So you’re ready to venture out on an idea and you need an online ecommerce store. Is it really that simple? Well yes in a way it is, there a number of ways to get an ecommerce site up and running quickly, however without carefully considering a number of factors your site may well just sit there and do nothing in terms of creating a return on investment.

Aswell as being a serious waste of money this would also be a major waste of time. Whether you are having the site built professionally or attempting it yourself you will need to make a number of considerations before going ahead. By the way I would almost always recommend a professionally built website as novices will struggle a lot.

Here are some considerations I would like to make you aware of:

Design and Usability

Picture this you have your site up and running, you have it functioning how you want but visitors are turning away from the site, why? Did you consider the aesthetics of the site? A poorly designed site immediately reduces a user’s confidence in you. Ok you are selling some amazing products but are you really showing that product off? Also have you shown your users that you can be trusted with their bank details if they decided to buy from you?

You may not think that the above matters to a sites success but you would be very surprised. Bear in mind your competitors may well have thought of all these factors and are benefiting from the fruits of their labour with some serious amounts of return on investment. An ecommerce site should be treated no different to a physical retail store. Consider this –

– You walk into a retail store it’s a nice presentable and safe environment. All the offers are within the eyes view and the store is easy to navigate around. The store has merchandised all its products very well to encourage that first visual look for a customer. This kind of environment is more likely to visitors, sales and repeat sales.

– You go to a website and its design is all over the place, you have no idea how to use the navigation. There are no clear offers and the site offers no valid reason to keep your attention and on top of all this you just lost confidence. You will never encourage more visitors let alone sales or repeat sales.

Design should be intuitive and should consider all kinds of users from all walks of life. The site structure should be easy to understand and information should be a maximum of 2-3 clicks away. A bright coloured site will turn away users immediately, easy on the eyes should a simple rule to follow. An even simpler rule to follow in design is ‘don’t make me think’. The minute a user has to think is the minute you have lost them.

Consider the platform you are going to use for your ecommerce site and take a look at the features available to you. Things like product feeds or ‘other customers bought such a product’ are great ways to improve the user experience.

Author Bio: Mithul is writing on behalf of Fluid Creativity, specialists in Ecommerce Website Design.

Category: Internet
Keywords: ecommerce website design