Shopping online is big business and that means if you want a slice of the pie, you will need to have an effective eCommerce website. But what design features and factors make an online shop profitable? Keep reading to find out!
If you had a brick-and-mortar store, you would likely create a display for your best products! The good news is you can also do this online and highlight items that customers are most likely to buy.
The way to do this is to find ways to attract the attention of potential prospects such as creating banners, making the images of your best-selling products larger, or positioning them at the top of the page so they are the first thing a visitor sees. You may also want to highlight them in a contrasting colour so they stand out even more.
Your customers will want to know what they are letting themselves in for with regards to pricing. What this means is you will need to display clear and honest pricing of every product.
If you can show or offer a way to calculate P&P before a customer makes a purchase, even better. Then you can manage their expectations and prevent them from getting a nasty shock later on that may cause them to reconsider their purchase.
SEO or search engine optimisation is a crucial design element for any eCommerce site. Indeed, without effective SEO their potential customers will find it hard to find your business and the products you are offering.
Of course, there are different elements of SEO to factor into the design of your eCommerce site including product descriptions and keywords. Backlinks on the other hand won’t be so relevant because you don’t want to direct your customer away from your site.
Another crucial design feature for any eCommerce site is great quality images. After all, your customer won’t get to see the item IRL, so you will want to provide them with as much information to help them buy in the images you display as possible.
With that in mind, product images need to be in focus and high-res. They also need to be taken against a white background, with the proper lighting, and from a range of angles. Videos can be particularly useful when customers can benefit from seeing a product such as a piece of equipment, or item of clothing being used. If in doubt, choose a professional photographer for your images.
While your brain may be overflowing with information about your products, your customers only want the most important details. To help them find these, make sure that the layout of your shop is clear and easy to navigate by using headings, categories, and lists.
In retail, the customer always comes first and the same applies to any eCommerce store. To that end, prioritising the user of your site’s experience (UX) is crucial to success. This means your site needs to be simple, easy, and fun to use. It also needs to be attractive, and engaging. In particular, linking your site to your social media accounts as a way of promoting feedback on how you can improve can work wonders.
Finally, the last design tip for creating a successful eCommerce website is to ask the following question for every change you make: will it help us make a profit? If the answer is no, then leave things as they are. If the answer is I’m not sure, get in touch with an expert that can help or do some research, while if the answer is yet – go ahead and make your eCommerce site the very best it can be!
Should I have a blog on my e-commerce website?
The simple answer to this is yes.
Although blogs may be seen as a little old school, they do still provide some really good benefits for your website, especially an e-commerce website.
A blog serves a few purposes:
Having those regularly updated blog posts can really make a difference in the long term and the medium term to the amount of visitors you’re getting to your website and therefore to the amount of sales you’re making from your website. The extra effort of keeping a blog updated on your website will translate to more sales for your business!
