eCommerce design: Seven top website design tips

Over the past few years, online shopping has grown exponentially. From groceries to new wardrobes and technology, there is nothing that people can’t buy online. After COVID-19, many previously in-store only businesses have gone online and, customers have become more comfortable with internet purchases. This is why there’s never been a better time to be in eCommerce.

eCommerce sites offer you the chance to build your brand, connect with more customers, and sell products directly to the customers —but only if you’ve got the right website design.

Web design is critical when creating an eCommerce website. Good web design is all about using the right colours, fonts, images, words and graphics to convince visitors to buy. The goal of an eCommerce website is to attract potential customers, provide a great user experience and present your company in the best light.

So your site has to look good, be on-brand, and drive your website visitors to buy your products. But how, exactly, do you do that? Here are our design tips to get your products flying off your virtual shelves.

Keep it simple.

One of the key things you need to keep in mind during the eCommerce design process is simplicity. 

When it comes to designing an eCommerce website less is more. Pop-ups, banner ads and flashing images can confuse the customer. They need space and time to see the products and a well-defined customer journey. Too many elements act as a distraction. Keep your design clear, clean, and simple—and keep the focus on the sale.

Keep it on-brand

When it comes to shopping online, people want to buy from brands they can relate to.

To build trust, you need to think about your branding. Your branding is like the DNA of your business; it is who you are as a company, what you care about, and how you are different from your competitors. Don’t underestimate its importance branding plays an important role in building a connection with your audience and driving sales.

If you want to get the most from your eCommerce design, take the time to define your brand first and use it as the base of your design. If you’re not sure who you are as a brand yet, don’t panic! Start figuring it out by asking yourself questions like:

• If my brand was a person, who would it be?
• If I had to describe my brand in three words, what would they be?
• What makes my brand different from others?
• What do we do better than anyone else on the market?

Once you know who you are the design of your site will be a breeze. Plus a strong brand helps build trust with your audience—and drive serious sales in the process.

Keep your visitors in mind

For your eCommerce website design to connect with your audience, you need to think like your audience. Your audience needs a few things from your eCommerce site: a site that’s easy to navigate looks sleek and is hassle-free.

When designing your site, put yourself in your customers’ shoes. What kind of layout is going to be easiest for them to navigate? How can you organise your products in a way that makes sense for the end-user? How can you simplify the checkout process?

When you think like your customer, you can anticipate what they want from your eCommerce store—and then design your site in order to meet those needs.

Keep the images high res

Images increase conversions (for example, one recent case study showed that incorporating more relevant images into a website design increased conversions by over 40%). 

No one is going to buy a product sight unseen. If you want people to buy your products, you need to show them what they’re buying via high-quality product images.

Getting professional images of all your products (and having images of your product from multiple different angles) goes a long way in building confidence and trust in your customers. If they feel confident that they know what they’re buying, they’re more likely to make a purchase.

Keep the text short 

It is tempting to write long descriptions for your products, but the truth is no one is going to read them.

Research shows that most website visitors only read about 20% of the text on any given web page. Instead of reading content word for word, they simply scan the text looking for key information.

This can also impact your approach to your SEO strategy, lots of text may seem like the best way to get your keywords in but it doesn’t help if there not read by users. Remember you can also boost your SEO with your pages meta descriptions and image captions.

You can also include blogs to include more detail about your company and your products. They also help you offer more in-depth advice to your audience and tell your companies story. 

The easier to scan your content, the more likely your audience will absorb your key messaging—and the more likely you’ll be able to make a sale.

Keep the checkout process minimal

If your checkout process is long and difficult to use you are going to end up with a lot of abandoned carts. 

Make your checkout page design clean, simple, and easy to navigate. Lead them through the process step by step: what information you need to process the purchase (and where they need to enter it), the different shipping options available (and how much they cost), and what to do in case there’s a problem with their order or they need to do a return. Once the purchase is complete, direct your customers to a confirmation page so they know everything went through.

In a nutshell, if you want people to buy from you, make the checkout process as easy as possible.

Keep it responsive

It’s official—mobile has surpassed desktop as the most popular way to surf the interwebs... And that includes shopping.

If you want to capture the customers who want to shop on their phones or tablets, you need to make sure your website design is fully responsive. Otherwise, you might not convince those valuable mobile visitors that your site is where they want to make a purchase.

Once you’ve revamped your site you need to find the right way to host it! That’s where we can help, get in touch with our team of web experts to get it online.