By: Pankaj Sakariya

August 3, 2023

What are the Top Website Design Best Practices for Ecommerce?

Do you know that 38 percent of people would stop using a website if its design or layout is unattractive? Also, more than 48 per cent of the individuals reported website design as the most crucial factor in deciding a business’s credibility.

So, a website design can either make or break any ecommerce business. To ensure that your site design stands out, you must follow the best practices for website design. 

Through this blog post, we are going to inform you about these. So, consider reading this from the start to the end before you hire a trusted web design company Melbourne.

What are the Key Reasons to Follow These Best Practices?

Here are the significant reasons why it is essential to follow the best practices in ecommerce website designing:

• Provide Your Customers with the Best Possible Customer Experience

You should offer a great customer experience that makes it effortless for customers to buy products from your site. Along with being hassle-free, their overall journey should be pleasurable as well. By adhering to the best web design practices, you can create a website experience your customers will love.

• Increase Your Overall Sales Volume Through CRO or Conversion Rate Optimization

If your website design is outstanding, it will increase your chances of converting more site visitors into customers, which will help boost your sales. Not only that, but it also helps in improving your business performance. By implementing best practices in website designing, you can create a thriving e-commerce platform that aids in driving sales and conversions.

• Build Robust Relationships with Your Customers

People are most likely to trust websites which are designed efficiently. It means that they will engage more with these websites. So, it helps in building outstanding and solid relationships with your customers.

• Strengthen Your Brand

Fantastic design will speak volumes about who you are, what your brand stands for, etc. This way, it works to strengthen your brand.

• Enhance Customer Retention

Nobody wants their site visitors or existing customers to leave their website and make a purchase from someone else. It is where a great design can help you. It works effectively to grab the attention of your visitors and increases your customers’ loyalty towards your brand.

Best Practices for Ecommerce Website Designing

• Homepage Design

The homepage of your website is the first thing that the customers see. It works as your shop front. So, it plays a vital role in creating the first impression in the mind of your customers. It gives them an overview of knowing who you are, what you do, and whether it would be a good decision to transact with you.

You can think about it in the same way as a physical store. Whenever you see a shop with a well-designed and inviting front, you are most likely to visit there. On the contrary, if the shop front is broken, messy or unclean, you would prefer to stay away from that store.

Thus, you need to ensure that your website’s homepage design is outstanding. You can hire Magento developers to ensure this if you have a Magento website.

A great homepage design is all about the following:

• Creating an eye-catching first impression that holds the attention and interest of your audience. There are different ways in which you can achieve this thing. These include adding a background video, placing an appealing banner image, using a bold message, etc. Based on your liking, you can select between any of these options. 
• In this regard, it is essential to note that your homepage has to hold the interest of your audience in less than a second. It’s because customer attention spans are becoming shorter these days.
• Building trust with your visitors through outstanding communication. The homepage of your website must immediately convey an image of authority and credibility in your domain. Make sure that it is designed so that it tells a story resonating with your customers.

• Responsive Design

As per a report by Similar Web, over 56 per cent of the traffic to popular US websites comes from mobile devices.

From this, you can get an idea about how important it is for your website to be accessible from all types of devices, whether desktop, tablet or mobile. So, you need to focus on responsive design. 

The best part about this design is that it enables your website to adjust to the specific device accessed from. Every element within the site, like video, images or text, will align themselves in a manner that would not compromise the customer experience.

When seen in terms of an SEO perspective, responsive design also plays a significant role. By ensuring your online website is responsive, you can offer a fantastic experience to everyone visiting your website.

Not sure about how to make your website responsive? If yes, a reliable ecommerce website design Australia agency can assist you in achieving this objective. 

• Shopping Cart Page Design

It is a page that can be continuously accessed throughout the e-commerce website experience. Irrespective of the buying journey stage a site visitor is at, they should always be able to tap on the ‘View cart’ button on the website’s interface. It will help them view all the products in the well-organized manner they have chosen.

One of the crucial things to note in this aspect is that a shopping cart should let your visitors do what an actual shopping cart will let them do. It includes incorporating or removing products, applying promotional codes or discounts, keeping a close check on prices, etc. Your customers should also know when they are expected to get the products they are involved in ordering.

It is also essential to track all those customers exiting the e-commerce site without making a purchase or abandoning the shopping cart page. On finding this information, you should focus on following up with them through an ad or an email. It is a great way to remind them about the unfinished purchase.

Are you having a tough time designing? If yes, hire a professional web design company Melbourne company. 

• Product Pages

The primary goal of any e-commerce website involves selling services or products. So, the pages on which products are exhibited on the site tend to impact whether the product will be purchased considerably.

It is an act to design high-quality product pages. These must incorporate the essential elements that make it look appealing. Some of these include the following:

• Product Images: You need to capture great photos of your products if you want to display those well. As a part of it, you can invest in professional product photography to showcase your product effectively. Based on your budget, you can go for videos or images.
• Product Description: The next thing you should never miss on adding involves a great product description that reveals the benefits of your products.
• Call to Action or CTA Buttons: Your CTA buttons should be the perfect combination of simple text and colors that encourages users to take the necessary action. But, you should avoid making them too ‘salesy’.
• Customer Reviews: These are a great way to win the confidence of your customers so that they are influenced to transact with you. So, asking your website visitors to leave reviews about their experience would be best.

• Search Functionality

Search functionality makes all the difference between shopping in an online and physical store. While doing online shopping, customers often struggle to find their desired products. In such a case, they can use the search bar to look for the product. It works like a ‘mini search’ engine within your eCommerce site. 

So, you must ensure that it is positioned well and always visible. If your website is made in WordPress, you can contact a WordPress development company for related assistance. 

• Checkout Page Design

The checkout page is the last page customers see before purchasing on an e-commerce site. It decides whether a customer will finish the purchase or drive away from your store. So, you must focus on this page and make it look attractive.

It would help if you aimed to provide your customers with different payment options through this page. Also, don’t allow them to purchase until they have completed the required fields. 

By doing so, you can avoid the situation where customers have already made a purchase but have forgotten to put the address where the product should be delivered. It may lead to a poor customer experience.

It is also important to note that the page should prompt customers to complete all the required information fields. But, they should never delete any information they have entered previously as it could frustrate the customers as they would have to do more work in that case.

All colors you add on this page should aim to assist the customers in taking the desired action. Ultimately, it eases their shopping experience.

Conclusion

By following all the above-discussed website design best practices, you, as an e-commerce website owner, can increase your chances of creating an outstanding customer experience.

One of the best ways to test your website design endeavors is by using A/B testing. As a part of it, you need to design two or more versions of the same website or webpage. After that, you can test it with users to check which one is driving better outcomes. 

Another tool that you can use is heat maps. It lets you capture where customers spend the most time on your site and which particular aspects of it they prefer to interact with. This way, you could get a good idea of what is working well. Based on that, you can eliminate the rest.

If you are having a tough time implementing this trend, all you need is to contact a professional web design company Melbourne. They can assist you in the best possible manner.