By
•
May 29, 2021
With a projected figure of 12 to 24 million e-commerce websites around the world in 2021, your e-commerce site doesn’t stand a chance to shine unless it is exceptionally designed.
But why so much emphasis on e-commerce stores? It can be accredited to the convenience it brings. The buyers also want more choices both in terms of product and price.
According to statistics, by 2040, 95% of all purchases will be done via e-commerce. So, what makes an e-commerce website exceptional?
Here are more stats and figures our Miami web design experts have discovered to answer and validate the question:
Apart from that, easy navigation, having a CTA, using high-quality images and videos, using the right colors, including social share buttons, and certifications are all essential elements and best practices for outstanding e-commerce website design.
Now that you know the gist, let’s discuss some of the most crucial points to have a better understanding:
People want to look at a beautiful website. So, designing a visually appealing one should be your focus. However, since a lot of elements go into making a website attractive, you need to have a proper plan.
You can begin with the navigation structure. You want your users to quickly find what they are looking for when they visit your site. Simple navigation is key to achieve that.
So, divide your content into categories and insert the category links in your menu, both primary and secondary.
Since you are an e-commerce site, your navigation structure might look something similar to this:
Remember to show only essential menu items while working with navigation. It will ensure better UX as too many menus can distract the users.
The next essential step is to create a style guide. It will decide the overall look of the site along with the social media pages, ad banners, and other digital media tools.
When it comes to the style guide, the essential components to consider include:
As per a study, implementing intense colors increased site recognition by nearly 80%. Moreover, adding dark colors to websites resulted in a 2% growth, and light color-themed sites saw 1.3% growth.
The third essential element to keep in mind is white space. It will make your site appear clean, scannable, and the content will be easier to digest. Use it everywhere- in your navigational elements, homepage, images, and typography.
Have a look at how Burnkit adds plenty of information on their homepage without overwhelming the user by using a lot of white space.
You can also follow suit.
Here are some essential tips to follow while building a mobile responsive design:
Other tools like InVision will allow you to come up with interactive prototypes of your e-commerce site. You can send the link to users and let them test the navigation, scrolling, buttons, and other features. You can gain feedback from them. To see how your site would behave in different settings, it is a great tool.
A great strategy to implement while designing navigation is leaving the most vital menu items noticeable even for smaller screen browsers. You can use the hamburger menu for the remaining links. Also, consider including links to different pages in the text on your landing page. It will support navigation.
Also, you should be saving the images in suitable formats. For instance, photographic images can be saved as JPG, while icons can be saved in PNG-8 format.
A media query will look like this:
You can also switch to the WooCommerce platform (an open-source e-commerce solution powered by WordPress) and start selling your products hassle-free. It is an ultra-intuitive and search-engine friendly platform that offers unparalleled flexibility with countless themes, customization options, and extensions.
No wonder, WooCommerce powers around 31% of the top 1 million e-commerce websites today.
As per a study, most website visitors will not read more than 20% of the text on a web page. Instead, they scan the text and search for key information. To make it easier for them, you should make your content scannable.
38% of people, when surveyed, said that they would abandon a site if it doesn’t have an eye-catching content layout.
Whether it is your blog posts, product descriptions, service page, or about us page, break the content into a scannable format. The sentences and paragraphs are better kept short. Apply bold on key information, and use bulleted lists if the text is large.
Your product description should be detailed, answering as many questions as it can, but you don’t want it to appear text-heavy and scare off visitors. A great trick is to add a summary right after the product and buy button. You can add the longer description down below.
For high-end products that demand a lot of information and specs, apply tabs. It will make the information look neat and tidy.
Whatever content you create, you should do it with the user in mind. And consider using images, graphics, and videos on all pages to support your content and engage the visitors.
Many statistics indicate that adding CTA buttons can fetch a 45% boost in clicks. But simply creating a “sign up” CTA will not drive conversions. You want a strong CTA that will convince visitors to take action.
While your CTA should be concise, don’t make it absurdly short. A concise and direct call to action will put the visitors’ focus on what’s significant and eliminate distractions.
Here’s an excellent example of CTA used by Starbucks, the coffee retail company.
The brand is popular for using bold and relevant CTAs. It makes people click or swipe through them, as in the image above.
Starbucks has employed imagery with a nature theme. The colors are of spring, and they have added a “Swipe Up to Try” CTA prompting their followers on Instagram to drink the Iced Matcha Green Tea Latte, a new flavor as they welcome the spring season. Enticing, isn’t it?
A modern e-commerce website is incomplete without social share buttons. There is an excellent opportunity of making the online experience social if you use social share buttons and your shoppers share, talk, or show off the products they bought from you.
The areas to include social share buttons are on product and checkout pages. It will encourage your buyers to share their shopping experience while they get a chance to connect with their friends.
Social engagement via likes, comments, and shares increases the shopping experience while making your product viral.
Important FAQs
A site is responsive when the layout and/or content adapts based on the screen size it gets viewed on.
A good CTA is precise and asks the audience what you want them to do. For instance, an e-commerce CTA can start with words like “shop,” “order,” or “buy.”
In general, e-commerce website development costs range from $10,000 to $500,000 or more.
As per Acumium, website redesigns can take anywhere from two to 12 months. On average, e-commerce sites take the longest to build.
There you have it—5 best practices for outstanding e-commerce website design. Make sure to implement them while designing your site to engage, retain, and convert visitors. Not having an up-to-date e-commerce website in this day and age will cost you a lot. Follow the minimalism principles while designing your site but make sure it is functional as well.
About The Author
Tim Ferguson is a writer and editor of Marketing Digest. He enjoys writing about SEO, content marketing, online reputation management, social media, AI, and Big Data. When he is not writing and editing for Marketing Digest, he spends time on learning more about content marketing and getting better at it.
Think you've got what it takes to hang with the pros at Digital Resource? Check out our Careers page to browse current job openings!