Ecommerce Web Design: A Complete Guide to Mistakes You Should Avoid

According to Forbes, 20.8% of retail purchases will happen via eCommerce in 2023. People are avoiding impulsive purchases, visits to the mall and commutes. They love how they can purchase their favourite products from the comfort of their home.

However, customers only visit an eCommerce site or application when they feel comfortable using it. Good performance, high speed, excellent interface and smooth movements are things that the user craves when using your application.

Web design plays a pivotal role in ensuring a good eCommerce experience. It helps enhance the user’s experience and cater to intuitive requirements. eCommerce web design is crucial as it can help attract, engage and convert customers to your website.

a complete guide to avoid mistakes

The Need for a Sound Web Design

You must work on the design to attract potential customers to the eCommerce site. Let’s see why design is a crucial part of your website.

  1. The eCommerce site is your front for attracting customers. It acts as the shopping mall or salesperson that extends help and improves conversion for your business. When you extend a solid first impression, you convert faster and retain well.
  2. When you invest in design, you gain excellent experiences. Your customers are happy when there is no friction in their movement. As a result of good design, they can easily and intuitively march through the different segments and reach their destination.
  3. When you strive to enhance your web design, you can make your eCommerce site look better than the competition. When you foster innovation, you can stand out. This allows you to gain more sales and improve the conversion rate.
  4. Effective and efficient design enables smooth performance and dictates better conversion for your business.

The Key Elements of Good Design

An attractive design can increase your potential customers. It can help you attract more people. Arranging the design elements appropriately can help you enhance aesthetics. Based on our research, we have chalked out the top design elements every eCommerce design should have.

Responsive Designs

It would help if you had more than that; your website opens easily on the desktop. What’s important is your website opens seamlessly on mobile phones. Most people access eCommerce sites or complete purchases on the move (especially during their commutes).

If your website is not easy to access on a mobile device or causes friction, it can impact your conversions. You can easily convert potential customers if it matches the device size and form factor.

High-Quality Images

People cannot touch or feel your products. However, they can view your products. The images play a pivotal role in ensuring conversions for your business. You should include high-quality and impressive product images on your website. These images should highlight the product features.

Add images where you can show the use cases. The images will talk to the customer and help them understand the product’s usefulness. You can even add customer images to ensure people understand how the products are used.

Excellent Loading Time

When your user reaches the website, they want to ensure they can access the pages easily. Speed and performance of the website matter. Despite good quality images, the user should be able to access them quickly.

Most users must wait to accept the site to open and access the images. You must ensure that your website loads within 3 seconds. Using vector images or other speed-related aspects can improve your experience. 

You should continuously cache the browser for better storage and improve the load times. Make sure to compress images and optimize all the files within the browser. 

Intuitive Navigation

Navigation is key to good design. Intuitive and self-explanatory design solutions can guarantee better usability. Users should not need any outside explanation When they want to move from one point to another on the application.

The move from the product page to purchase should be extensive and accessible. Make sure to include checkout pages that are easy to access. Single-page checkout systems are a great idea. You can even ensure they are mobile-friendly, an important criterion.

Breadcrumb navigation is an equally important feature for your web design. Ensure that the whole design looks and feels good. Aesthetics are crucial for website design.

Crisp Call-to-Action

Your call to action will decide if the customer will likely convert. However, if there are multiple CTAs or they need clarification, you might notice that users need clarification. This can increase the bounce rate and cart abandonments for your page.

That’s why it is very important to place your CTA on the page where people will likely notice it. The CTA should be visible. Moreover, it should be easy to comprehend and compelling. The action should give a good reason to the users so that they click and take the action.

It is important to tag the CTAs relevant to the product.

Customer Ratings for Features

People talking about their product experiences will generate more curiosity among potential customers. You must add their ratings and reviews on the top page. It is very important to showcase how customers feel about the usability and other relevant factors associated with the product. Users reading reviews concerning a product are more likely to make an informed decision.

You can create tailored factors to ensure better relevance and understanding of the product. 

Easy Checkout

The checkout is when you will likely notice an increase in cart abandonments. This could be because you aren’t allowing guest checkouts. Your checkout page may also be driven with multiple boxes, which is not accessible on mobile.

It is very important to keep the checkout processes simple and accessible across devices. People should be able to add their details conveniently with the checkout design you have created. 

Allow guest checkouts for a greater experience. Ensure it is minimal so that more people check out at the end.

Clear Policies

Your design should showcase clarity in all policies. The shipping and return policies should be clearly defined on the website. If you haven’t added pointers, you may want to do that.

It is crucial to mention all the pointers clearly for better decision-making. 

Conclusion

eCommerce is an important segment, especially during the Pandemic. You would have noticed an increase in the number of people shopping online against entering the shop. Businesses have added an incredible online avatar to enable more profits. However, design is the key to getting more customers and winning hearts. You need to invest in a properly designed and intuitive interface that can enable conversions. 

Choose a London-based eCommerce design company that helps you with your designs, embraces your ideas and converts them into intuitive interfaces. Sourcing, vetting, and consulting are important steps in completing the choice.