Worldwide ecommerce sales are expected to grow to 4.88 trillion US dollars by 2021. As more consumers prefer purchasing goods online, launching an ecommerce website can help you take your business to the next level.
How does that help you?
An online store can help you reach more people globally, retain existing customers, and attract new ones. It allows people to check out your products and shop for them from anywhere, anytime. That’s because an ecommerce store is always open.
Basically, the number of ecommerce businesses is increasing for a reason. And you should plan and build an ecommerce store regardless of the size of your business.
Anything else?
However, it is important to craft an impressive and functional ecommerce website design to ensure the success of your online store. You need to develop a website that is visually appealing, has a good user interface, and is optimized to increase conversions.
So what does it take to build a great online store with an impressive ecommerce website design? Let’s take a look.
How Can You Create an Effective Ecommerce Website Design for Your Store?
A good ecommerce website design can help you present yourself as a trusted and legitimate business, and that’s what customers are looking for.
If you want to grow your online business successfully, your ecommerce website design should include the following components.
1. Clean and Simple Design
The success of an online store is majorly influenced by its website design. In fact, 48% of people determine the credibility of a business by its website design.
Busy designs easily lose their allure with time. But a minimalistic ecommerce website design with a simple color scheme and elegant typography can look appealing for longer.
Similarly, the more elements you put on a web page, the more they may distract users from the main purpose of the store. Removing unnecessary elements can help you draw your visitors’ attention to what matters most.
What’s more?
A minimalistic website will also load faster, which can help you reduce bounce rates and engage more visitors.
Website design templates can come in handy if you don’t want to go wrong with your website’s look and feel. They are code-free and professionally-designed to give your website a clean and impressive look.
So, if you want to optimize your store for more conversions, you should keep it simple and make sure the focus is on closing the sale. Clean and simple ecommerce website designs are always better.
2. Easy Navigation
Ecommerce brands are spending huge amounts of money to bring visitors to their websites. It is crucial for brands to build websites that can guide visitors to make a purchase.
That’s why your site’s navigation should help shoppers find products quickly and easily. Good navigation can help you improve user experience and lead to more sales and revenue. On the other hand, poor navigation can annoy users and lead to a higher bounce rate.
Get it?
Good. The following tips can help you improve your site’s navigation:
- Main navigation menu: Follow common design and navigation conventions to make things easier for users. You should include your site’s main navigation menu at the top of the page or on the left side of the page.
- Product categories: Organize your product listings using meaningful categories, subcategories, and labels. For instance, if you’re a clothing brand, you can use labels like “Men,” “Women,” and “Kids” to categorize your collection.
- Search bar: You should also include a search bar towards the top of every page on your ecommerce website. This will help users to instantly find the products they want.
3. High-Quality Product Images
A picture conveys a thousand words. Sound cliche?
Actually, it’s quite true.
Especially for ecommerce stores.
Product images help visitors form their first impression of your product. They can either attract or turn them away.
Would you trust a store that failed to properly photograph their products?
Unlike brick-and-mortar retail stores, consumers can’t see, touch, feel, or try your products when they purchase online. It’s often by looking at product photos that they decide whether or not they should keep looking.
If your product images are too small, pixelated, or there’s just one picture of each product, will it inspire people to purchase the product? Probably not.
That’s why you should invest in high-quality product photography to properly showcase your product. Online shoppers want to see how the product actually looks.
Think I’m exaggerating?
Then check this out:
33.16% of consumers prefer to see multiple photos of a product before they make a purchase.
You can also include a 360-degree shot or video that shows off all of the important features of your product. Including a few in-context or lifestyle images of your product would be even better. It is a great way to help users visualize the product as their own and build an emotional connection.
Do you have a WordPress ecommerce store?
Then, you are probably already aware of the design constraints on the platform.
However, if you use a tool like Elementor, you can create professional-grade product images using its drag-and-drop editor. You can finetune colors and layouts and view the updates in real-time.
Product images or videos are the best bet of any ecommerce website. They can help you encourage more users to buy your products and boost revenue.
A home furnishing store, Pottery Barn, uses a variety of impressive images and videos to show off their products.
Using impressive images should not be limited to single product pages. You should also focus on improving the quality of smaller images displayed on category pages.
High-quality images are more likely to compel users to click on the individual pages and browse through them. The more pages they visit, the higher their likelihood of conversion.
Here’s how a real estate site, HomeReviews.com, displays various Las Vegas Condos that are available for sale:
4. Useful Product Descriptions
Your product descriptions should provide relevant and useful information about your product. They should cover the benefits of your products and their features.
When a visitor likes a product, they want to learn how your product can help them. So make sure that your product descriptions effectively convey the value your product can provide.
Want to know a pro tip?
Many people visit ecommerce stores only to browse stuff. While a great product description will keep them engaged on the page, a well-timed pop-up or sticky bar can nudge them towards checkout.
In a pop-up, you can flash items that your website visitors browsed or wishlisted. Add dynamic content like a limited-time discount or bundled offers to make them convert faster. Use pop-up builder tools to get the pop-up content, timing, and target right.
5. Easy Checkout Process
This is obviously one of the most important elements of an ecommerce website. You should focus on delivering a great checkout experience to your buyers.
It should be easy for buyers to add items to their shopping carts and proceed to the checkout page. Make sure that you don’t confuse users during checkout. They should be able to view exactly what they have in their cart.
Use a simple and clean design. Give users an easy checkout process with features like a guest checkout option, easy form-filling, multiple payment options, and persistent cart summary.
You should also optimize your checkout page for speed. Improving your checkout experience can help you encourage more sales in the future and increase your customer retention rate.
Want another pro tip?
Be smart and capitalize on upselling opportunities.
If you have a Shopify store, you can use Zipify’s OneClickUpsell (OCU) for easy upselling. Traditionally, product recommendations are shown pre-checkout which can distract customers and keep them away from finishing their purchase.
OCU recommends products post-purchase.
Want to know why?
There are two advantages of upselling post-checkout. One, upsell recommendations are more relevant since they are based on the buyer’s recent purchases. Two, customers need not go through the hassle of providing payment information again since it’s saved in the app. Just one click and the checkout is completed.
6. Mobile Responsiveness
A significant number of users shop online from their mobile devices. You should optimize your website for mobile devices to ensure that visitors have a pleasant experience.
Responsive design can make your ecommerce website design more user-friendly. Your mobile site should allow visitors to easily access all of the important features, offers, and products in no time.
