No matter what you are selling or how useful they are, you need to present them nicely to attract customers.
Let’s face it, nobody likes a messy website. The main reason customers resort to eCommerce stores is because of their convenience.
The first thing that a customer notices upon visiting a website is its design. Design isn’t just limited to your website’s aesthetic features but also its functionality.
According to recent research, it was found that 94% of customers’ first impression upon visiting a website is its design and 38% of customers are likely to leave the website if the design is unattractive and outdated.
It takes 50 milliseconds for a customer to determine whether they like your website or not. After that, they either subconsciously decide to stay on your website or abandon it.
Customers prefer an eCommerce website that is easy to use with a comforting visual look. So, if you want your eCommerce business to thrive, then it is very important to ensure that your website is nicely designed.
In this article, we have suggested 6 trending and valuable tips to help you understand how you can create a nice design for your eCommerce website.
6 Trendy & Useful eCommerce Website Design Tips
1. Keep the Website Design Simple and Minimalistic
You should not make your website too fancy, especially with multiple unnecessary elements.
You might think that adding a lot of popups, whistle notifications, bright shiny visuals, and other eye-catching website decors will attract customers and motivate them to hit that purchase button.
But in reality, your target audience might find that annoying. What’s the point of going overboard with aesthetics and features that makes your website more complicated to use?
Customers prefer a seamless, user-friendly e-commerce shopping experience. 70% of customers abandon their online cart due to poor user experience.
It is important to make sure that your website is simply designed so that your target audience can seamlessly browse your website.
As you are running an e-commerce website, your goal is to make sure your customers get a hassle-free online shopping experience.
The website should look aesthetically pleasing to motivate customers to browse through your website to find and order their desired products/services.
The following tips will help to keep your website simple, aesthetically pleasing,
- White Space is the blank white background you see on a website. There are no visuals, characters, or elements there.
Psychologically the human brain finds it easier to process information for that certain white gap.Think about it, would it be easier to find your socks or a shirt in a messy wardrobe? Or would it be more convenient to find it, if the clothes were nicely stacked, folded, and kept in an organized fashion?The white gap here is essential to give users a clean, smooth user interface to navigate through the website seamlessly.
- Typography is the form in which text content appears on your website. It is simply the website’s font style, size, depth, etc.You need to make sure that your website’s typography is easy to read and consistent to give your visitors a smooth browsing experience. If they don’t understand the text or the handwriting, how will they navigate through your website?Let alone, how will they understand your business, product, and services? That’s why you need to pick fonts that anyone can read and understand. You can use your own custom font if you want, as every element on your website represents your brand.
- Visual Elements are images, videos, animations, and other design features. Psychologically humans are wired to pay attention to visuals rather than texts.That’s why it is important to use the right visual elements on your website. So make sure to use the right image, video, or any other graphic content where it would serve the purpose.It would be best if you were extremely specific when placing the visual elements on your website.
For example, if you have a subcategory of men’s t-shirts, your target audience will expect to see t-shirts, right? But if they find jackets upon clicking it, that will be misleading.
If the customer’s intent was to buy t-shirts, they will probably leave your website and check elsewhere. So, even if your website had t-shirts, this simple design flaw would drive the customers away.
2. Website Should be Easy to Navigate
Your website should be easy to navigate. Customers should be seamlessly able to find their desired products/services within seconds.
If they struggle to find what they are looking for, there is a high chance that they’ll abandon your website and go to another website.
That’s why it is super important to make your website extra user-friendly. To do so, you can follow the easy steps listed below,
- Include a Search Bar and optimize it properly to generate accurate results for multiple keywords.
- Stick the Search Bar on a visible area on your website and make sure it’s always noticeable.
- Integrate the Voice Search option on your website’s Search Bar.
- Neatly organize Categories and Sub-Categories on your website. If needed, include Sub-subcategories.
- Stick the Categories section on either your website’s side or top panel. It’s better if you can add the option to toggle the categories. In this way, the customer can always use the categories section whenever they need to.
- Add Filter option in the Search Bar and Categories section, so that the customer can find products/services within their budget or by selecting preferred brands, specific categories, etc.
- Make sure the products/services are clickable so that customers can seamlessly see detailed information, images, and videos to know more about the product/services.
- It is better if you can make sure that the images are rotatable 360 degrees. So, the customer can inspect the product from all angles to get a clearer concept. You can use online tools such as webrotate 360 to make rotatable images.
- If you want to provide the customer with a superior browsing experience, consider incorporating Augmented Reality (AR) to inspect the products and services. In this way, customers can use their mobile phone’s camera to place the product in their room virtually and see where it would best fit.It will be even more awesome for customers to have the option to have a digital preview of their products using a VR (Virtual Reality) Headset. This will be extra useful if you are selling furniture, home decors, kitchen machinery/accessories, vehicles, and many other items.60% of customers are more likely to buy from e-commerce stores that offer the option to see the product on AR.
