry about branding. But ensuring the consistency of a brand and its message is equally important for a small and well-established business.
Brand guidelines keep your marketing consistent. Documenting your brand’s look and feel is one of the best ways to create consistency across all of your marketing efforts, especially as you scale up and onboard more people.
If you have heard the brand guideline term before, you should incorporate it into your store’s design. A brand style guide is a collection of rules for how your brand looks and sounds. This guide proves useful when you decide to hand over graphic designing to a virtual assistant.
Colour psychology in design and marketing
Colour psychology is a subfield of industrial psychology. All designers working across different mediums and industries must understand the basic principles of colour psychology and include them in their work to procure results.
The fact that certain colours convey a bunch of different emotions and actions is fascinating. There are many theories about colour as many things such as personal preference, history, and more can influence its meaning.
That said it’s important to know how to apply colour theory in-store design and marketing. One of the studies conducted by the KISSmetrics team found some interesting information regarding colours and their effect on the human mind.
Shoppers consider visual appearance to be more important than any other senses. Shopify offers a wide range of colour theme options that you can incorporate into your design strategy to leverage this opportunity.
For each colour, Shopify offers HTML Hex codes. This method is a standard to specify a colour for websites and compatible with Shopify themes control panels. Just remember, different colours display differently on different devices. Check individual conditions and lighting conditions.
Less is more – keep things simple
According to HubSpot, 55% of viewers spend more than 15 seconds on your website. Users are likely to exit your website if they don’t find what they are looking for. Sometimes complexities of things make your users confused, and they leave.
Simplicity is the best thing in all aspects of life, and the same implies to your Shopify eCommerce store design. The more elements in a design, the more difficult it will be for the customers to find products.
While designing an eCommerce store – less is more. This phrase holds for the design and user interface of each page of your website. All the elements, modules, and content must be clearly executed in the design. These are the steps that can convert your users into conversions.
For a minimalist design, Shopify offers specially created minimal themes. These encompass any topic that you may require. For instance, if you have a furniture store, Minim theme is a great option. It is clean and minimal, wherein you can customize settings and sections including colours, fonts, social media links, checkout and more.
You can decide to add themes yourself or get it done by Shopify experts. To hire an expert, you can consider HappyPoints as a service supplier to do this.
Think Mobile-First
In this digital world, mobile is taking over the world. Who knows how long it will go until the desktop and laptop are entirely obsolete. So designing for comfort and ease of use, knowing that people are using their thumbs and fingers to interact with your website is essential.
The mobile marketplace is a big part of the eCommerce business today. An optimized mobile experience with minimum load times, readable texts, and properly quality images and CTAs are critical for your eCommerce store’s success.
Think Mobile first before designing your store. Your store design should be mobile responsive to attract potential leads for your business.
There are tons of themes compatible with Shopify and mobile phones from theme markets such as Shopify theme store, Themeforest. A lot of them are free. Some are highly capable of driving traffic and increasing opportunities to raise sales. Some vital functionalities included in the themes are SEO optimized, Ajax shopping cart, deal countdown, wishlist, lazy image load and more.
Final Verdict
Creating a simple and creative design demands a lot of hard work. However, trial and error is key to a good store design.
Now that we have taken a look at some design tactics you can implement into your eCommerce store, it’s up to you to put these tactics into play. The above principles are tested ideas that can help make it easier for you to think through the process.
Implementing bold features and testing their effects along with customization of themes will help you create a robust store design.
Download Shopify themes available or customize themes as the need be. Refer to this link or if you have applied any other tactic, please share with us.
