Shopping is no more just a woman’s obsession, even men and kids can equally take pleasure of shopping as they can shop for anything, anywhere, effortlessly within few clicks. Online shopping portals have assured to make customer’s lives more enjoyable and trouble-free. Right from branded apparels to wide-ranging tech gadgets, latest toys to fresh food-products, everything is available under one roof. The main objective of any e-commerce website is to promote and sell products online. Since it aims to increase the sales, an online shopping website should not only be engaging but it should be easy to use too. As a web-designer you have to pay heed to both aesthetic sense and functionality.
Online selling is a tricky business and it is an uphill struggle when it comes to creating an ecommerce website. You might face challenges with respect to designing and usability issues. Sometimes the customer might get puzzled about what the business is offering, how to search for a particular product or they may even get lost.
If you want to sell the products like hotcakes, then you have to follow certain guidelines while designing an e-commerce website:
Simple yet attractive design:
Remember your goal is to sell the products and not the web design, thus keep the design simple but impactful.
- Minimalistic approach is the best, layout and template should chiefly focus on the products
- Let the sharp and high- quality pictures of products, do the talking for your website
- Only put up images of products, so that it instantly draws attention of the visitors rather than sidetracking them
Let the best be viewed first:
Every business will have a bestselling or the most adorable product which the designers can brag off on their website.
- You have to update your website on regular basis to keep it alive and fresh
- Put up any new product which the business will be launching as the home-page background, it will right away catch interest and compel the visitors to explore the site
- If you are designing website for an online shop that sells seasonal products then make sure you renew the featured section of the website, accordingly. This will help in marketing the products
Highlight the shopping deals:
What is the first thing that attracts any shopper? It’s, of course when they see the word Sale, Discount, Free Shipping or Offer. These terms are instant crowd pullers.
- Any shopaholic person go week at the knees when they are offered with great deals on their purchase. Thus you can use this marketing tool to promote your website
- You can create attention-grabbing banners that specify the shopping deals offered and highlight it on the homepage of your website
Make the shopping convenient:
Shopping cart, search box, login box are the main ingredients of any ecommerce website. Your online store will probably get closed if any of these elements do not function effectively.
- When you visit any shopping mall, you look for the map to search for the store you want; similarly in websites, navigation is also very important to reach out to your desirable product
- If the online store offers assortment of products then good quality search box is a must. If log-in fails then obviously sales would fail and undoubtedly the online shopping site will be incomplete without a perfectly functioning shopping cart
Show up the payment gateway icons:
What comes after shopping? It is certainly the payment. Shopping is loved by customers and payment is loved by business. Remember you are not running a local shop; your store can be viewed and accessed all over the world, each customer may have their own favored payment method. Thus you need to pay extra heed to the payment process.
- Payment procedure can differ for different ecommerce websites, so clearly mention the payment mode
- Credit cards, debit cards, cash on delivery, Paypal, gift vouchers are the most common payment symbols found on ecommerce websites
- Place these payment icons visibly on the footer or top-right corner of the website. Do show up the icons on the homepage
Ecommerce sites are the only way to generate sales and make profit for the online stores. There are innumerable online shopping websites available, you have to make your website look stand out of the crowd and compel the visitors to invest in the products and services. The above course of action can either make or break the business (will break only if you don’t follow the guidelines perfectly). Thus plan out powerfully for a successful website.
