The increasing inclination of the market towards the ecommerce industry is attracting many business owners towards this segment. The industry’s growth is happening, but success is yet to be added in everyone’s cart.
There are two types of ecommerce businesses in the market viz, trendsetters and trend-followers. The trendsetters are the ones that gain name and fame and come first in the conversation of ecommerce, whenever and wherever it occurs. Yes, they are multi-million dollar brands like Amazon, Alibaba, Rakuten, eBay, and others. Whereas, the trend-followers are all other businesses that are opening up with the notion of becoming the brand.
Every year hundreds of thousands of businesses launch their ecommerce website with the same notion. But, not all them sustain and turn out to be a brand. It’s tricky to thrive in this market, get an unusual amount of sales, and keep your business going.
Competition is good, but be realistic, as it may disappoint you rather than adding motivation. It took almost 25 years and a huge investment for Amazon to reach this level. So, it would be best if you were patient, as tables won’t turn overnight. Also, the success story of the business depends upon your business model.
To make your brand renowned, it’s important to concentrate on small things that people mostly ignore. It starts right from designing your ecommerce website and stays with marketing, branding, sales, and all other segments.
In this blog, we will be precisely talking about the website design of your ecommerce store. Don’t simply go with the flow; be picky about everything you are adding to your site. Let me tell you one-on-one, starting with:
● Selection of Theme
The theme of your store is like the front cover of your book. Keep it relevant to your business niche and count on the features that the theme is offering. Your theme can likely tell the tale of your business, or at least about the niche. The relevancy of the theme of your e-tail store will surely be profitable for your business. Please don’t stick to one single theme you saw for the first time, rather check their live demo and select the one that suits you by interface and features. Depending upon the platform you select, you may get a perfect theme in the collection of free themes; if that doesn’t happen, you have to buy one for your store. You can check the demo options or try a free version, and upgrade it later.
While selecting the theme for your store, take the responsiveness as one of the key measures. The SEO friendly, the responsive theme will add bonus points to your visibility on the web.
● Personalize your Content:
In contrast to the static business sites, the flow of the content for ecommerce websites will keep changing as per the demand of its placement. On the banners, it is all about that catchy tagline that can make the visitor explore more of your products. In the about section, you have to be a bit talkative, open, and tell your brand’s story in the way it connects. The flow of the content for policy pages will be very static and added in the laymen yet legal terms. You can take the reference of policy generator tools available online to create the sample content for you that you can tweak later befitting your rules.
Opposite to both of these approaches, the content for your product detail pages should be rich in keywords, precise, and attractive. You have to give your customers details about your product, but you must not add a lot of information. Here, you need to choose wisely; the information that can be added in images and the important details that must be in the textual format. Your product detail pages are the key conversion pages of your site; they can organically improve your website’s ranking. That’s why they don’t take their layout and content for granted.
● Media elements
Media elements involve the graphics, videos, images, GIFs, vectors, and everything that can make your customers stay at your store. With the improved quality of the internet connection, people are more drawn towards interactive media than textual content. Now that you know this secret don’t overdo it! Remember that the media elements are known to reduce the loading speed of the website. So, don’t forget to optimize the interactive media before adding it to your site. You can check for free stock images and complementary vector sources to personalize graphics that you will add to your online store.
While uploading media elements, keep track of format and canvas size for regular images and the ones you will be adding for your product pages. The different images sizes may not look well arranged on your shop page, and it won’t look professional at all. Add high-quality images for your product detail pages. While shopping online, it is the look of the product that can make it sell. When you are standing as a brand, you have to note all these little things.
● Design standards
We know that you want to stand ahead of your competitors, but don’t try to be unique everywhere. Following the design standards will make it a lot easier for customers to navigate your site and understand the utility of features and symbols. It will also help customers around the world to shop from your website, even if your website does not translate in their regional language because of any technical glitch. When talking about the design standards, it can be as simple as using a search icon to add a search option to your store or the placement of a logo on the website, be particular about the placement of static pages, the layout of different web pages, and everything else that covers designing standards.
In addition to the relevancy guidelines, here are a few more tips to refine your store’s look and feel.
- Maintain consistency: The color combination, size of images, font style, display pattern of your store speaks a lot about your brand. Even if you don’t stress the theme’s selection, consistency must be maintained throughout the site. If you choose the option of creating your store on an ecommerce platform like Builderfly, you need not worry much about the consistency of design. We have professionally designed templates that will add a Midas touch to your store. But, if you are looking for custom website development, check with the design layout multiple times before finalizing it.
- Plain vs. simple: There is a fine line between a plain website and that of simple. You adore bulky themes or maybe like to add more graphics to attract customer attention, but don’t add too much of it. More simple you will keep it, the easier it will be to understand. Make the content catchy and graphics attractive, but too much of it can affect the loading speed of your site. The simple yet elegant look of your store and products are enough to entice customers and explore more.
- Add Visual Cues: When you are just designing your store from scratch, you don’t have a lot of data to help you with the CTAs that people explore more. So, you can take the visual cues into account for creating banner images for your store, especially where you want to bring the attention of customers. The visuals cues can be the arrows or directional symbols or human figures pointing in a certain direction, asking customers to take the action that you are expecting.
- Add your gallery: Human faces are known to attract and build connections with customers. We are sure that you have checked this thing with numerous websites when shopping for your products. The challenge is to find the right type of such images, and let’s not rely on free stock images only. Add a gallery or media page on your ecommerce store, where you will be sharing the news coverage, new launches, images of your office/manufacturing unit if you are the manufacturer. When you reveal the real face behind the brand, people will more likely trust your business.
Take branding on priority and keep the layout that can be scannable. Don’t forget to add social proofs and security badges to your store. It builds the authenticity of your business and makes the customers trust you, especially as a first-time buyer. The rest of the customer’s journey will depend on the services and quality of the product you will be offering.
Please remember to audit your website in a timely fashion. Website designing is not just a one-time thing; rather, it’s a development. Keep checking the response that you are getting from your visitors and customers, and keep tweaking the design options a bit. Even the slightest changes can make huge variations. Don’t get intimidated by that. You will keep learning more design tricks with time. For more details about design standards and guidelines, you can check our resources section to check our blog inventory.
I hope this will add value to your make your store relevant to your business idea.
