Have you ever walked into a store and got amazed just by its design? Or, vice versa, you walked in a store and you immediately went out without looking behind. Sometimes a store’s design looks so good that we want to just stay there even if the products are not relatively good. Here, we see how eCommerce store design plays a role in the consumers’ perception of stores.
If you think that eCommerce store design is hard and puzzling, you are right. I can say that it is the cornerstone of an eCommerce business. Here is why: users should have a good impression of your business. You may have great products and services, but if your store is messy, no one would spend time on it.
Knowing the importance of web design, how should you structure the content of your website to impress consumers and increase conversions?
In this blog, I will try my best to assist you in designing eCommerce stores.
Take your favorite tea and find a comfortable place, and enjoy the reading!
Table of Contents
How to Choose a Theme?
To have a good design, you will need a good theme. If you have a budget, it’s best to hire a professional UI/UX Designer. I would recommend buying a theme from Shopify theme store or Themeforest and customize it as you wish for it will be quicker and budget-friendly. What should you pay attention to while searching for a theme?
Speed
Speed is one of the most important factors that affect search ranking and user experience. Did you know “a 100-millisecond delay in website load time can hurt conversion rates by 7 percent?” It means that a one-second delay can cause conversion rates to drop by 70%!So, you get the picture of how important a website’s speed is.
In 2019, Google’s John Mueller said that:
“Speed is definitely a ranking factor? YES.”
Thus, pay attention to its speed, if it’s not available, don’t hesitate to ask for customer support.
Wide range of design features
If you ever tried to customize free plugins by WordPress and Shopify, you have noticed that they have limited design features. I am not saying that they are bad-looking or poor-working, no. They offer themes that their speed is great, indeed. When you want to customize those free themes, you are limited to what they offer. Or, you can install plugins like Elementor, WPBakery, or PageBuilder, but still, you have to pay to access the full features.
Thus, it is safer, quicker, and cheaper to buy a theme that also includes licenses of paid plugins, and demos.
Availability of support
No way that you will not face difficulties while customizing your theme. Or, after a while you may have bugs or need maintenance. Thus, free support is essential to keep everything good on your website.
For more detailed instructions, you might want to have a look at this guideline on how to pick the perfect theme for your online business.
Not sure where to start? We’re here to help! Contact Us.
Landing Page
Landing page is where users get the first impression of your brand. It needs to be simple, informative, and at the same time attention grabber. Here, you should demonstrate your company’s transparency, trust, and attention to a piece of content that will catch a visitor’s eyes that will lead them to the shopping page.
Design
The goal is to grab attention. Here you need to use big and high-quality pictures or a carousel gallery. You can also add a short video on the landing page that briefly explains your product or service.
Your landing page should be simple in order not to bother the users. But, at the same time most information about your brand should be there. Thus, you need well-organized information, menus, and buttons. What do you need to add?
- About info
- Brand trust
- CTA Buttons
Short “About Us”. Here includes information like your company’s value, or money back guarantee, shipping information, your mission, a short information about your team, etc.
Social Trust. If you have a Trustpilot account, you can install its plugin and show customers your ratings.
You can also use popup notifications to demonstrate social proof. Nextsale offers activity and sales popup based on real data to build brand trust for visitors.
- Sales pop ups demonstrate the number of recent purchases to the user.
- Activity pop ups show recent activities such as live visitor count, product views, order count, etc.
By using Nextsale social proof, you can build trust in the early stage of the visits. You can check their pricing here, and get your 14 days free trial.
CTA Buttons. Now visitors get the main idea about your company, it is time to welcome them on your shop page or at least get information about them. Here, we call it increasing conversion rate and lead generation.
Call To Action buttons are one of the ideal ways to increase conversions and generate leads. If you have a software company, you can take an example of Semrush, and see how it includes short info and the CTA button.
You can also get their email addresses by offering your latest newsletters or discount code as demonstrated below:
User Experience
On your online store, you need to let your visitors enjoy the experience of pleasant shopping. In this stage, here UI/UX Design plays a huge role. Your categories, required information, about page, and more should be placed in a way that a user can easily find it.
Navigation
Have you heard about the 3-click rule? It simply says that a user should find the required information no more than three mouse clicks. You can follow this rule to organize your pages, categories and subcategories.
Internal Linking
Think of a funnel; this tactic lets a user crawl your page from general to specific: from exploring a product on the shop page to the checkout process.
According to MOZ, internal links help a user:
- Navigate your website
- Find the established hierarchy of the information
MOZ states that an ideal link structure of a website looks something like this, where the biggest dot represents the homepage:
All the pages on your website should be connected. In the example below, page A represents the homepage. You see that it is hard for Googlebot to fetch pages D and C whereas it can reach B and E easily. As you know Google’s Spiders crawl the pages on the web. Google demonstrates the linking structure like this:
All the pages on your website should be connected. In the example below, page A represents the homepage. You see that it is hard for Googlebot to fetch pages D and C whereas it can reach B and E easily. As you know Google’s Spiders crawl the pages on the web. Google demonstrates the linking structure like this:
Final Words
So, yes, it seems hard to establish a well-designed eCommerce website. To ease your work, I would suggest you split the design into parts, and then complete them one by one. Plus, consider yourself as a consumer. Explore as many websites as you can and take notes. Based on the notes, you can come up with an excellent eCommerce website design!
