There’s more to the success of an ecommerce website than its design but good design IS the biggest determining factor. A good ecommerce web design will result in far more sales than a poor design, that’s just fact.

So what makes a good design? This will depend a lot on the brand and product in question but there are some basic rules to follow that will prove invaluable to a designer as he or she plans out the ‘extras’.

Layout

It’s important to keep an ecommerce site uncluttered so nothing distracts the visitor from the products and the eventual sale. However, that doesn’t mean you have to compromise on the amount of information and content you can place on a page, especially the homepage.

Use plenty of whitespace, big, bold fonts and showcase your products and any special offers in a clear obvious manner. Links should go directly to the individual product pages and offer pages so the customer doesn’t have to look around the site too much to find what they are after.

Features

When it comes to utilising the real estate on an ecommerce website, especially on the homepage there are several design features you can use. One of the best is the content slider or carousel.

The slider or carousel is a section of the page that scrolls content, specifically products, on a timed basis or by a click. This provides three real benefits.

Firstly, it allows a much greater amount of content to be displayed in a much smaller area than just placing it on the page, keeping the site design uncluttered.

Secondly, it creates interactivity, providing a way for the customer to interact with the website as he or she scrolls through the content.

Finally, as it will look impressive and is relatively technologically advanced (though easy to implement in reality), it adds a professional ambience to the website, building confidence for the customer.

Navigation

Clear and concise navigation from the homepage right through to the checkout is a vital component of an ecommerce website design. Firstly, the fewer steps there are between the original landing page and the final checkout the better.

Using navigation to increase the number of ways a customer can get to a specific product is also a good idea. For example, giving the customer the ability to view products by price, name AND date added to the site will cover many of the ways they will want to find what they’re looking for.

Some might be out for a bargain, others the latest products and other still will know what they’re looking for and want to find it as soon as possible.

Checkout

The last and often the most difficult part of an ecommerce website is the checkout. A large percentage of lost sales come from an overly complicated checkout process.

Make sure there are as few steps as possible and that the minimum amount of information required is asked for. Add in explanations if there is anything that might be considered unclear – a good example of this is when a customer is paying by card and are asked for the Security Code. Quite a few will not know that it is the three-digit code found on the back of debit and credit cards. A sentence explaining this could be the difference between a sale and the customer going elsewhere.

The sooner a customer clicks “Submit” the better!

Author Bio: Ian Grainger is writing on behalf of Fluid Creativity, specialists in ecommerce web design.

Category: Internet
Keywords: ecommerce websites, conversion rates, website design, ecommerce design