Web design plays a vital role in building interest, trust, and engagement with visitors. A negative user experience will almost certainly lead to a low conversion rate, making it hard to take your store into profit. It was commonly thought that to earn trust from visitors you must use a professional design. However, many sites were overly elaborate, often to the detriment of navigation and overall experience.
While there is nothing wrong with designing a store to look professional, it is important that visitors are put first. The following methods allow you to focus on the design factors that really matter, letting you focus on making sales and providing an exceptional service.
Simple Checkout
Checkout abandonment rates typically fall between 60% and 80%. This is a lot of potential customers leaving without making a purchase. Optimizing your checkout page is a good place to start testing, potentially adding a huge amount to your revenues.
Confusion during the buying process is likely to harm conversions, so try to make the page as clear as possible, including total cost, shipping details, payment options, and returns policies. You will need to include all pertinent information to gain trust, but avoid excessive and cluttered details that give people a reason to leave.
Add Reviews and Testimonials
User reviews help potential customers make a buying decision. Reviews will almost certainly increase the conversion rate across the site as a whole, with some negative reviews often helping an individual product as they add credibility.
Real customer feedback also adds extra content to the page, helping a site rank for a variety of keywords. If a product has testimonials from recognized sites or personalities, adding them to the description can also help customers decide.
Avoid Clutter
Many online stores, particularly if they stock a large inventory, are messy and cluttered. It is difficult to process a lot of information on a web page, so less motivated buyers will probably leave the site and look elsewhere. Searchers are used to fairly standard structures and layouts, with unnecessary elements offering a distraction from the buying process. You don’t need to copy other designs, but sticking to simple ecommerce seo rules and recognizable store style will usually offer best results.
Quality Images and Videos
If visitors know exactly what they want, they will be looking for factors like price and shipping details. When they are browsing, though, more information is essential. Among the most important ecommerce factors is the existence of quality images.
It can also be effective to include sales videos, helping to add even more insight into each product. Images and videos add life to a page, being both useful to the customer and effective for marketing purposes.
Easy Navigation and Search
Navigation on ecommerce sites can often get complicated. A large store with many categories needs to organize itself effectively but still make it easy to find individual items. You could include breadcrumbs to provide clear paths to each area of the site, while a large site could also benefit from a mega menu that includes visual aids.
The search bar is also essential, so ensure it is always easy to find. You could include a fixed search bar to keep it visible even as the visitors scroll.
Getting back to basics doesn’t mean you need to go back to your old site or outdated marketing strategies. A good ecommerce site can instill trust in visitors by focusing on the factors that bring results. Most consumers want easy access to good products, with no difficulty finding all the relevant information they require.
There are, however, no guarantees with web design, so it is important to run tests to work out the best converting site. When you offer quality products in a clear and focused site, though, you should have no problem meeting the needs of your customers.
