eCommerce Website Design Best Practices
By 2023, U.S. retail eCommerce sales are expected to surpass 735 billion dollars.*
If you want to get your own slice of the eCommerce pie, you’ll need an eCommerce website. But it’s not just about having the capability to sell your product or service online. Your website needs to work as a tool to help people all the way through the sales process. Here is everything you need to know about eCommerce website design best practices.
What is eCommerce?
Electronic commerce (widely known as eCommerce) is used by consumers and businesses to exchange goods and services online. With an online store, you’ll be able to reach your customers 24/7 even if you don’t have a physical location, or if your storefront is closed. Also, online stores have reduced overhead and operational costs. So not only will you reach more customers, but eCommerce will provide more revenue for your business!
Though physical products are the most typical products sold on online stores, there are numerous other products you can sell online.
- Booking such as tours, hotels, and event spaces
- Digital products such as music, movies, and online games
- Downloadable products such as e-books
eCommerce Website Design Best Practices
eCommerce website design involves more than just how your site looks. You need to take into consideration how it works and flows as well. If you want your customers to stay on your site and make a purchase, you need to make visiting your site a pleasurable user experience. The following five elements need to be included in your eCommerce website design in order to convert more customers.
Easy Navigation
First impressions matter. Your site should be easy to navigate through and include a search bar. If you want your customers to buy your products, you need to make it easy for them to find what they want! Clear navigation with text search options and category filters assists with usability and allows users to get to their desired destination with ease.
Large, High-Resolution Photos
Visuals and looks are everything online. There is nothing more unprofessional than an image with bad lighting, poor focus, too small, and/or low-resolution quality. Use consistent branding in your photography including the same background, natural lighting, and a consistent theme. Having vibrant, on brand pictures will appeal more to your customers.
Trust Symbols & Customer Reviews
Consumers are greatly influenced by online reviews. In fact, according to Bright Local, 90% of consumers read online reviews before visiting a business. Displaying reviews, good and bad, encourages your customers to trust your brand and make a purchase from you. You can also include other trust symbols such as awards your business has received, a Better Business Bureau logo, or another type of seal such as a PayPal Verified or Norton Secured Seal.
You Need a Responsive Website
With an increasing number of purchases done on mobile devices, you need to make sure your website is mobile responsive. This means you can’t afford to exclude mobile shoppers! You want to make the checkout process as simple as possible, and easy to use on mobile devices. Forms should be optimized and not require customers to zoom in/out or scroll horizontally to fill them out.
Make sure it’s secure with an SSL Certificate.
An SSL Certificate is a standard secure protocol that ensures all communication happens between a web server and browser remains encrypted and private. An SSL Certificate is required for all sites that sell products online. It’s now an industry standard that instills trust with your customers.
Our Favorite eCommerce Platform
There are various eCommerce platforms online such as Shopify, Weebly, Squarespace, and BigCommerce. But we’re all about WooCommerce! It the world’s most customizable eCommerce platform with over 60 million active downloads. WooCommerce allows you to sell digital and physical products, manage inventory and shipping, take secure payments, and sort taxes automatically. And just like WordPress, WooCommerce is free and open source.
This scalable eCommerce platform takes time to style and configure with its extensions and plug-ins that allow more functionality. Despite its extensibility, WooCommerce is easy to use for beginners. You don’t really need to know any code at all.
Want to learn more about eCommerce Website Design?
Listen to our Executive VP, Serah, talk more about eCommerce website design on our Youtube channel.
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