5 Tips for Effective E-Commerce Website Designs
Thinking to start an e-commerce website? Here are 5 website designs tips that you should consider as a web designer.
1. Organized categories and menu navigation
Having clear, logical product categories and having them easily visible on a top menu makes navigating through your site easier for your visitor. Visitors nowadays have little patience and want to reach what they want in as few steps as possible. Having clear categorization and layered navigation helps you do that. For example, for a clothes store, a woman look for polka dotted shorts should know she can easily find it under Clothes - Women - Bottoms.
2. Sufficient Product Information
For a listed product, other than its name and price, you want to be sure to include as detailed, candid information as possible to help visitors make their choice. For example, someone buying a piece of apparel will need to know exact size and dimensions. Someone buying a laptop need to know all the technical specifications. While we understand the need to "sell" a product, it is always encouraged to include as many truthful information as possible a product. This is to ensure that customers know what they're getting so as to maximize customer satisfaction (hence return sales), and minimize returns and refunds which are very costly to operations. Also, a customer lost is extremely hard to regain.
3. Great Product Photos, need we say more.
People are visual and your product photos are going to be your main selling point. (Even if you're running a book store, we do judge them by their covers sometimes). Make sure your product photos are professionally taken with ample lighting, are clear with vivid colors. There should also be detail shots, and shots of various angles.
4. Customer Service and FAQ
Always have your customer service at easy reach should your visitors have any queries, and also list an FAQ of commonly asked questions and answers that can help your customer with their user experience.
5. Clear Methods of Conversion
The objective of a website is to achieve some goal for the website owner, in other words, conversions. A conversion could be a sale or purchase, or in a more intermediary way, a subscription to a mailing list or a submission of an interest query form. Whatever the case, there should be clear methods of conversion for visitors. Visible forms and buttons beckoning visitors to make the action. The process should be as simple as possible to avoid "cart abandonment" which is potential customers giving up en route the conversion process.
Some extra tips in this area could be: - Minimize information asked, limit to bare essentials like an email and a name (visitors are daunted by lengthy forms) - Provide incentives for conversion e.g. a coupon code for joining a mailing list - Have a clear privacy policy and no-spam policy
About the Author
Chloe Michelle is the chief web designer at Chloe Design (www.websitedesigns.sg) a Singapore-based design house specializing in E-commerce Web Design and Corporate Web Development, Search Engine Optimization and Graphics and Logo Design
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