eCommerce Design Best Practices

Did you know that it takes less than a second for your website visitor to form an opinion about your eCommerce site? Well, now you know! 

Typically, the first impression a potential client gets from your website determines whether they stay or leave. This means your eCommerce design has a direct impact on your site's conversions and bounce rates. 

It, therefore, doesn't come as a surprise to learn that big corporations and e-commerce companies spend thousands of dollars on web design and maintenance to win over more business, improve conversion rates, and help overcome cart abandonment from a design perspective.

If you're looking for eCommerce website design essentials to help design a user-friendly website, you're in the right place. In this article, we'll discuss the top tips to help you create a successful eCommerce site. Let's get started!

1. Make Use of White Space

The white space in an eCommerce site is one of the vital design practices that most people often overlook. Using white space or "negative space" on your website not only keeps it clean but also makes it look organized. 

And while adding photos and videos on your eCommerce site may seem like a good marketing idea, going overboard and taking up much of the white space leaves your site looking cluttered. A website cluttered with content, videos, and photos everywhere will distract customers and prevent them from concentrating on what leads to conversion

When designing your home page, for example, the less you have, the better. You might be tempted to add lots of photos, videos, and text, to make your site more visually appealing, but doing so can be overwhelming to your site visitors. 

Consider your home page as a physical storefront. You wouldn't want to put all your wares on display. Instead, you'd want to arrange it such that it can attract potential customers to get into the store and explore more. This is the same purpose your landing page should serve. 

The landing page should entice and engage customers using a few sentences that deliver the most important message and a few photos and videos that matter most. 

 Using white space reduces distractions and ensures your site visitors focus on what's important, which allows for smooth navigation, increased conversion rates, and high customer satisfaction. 

Efficient use of white space also makes your eCommerce site more mobile-friendly.

2. Consistent Branding

Consistent branding is another crucial factor on top of the eCommerce design best practices list. Customers who are familiar with your brand expect a website that mirrors your organization's style and look. Visiting your website and not seeing what they expect may raise suspicions. 

For consistency, you should adopt an omnichannel approach when branding. With this approach, your customers will have the same experience across all your online channels. Even those who visit your physical shop should have the same experience. 

Your physical store and home page should have the same logo and colours. If you design your website using a template, make sure you customize it until it matches your brand. The fonts and colours used on the website and other online platforms should also be the same as those used on your shopping bags and business cards to foster brand consistency.

Additionally, all the videos posted on your website should reflect your brand messaging and voice. For example, the promotion copy you use on your website should be the same as that in your store and social media profiles.

3. Optimize Your Website for Search Engines

An eCommerce is supposed to attract as many clients as possible. And the best way to ensure this happens is by optimizing your website to appear at the top of search results. Search engine optimization (SEO) is key if you want your website to rank in relevant keywords.

SEO ensures your target audience finds your site easily when searching for the products or services you offer. To optimize your site for Google and other search engines, do the following:

Use Relevant Keywords in Your Product Listing

When listing your products and services online, ensure you include relevant keywords to make them appear on search engines. The first step is to conduct a keyword search using multiple online research tools like Googe Keyword Planner. 

When searching for keywords, focus more on long-tail keywords that contain at least three words. For example, if you're selling sneakers on your website, go for a keyword like "women's white running sneakers" that should easily land someone on your page.

Ensure Your Ecommerce Website Loads Quickly

No one wants to use a slow-loading website. It's a huge turnoff for many potential clients.

If your website is slow, visitors will find it difficult to, and they'll likely move to your competitors' websites.

Typically, a good website should load in about two seconds or less; anything beyond this can lead to high bounce rates. 

To check how fast your website loads, you can use online tools like Google PageSpeed Insights. This tool shows your website's load time and suggests ways to boost page speed. Here are some tricks you can use to increase your site's loading speed:

• Minify HTML, JavaScript, and CSS
• Reduce redirects
• Enable browser caching
• Compress large image files

 If you can't find time to do all these, you can hire an expert to help optimize your website.

Create Content

Content is another excellent way of boosting eCommerce website ranking. High-quality content will help drive traffic to your website. Content is the best way to showcase your expertise by sharing your knowledge with your target audience. 

Well-crafted content helps in building trust because it convinces your audience that you are good at what you are doing. You can also use content to inform people more about your business. 

The content in your eCommerce site also needs to be optimized using the right keywords. You can use different forms of content such as podcasts, guides, ebooks, infographics, videos, and blogs.

Choose content formats that are most appealing to your audience and are relevant to your industry. You can use Google to search for keywords or use Google Trends to find topics for your content.

Use High-Quality Photos

As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. Photos play a big role in eCommerce websites; they greatly influence a client's purchase decision.

Before some customers purchase a product online, they want to see exactly how it looks. Photos that are of poor quality may portray you as being dishonest or unprofessional.

When taking a photo of a product for display on your eCommerce site, use a high-quality camera, and take the shots from different angles and distances. Also, ensure the lighting is good, so all the details are captured. You can even hire a professional photographer to take the shots.

It is also important to properly compress your high-quality photos or else you will slow your website down. If you are wondering how fast your website should load, check out our guide.

Apart from the product photos, you can also take your lifestyle photos, showing you and your employees if possible. This will prove to your clients that they are dealing with real human beings.