Ecommerce website design differs from a standard commercial website in that it has one key specific goal – for people to go to the site and buy a product. Simple right?
Often people get transfixed by a design led website that ultimately looks fancy but doesn’t get the sales. Functionality is key – but this element is unglamorous and frankly boring.
If you are looking into getting the best out of your ecommerce website design and development, start with who is your target audience, and how do they shop?
Their customer journey is a huge part of how your ecommerce website should be designed. Is the journey cross channel and cross device – by that I mean do they start on a social media page, and end up on your website, and do they go from mobile device to table to desktop.
Have you considered the experience of the user if they have to do the whole journey on a mobile device? Just making it all abit smaller doesn’t cut it anymore. Mobile ecommerce website design and development needs a different look and feel for the user, simpler, less text, more use of visuals and buttons, and a much shorter journey to payment.
As often as there are frictions in the journey is a risk you lose your customer.
A big frustration for users is not being able to find the products they want – great ecommerce website design and development will include a highly visible search bar, in the same location on all pages. It should be speedy and be able to handle typos and misspellings, as well as predictive text. Filtering is key as well, giving users the opportunity to narrow down their searches based on price, product type or availability. Is the website designed for the user to find the product they want within three clicks.
Often Ecommerce website developers will integrate the website into back office systems like shipping and stock management – to ensure stock is always available if on sale, and vice versa.
Another step to make very clear and easy is the payment gateway. Is the customer being sent off to a third-party provider? Do they trust it and is it secure? This could be another opportunity for them to ditch the purchase. Are you offering a variety of payment gateways to include apple pay and PayPal.
Giving clear information at the right stage of the journey is key. At some point in time customers will want to know about shipping costs and timings, however bombarding them with information when they don’t need it yet might put them off. Making it easy to find and giving it at the right time will keep the customer engaged and on the site.
Communications built in to allow automatic emails/ messages to keep the customer information and engaged during the process, and contacting customers with incomplete baskets can bring down abandoned carts and improve your conversion rate.
Once an ecommerce website is complete, the work is never done! Ongoing use of data analytics and continued feedback will ensure the ecommerce website continues to be designed and developed to maximise sales.
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