- Integrate the Accessibility Option on your website so that people suffering from disabilities can use your website.According to the World Bank, 15% of the global population suffers from some kind of disability.You can highlight some elements of your website with specific colors and add options so that visitors with poor eyesight can zoom in for a clearer view.
You can even add narration features for people who struggle to read. These features can be difficult to include on your website, but these are crucial designs for your e-commerce store. So, we would highly recommend including them.
However, if you are struggling to install these features on your own, then you can consider signing up for our web design and development services. You can even have a Free Consultation with our experts to decide on the best website design enhancements.
3. The Design Should be Mobile Optimized
According to Oberlo, more than 90% of customers worldwide use mobile phones for online shopping, whereas 53% are from the USA.
Out of which, about 50% of customers in the USA conduct their research using mobile phones before buying a product/service from e-commerce stores.
More than 167 million customers are currently using mobile phones for online shopping, and it is expected to increase to 187.5 million by the year 2024 in the USA.
If you are implementing SEO strategies to boost your online presence, not having a mobile-friendly website can negatively impact your website.
As the recent Google Guideline states, that is now a requirement to make your website mobile-friendly. So if your website is not mobile-friendly, it will get penalized by Google.
What’s even worse is that if your website isn’t mobile-friendly, then 57% of visitors will abandon your website, whereas 47% of visitors will not recommend your store to others.
So, if you don’t prioritize making your website’s design both desktop and mobile-friendly, then you will lose a vast majority of customers.
And the scope of gaining potential customers will be significantly low in the future.
To make your e-commerce site mobile-friendly, you can consider following the tips below,
- Ensure Equally Fast Loading Speed on Both Mobile & Desktop. Learn more about website loading speed and the current benchmarks.
- Choose a Mobile Responsive Theme.
- Optimize and Compress Website Images. The larger the file size and resolution, the longer it will take your website to load. You can use online tools such as Imagify to optimize your images without compromising their quality. If you are running a Shopify website, then you can consider using Shopify Image Resizer.
- Reduce Pop Ups and Redirects.
- Don’t use too many Animations, it can pressurize your website from loading, especially on mobile devices.
- Optimize Button Sizes and place them so that it’s convenient for mobile users.
If you need help making your website’s design mobile-friendly, then you can book a Free Consultation with our IT Experts.
4. Add Customization Options
According to studies by Freshdesk, adding customization options to e-commerce stores can yield 20% higher customer satisfaction and boost sales conversion by 10% to 15%.
Whether it’s automobiles, shoes, furniture, home decor, or clothes, allowing your customers to customize their products will increase their interest in buying the product.
For example, if you are selling clothes, then the customer should be able to pick their color and size.
Services often cannot be limited in packages, as customers might have problems that go beyond your service plan. So, it is best to always have that custom option.
The most significant advantage is that you can even charge an additional price for certain products/services.
Moreover, for some products, there should be multiple options to choose from. For example, a t-shirt can come in multiple colors, so you should give your customers the option to select their desired color and size.
5. Use the Right Colors
Colors represent your brand identity. It is important to ensure that your website designs contain your brand colors. And, they should be placed all over your website in such a way so that it’s noticeable.
Moreover, you can customize each of your web pages so that your website looks dynamic. It will help customers distinguish between the differences on each page.
You can consider using different colors for each sales page. The individual colors will represent those products/services. And the info section of your website should also have its unique blend of colors.
Using a mixture of colors will make your website design more attractive to customers as it offers some degree of diversity across each page.
But remember, your brand color and background should remain constant and should be the same on every web page. The other sections of each website can have their unique blend of color customization.
Don’t go overboard with colors though. It’s better to create a brand color palette by putting particular colors that represent your brand.
Remember, each color you use is your brand’s identity, so you should only use a fixed number or combination of colors.
6. Automate Inventory Update
It will not reflect well on your e-commerce business if your customer orders products from your store that have already gone out of stock.
This will not only waste the customers’ time, but when you send that apology email letting them know that the product is currently out of stock, it might create a bad impression.
It is better if you automate your website to automatically update the inventory, to prevent such hassle. So, once a product goes out of stock, the customer will be able to see it.
You can even add an option for the customer to notify you to restock the product. In this way, you will get real-time feedback from the customer concerning the market demand for certain products.
If your e-commerce store is a Shopify site, then you can install apps like Stock Sync to automatically update your inventory.
You can even use Shopify’s built-in tools to automate inventory management. Look into the Shopify Plans to learn more.
Conclusion
Website design is something that you cannot compromise. It is the core outlook of your business’s online presence.
If your customer does not like your website design, there is a high chance that they will leave your website. This can lead to a substantial loss of revenue.
According to our trend analysis, major e-commerce businesses follow the 6 website design tips that we’ve suggested above.
They have proven to be very successful as they portray that appealing, aesthetic, modern website look that customers want. So, it is highly recommended that you consider these website design tips.
We understand that implementing these suggestions isn’t a walk in the park either as some of these suggestions require an extensive level of coding knowledge and experience.
So, if you need any help with web design and development, you can book a Free Consultation with our IT Experts.
