Helping Small and Medium Businesses Achieve Their Full Marketing Potential | Digital Marketing Expert
Tips & Tricks to Improve Your eCommerce Website Design
The number of times brands have underestimated the power of a website design and, in turn, received a drop in conversions will surprise you. But not us. The digital marketplace is fast-paced and merciless. In such an environment, your website design might be the make-or-break of your eCommerce business. That’s why, just like every other part of your digital strategy, you want to create a seamless and engaging UX journey, which builds trust and guides your visitors from the homepage to checkout with zero friction.
However, bad news, sorry! This is not enough. Consumer behaviour constantly evolves. Your shoppers will now also expect faster load times, mobile-optimised layouts, intuitive navigation, and quirky personalised touches to surprise them. Therefore, if you leave your site clunky and outdated, they’ll bounce straight to your competitor.
Fret not! As expert eCommerce strategists, we have some website design tips and tricks up our sleeve that we can’t wait to share with you and help you get the most out of your webspace.
So, buckle up and get ready to boost UX, build trust, and increase those conversions!
Your User Experience Is Your Top Priority
UX is not just a buzzword. Or at least, if it is, there’s a solid reason for that. It’s the backbone of any successful eCommerce website strategy. When visitors find your website easy to use, they stay longer, convert more often, and are more likely to return.
But how can website UX for eCommerce be improved? Let’s break it down:
Easy Navigation Based On Intuition
Your web navigation should be clear, consistent, and clutter-free. Imagine your customers wandering around your website, confused and lost, unable to find what they’re looking for. Would you blame them for leaving?
Use familiar patterns like a top menu with dropdowns, a visible search bar, and clearly labelled categories. Keep it lean, and keep it tidy. Don’t overwhelm your visitors with too many choices at once. They should be able to intuitively find their way around.
Mobile-First Is a Must!
More than half of online shopping now happens on mobile. If you don’t prioritise designing for small screens first, you’re bound to lose customers. Always, make sure you have a responsive design that can adapt your content beautifully and seamlessly to every screen size. And combine this with mobile-friendly elements to make your visitors’ journey as smooth as possible.
Fast Load Times
In this age of short attention spans and low patience levels, every second counts. If you have a slow load speed, you’re killing conversions. Optimise your performance and get Google PageSpeed Insights and GTmetrix to help you out. In fact, use them regularly so that things are always quick and snappy.
Any minor UX improvement you implement can lead to major ROI gains. Don’t guess. Test, track, and optimise continuously.
Build Trust Through Design
We won’t stop repeating it because it’s true: trust is the cornerstone of any successful marketing strategy, including eCommerce. Unprofessional and inconsistent websites are murdering your business. Show your visitors you are someone they can trust with their money. Be credible, be cohesive. Show expertise through attention to detail.
To succeed in building trust, you must first make sure your brand speaks from every page of your site. Show consistency in logo, colour scheme, typography, imagery, and language and keep it consistent from product pages to checkout. This is how you build a reliable identity.
Additionally, the best eCommerce website design will reflect the professionalism of your brand. Forget cluttered layouts and choose fonts that are easy to read. When you select the colour scheme, think about the psychology behind every colour. Are you promoting health and eco-friendliness? Green is your friend. Trust and security? Think blue, then. If you want to build a successful design, you need to align your choices with the emotions you want to evoke.
Finally, support your customers. Make them feel safe. Use live chats to offer real-time help whenever they need it and combine them with comprehensive FAQs to answer their most common questions. Additionally, make your return policy clear – it will give them peace of mind. The hassle-free process you create will make their shopping experience a breeze.
Website Design Tips and Tricks: Visual Hierarchy
A great website UX design won’t focus solely on aesthetics. It will prioritise guiding the users to act. Visual hierarchy is a way to organise your site so that it directs attention and encourages clicks. All it takes is some smart layout decisions:
F-pattern & Z-pattern
Users are predictable. You can rely on that to drive your decisions. The way they scan pages is the same. When you have a text-heavy layout, users tend to read, with their eyes moving left to right and top to bottom. For such pages, use the F-pattern principle to match the user’s behaviour.
The Z-pattern principle, on the other hand, works great for minimalist homepages and landing pages. Basically, what it does is guide the visitor straight to the CTA button in a seamless zigzag flow.
Whitespace & Contrast
Don’t try to fit everything on the same page. Leave some whitespace as a room to breathe, as a moment of clarity and rest. Combine it with contrast, like bold CTAs and dark text on light backgrounds, to highlight the key actions and content you want visitors to focus on.
The Winning CTA Placements
CTAs are extremely important buttons, and your whole design should be guiding visitors to click on them. Therefore, they should be impossible to miss and placed where attention would naturally fall. This could be above the fold, after product descriptions, or in sticky elements. And always keep them action-oriented. For example: ‘Add to Basket’, ‘Get 10% Off’, etc.
To help you take things further, we suggest you use heat maps and scroll data to fine-tune your layout based on how real users behave on your website. Don’t guess. Test!
Successful eCommerce Website Designs Rely on Social Proof
We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: trust equals conversions. You want to build a solid relationship with your customers. One that lasts and withstands the temptation of competitors. To do this, you need to show real experiences and real activity on your website to reassure potential buyers that they are indeed making the right choice.
Place ratings, detailed reviews, and photos from real customers prominently on product pages or in any other dedicated sections, where it’ll make sense for them to exist.
Additionally, if you have worked with influencers that align with your target audience, feature them on the respective product pages. Enhance this with real-time purchase notifications showing ‘X items sold in the last hour’. You’ll create a sense of urgency and really leverage that FOMO we’re all susceptible to.
And to seal the deal, add social sharing buttons that will allow your visitors to share products on social media or with friends and family. It’s a simple detail that can expand your reach massively, and if you have a Social Media strategy in place, it will help that too!. However, do make sure you place them mindfully, and you don’t overwhelm your page or interfere with the intuitive UX experience.
And keep it real. Don’t overdo social proof and don’t even think of faking it. You will break the trust of your customers, and you won’t be able to build it again.
Designing Success
In this brutal, fast-paced eCommerce world, your design can be the critical factor that drives conversion and builds trust. Use these eCommerce web design tips to create a seamless user journey that makes shopping a joy, not a chore.
And remember, a design is never truly finished ever. Test continuously, iterate and improve based on user behaviour and insight. This way, you will always be ahead of the game.
So, are you ready to take your website to the next level? Well, then. It’s time for an audit. Contact us, and our experts will give you the fresh perspective that may be just the thing you need to successfully optimise and bag those conversions.
Don’t wait. Your next customer could be just a click away!