Principles for The Success of an eCommerce Web Design

If a website is presented attractively and your products packaged neatly you have won half the battle. Needless to say, attractive web designs have played a key role in the success of online marketing as it virtually increases the value of your products and raises the credibility of your website.

Apart from having a firm SEO and a perfectly well-developed strategy, an eCommerce site triumphs on its aesthetic layout structure and designed to comprehend by every one raises the bar of your site for high conversions. Thanks to these combined features working in tandem.

To ensure our clients’ success, an ample design inspiration for your next project, in case you have plans to redesign your current eCommerce website or create a new one, can be made available should you care to take note of.

Brand Awareness:-

It is quite unlikely that you will be able to illustrate in detail what your eCommerce store does or sells that too in a jiffy. Ditto your employees and customers. Thus, you have to find out and discover the characteristics or features of your brand to find out its suitability in the current industry scene. Having discovered this, we can initiate ways and means to position your brand in accordance with the trend. We could appropriately choose catchy tag line for your brand with texts or typeface blended with the right color scheme and styling too with the right marketing tactics to drive web traffic to your site. Well, if your brand is firmly established it is good! However, ensure you are satisfied with its performance in terms of sales outreach.

Identify Customers:-

Have you targeted your end-users who would be benefited by consuming your products? Have you not missed out on any prospective customers that may increase your revenue? By zeroing your target audiences at their own locations, you are just ensuring that your cool website design approach will make them feel at home. This is the first step in building the trust factor vis-à-vis prospective audience who were used to be familiar with only brick-and-mortar business all along attended by the staff where the products could be handled and touched before they were finally bought. Thus in a virtual online marketing, it is crucial to identify with your target audience by building the trust with the aid of an attractive and well-designed website.

Focus on Usability:-

It is nothing but science to make navigation easy to use and understand. Moreover very intuitive and instinctive though not a rocket science either. On the contrary, it just needs to be discerned strategically and carefully. To make more sense, your products need to be grouped into different categories and subcategories. Additionally, to make things easier and simple, your products should also be presented in a clean grid with proper labeling for easy reading and scanning.

Direction for Users:-

Anything appealing attracts everybody and users are drawn to such Calls-To-Action or CTA for short, or link that would lead them to their intended destination. Similarly, users do not get deterred to click on such links that progressively conduct them to interesting contents that are organized well. On the contrary, they get discouraged and abhor cluttered pages with no real paths to follow with any logical consistency. It is a known fact that conversions don’t necessarily happen on the home page, giving your users these clear paths to follow is smart indeed. Points to be kept in mind are; one good path is having a simple and clear main navigation. Other good paths that can be considered are having a clear calls-to-action and call-outs for popular items.  In other words, you now have at your disposal, three clear paths that are in addition to a clear and well-placed site search block.  Lastly, you have four strategic paths for your user to easily enter the sales funnel.

If It Walks & Quacks Like a Duck….!

The efforts, simple and complex, taken during the making of the website should not go waste therefore make sure it works as expected. Generally, users are desirous of having an interesting and satisfying experience and not worn down or lackluster site. They look out for links that functions seamlessly like links, if there are any shortcomings and hiccups, resolve and redesign it. Ensure that you avoid superfluous or ineffective icons, eg., hover or drift effect for something that is not clickable. Immediately, users conclude that when sites don’t function as expected, the credibility of your site is lost and questions rise about its trustworthiness. Elements that work against the site sound the death knell of the site. These elements with other relevant aspects, by default should do everything possible to prevent confusion and minimize compromising the trust bestowed on your business. In short, the fundamental requirement is your design and functionality.

Push The Right Technology:-

It is a known fact that some of your users may not be using upgraded browsers as they are satisfied with these versions…loyalty eh! However, they are in no way inferior and not qualify for a redesign. We at Groovegauge consider everybody as our client as the goal of any eCommerce site is to increase revenue and conversions. There are many ways for improvements but few to prevent a decline in numbers. One of the causes could be the budget constraint for designing a dynamic and responsive eCommerce site. No worry; we have solution for every technical issues.  Our designs are flexible enough to present your info and content clearly on most devices without taking loads of extra development time.

Your site should avoid using Flash; not only is it clunky, but it is also not supported on Apple devices. It is better to avoid technology like parallax scrolling, it may be cool and trendy, but it can hardly improve user experience or conversions. Lastly, clean, semantic code is your site’s best friend. Nothing can make a positive impact to a user as much as a fast loading site. It not only exudes his experience of the site but also helps your product outreach.

Google Trained us to Search:-

Of course, search is very vital as far as website is concerned. Suitably designed search design should be high flying when it comes to making it remarkably popular. The user perception will help define the significance of search in your site. Moreover, utilizing good design fundamentals will help determine appropriate location, styling and calls-to-action text or icons apart.

Consistency is Key:-

We are aware that a consistent layout is fundamentally decisive to a successful site. Here we can bank on Opencart, Magento the good content management systems for a consistent theme. What more, maintenance is easy. However, care should be taken for Header, Footer and product grid which has to be the same on every page. Similarly, it holds good for many style elements and aesthetics. The basic fundamentals of good typography always precede the text. Another significant element to be kept in mind is to establish and followed is the color palette. Equally important are also the tone of the photography and the text/descriptions. These should always follow the tone of your site and brand identity. Consistency is one the important factors that govern your website as its calls-to-action need to adhere to a stringent hierarchy. These generally are specific colors, sizes or styling of the website but may not be in the same order. The final site design should be easily represented in a style guide that has all the relevant elements, buttons, pleasing and appropriately sized fonts and colors signifying the creation of a great website.

 Less is More:-

True, no one wants to be besieged and bogged down with basket loads of information or content. Properly balanced white space, or for that matter any pleasing hue, improves readability making your content to position better. By allowing a clutter free content and clear pages your layout will have a consistent look without disturbing the overall appearance when a solid grid structure is applied. Do not attempt to fill up all the available space on a page or over zealously cram more categories into your navigation. It is a strict no-no because less is always more.

Own The Calls-to-Action (aka CTA):-

An entire blog about the importance and power of calls-to-action can be written. A rule of thumb for CTAs is no great shakes. The fundamental requirement is to maintain consistency throughout your site. The site should also emit constancy to retain viewers. A great call to action for your contact page instead of the worn out “Subscribe” would be “Contact Us Now”, “You Can Reach Us At” or “We Are

Available 24×7”.

A lot of planning and research goes into the making a website before it finally gets crystallized. The above 10 strategic principles will certainly allow you to discern important aspects on the fundamentals for a successful web design. The designing itself is a curiously amazing medium that generates high conversions and offering an incredible user experience starts.