Whether you’re redoing your ecommerce site or are jumpstarting a business, coming up with the right design is imperative to your success.
After all, the majority of people shop online and on their smartphones these days. So it’s a must to have a website that stands apart from the rest.
If you’re curious about the best practices for designing a site, look no further. Here are five design practices to keep in mind.
1. Integrate Responsive Design
As a new Shopify seller, you don’t want to miss out on any ecommerce sales. To ensure that doesn’t happen, set up a responsive website.
What does this mean, exactly?
Responsive design is all about making sure design and development go hand in hand. It shouldn’t matter whether a visitor is on their smartphone, PC, or iPad. The design should always adjust and respond to a user’s behavior.
Make sure your website is mobile-friendly. The majority of people shop on their phones today. And it just so happens that Google emphasizes having a mobile-friendly site.
In 2019, Google moved to a mobile-first indexing system. That’s why it’s vital to make sure your design looks top-notch no matter what type of smartphone visitors have.
2. Make the Checkout Process Easy
You don’t want people to change their minds while they’re checking out. To ensure they follow through with the sale, it’ll help if the checkout process is as seamless as possible.
That means there shouldn’t be anything that’ll deter a person from following through.
A few things that can halt the checkout process are:
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- Forcing users to create an account
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- Having too many steps before submitting the purchase
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- Unexpected costs
It’s impossible to complete a purchase with a single click, but a short and easy checkout process ought to do the trick.
3. Provide Useful Content
In addition to selling fantastic products on your website, consider adding more content. Of course, there’s compelling product descriptions and well thought out website copy. But beyond that, there are other ways to attract more potential customers.
Content comes in many forms, such as:
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- Blogging
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- Ebooks
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- Videos
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- Podcasts
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- Infographics
If any of these are your specialty (and even if they aren’t), go out on a limb. You can add a lot of value to your ecommerce site by offering valuable content to visitors.
Even if a visitor may not be ready to make a purchase, an ebook or blog may catch their eye. After subscribing to your blog, for example, they could get an email from you. The email would let them know there’s a new blog post, product, or ebook available. (Make sure there’s a subscribe and email option on your site.)
And once they pop over to your site, they may feel prompted to buy something.
4. Stick With a Simple Design
Even if you’d like to display a lot on your website, too much information can be distracting.
It’s better to have a clean website than to have too much going on. So, keep the images, text, and links to a minimum. Only have on there what’s necessary for users to browse and enjoy your site.
One way to ensure you have a clean website is by taking advantage of white space. White space helps keep everything organized and clean. It also is a smart design that stops shoppers from clicking away from a site.
Keep shoppers focused on what should matter on your site the most: products and product links.
5. Use High-Quality Images
Having low-quality images on your website will deter new visitors. The moment they land on your site, they’ll likely leave if product photos are grainy with low resolution.
You may have taken pictures of your products yourself, but they’re not that great. If they need to be retaken, have a professional photographer work their magic. They can place your products on cool backgrounds and take pictures in the right lighting. You’ll be surprised how much of a difference fantastic photos can make on a website!
Or, hire a graphic designer to improve your photos’ appearance if they’re not that bad. They may only need to be sharpened and brightened up a bit.
A graphic designer can also “cut” a product out of an image and put it on a white background instead. This will make it stand out on your website. Plus, it’ll give shoppers the option to zoom in to see what they are thinking about purchasing.
Conclusion
As you design your ecommerce site, you want things to go as smoothly as possible. Following these best practices will keep you on course and help you achieve your goals.
As you develop a website that attracts shoppers, continue to stay up to date on the latest trends—things in the ecommerce world change all the time.
Staying current and updating your site as necessary can keep things running smoothly. In time, you’ll have a profitable and thriving business!