6 Essential Components of an Effective Ecommerce Website Design

6 Essential Components of an Effective Ecommerce Website Design

Shane Barker 19/03/2020 7
6 Essential Components of an Effective Ecommerce Website Design

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.

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.

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 to 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.An appropriate coloring scheme can play a crucial role in creating a powerful brand.

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.

A minimalistic website will also load faster, which can help you reduce bounce rates and engage more visitors.

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.

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

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 is 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. In fact, 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.

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.

High Quality Product Images Ecommerce websites

Image via Pottery Barn

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.

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.

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.

Amazon Mobile Responsiveness

Image via Amazon

Beyond a great Website design only through personalization can you maximize your conversion rate. One way to do this is through personalized messages, these can be triggered by pre-defined user actions which provide content on-demand. This could be a request for customer feedback or learning material for free in exchange for identifying themselves via a form fill, or just to deliver a discount code as if they try to leave your website. 

Conclusion

An ecommerce website should not only be visually-attractive but also provide a hassle-free shopping experience. If consumers feel comfortable on your website, they are more likely to buy your products and return.

You should incorporate the ecommerce website design elements mentioned above to improve the user experience. This will help you engage more visitors and encourage them to make purchases.

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  • James McCarthy

    FINALLY a digital marketing expert that actually says some worthwhile stuff and doesn't try to sell me a course or book to learn about e-commerce.

  • Tim Conklin

    Target smaller influencers on Instagram who have larger organic engagement, they will make any e-commerce shop viral

  • Ryan Edward

    Quality content !!

  • Chris Kelly

    Success is dependent to ur ability to be persistent

  • David S

    This was so helpful!

  • Michael Wilson

    Crazy things happen when you take action

  • Phil Bower

    So helpful I've been struggling with my buisness for a month. Thank you for the advice.

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Shane Barker

Digital Strategy Expert

Shane Barker is a digital marketing consultant who specializes in influencer marketing, content marketing, and SEO. He is the Co-Founder of Attrock, a digital marketing agency. He has consulted with Fortune 500 companies, influencers with digital products, and a number of A-List celebrities.

   
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