Importance of design in ecommerce sites:
There are many elements when deciding to sell online with an ecommerce site but you must not neglect design. It’s important to realise that design is more complicated than simply ‘what it looks like’. A well designed ecommerce store should offer a great customer experience as well as making purchasing easy and intuitive.
Below are some key points to consider with regards to design in ecommerce:
Navigation
Navigation determines how customers get around on your website. It is regarded by most to be the most important part of any website, especially an online store. The aim is to present a clear path that enables a potential customer to find what they are looking for fast. See an example of clear navigation below.
Image: 3AManufacturing. This site, built by Digital Storm, features the navigation bar in a standard position (top of page). On here are the main product categories and then further drop down menus to allow fast access to the specific product. Once an option has been chosen, you can also see this drop down menu is replicated on the left side for quick access incase the wrong option was selected.
Consistency
A consistent design that is in-keeping with the company’s branding will build trust in customers. Consumers first impressions are 94% design-related and based on superficial elements such as colours and fonts. It is important to make sure all the pages use consistent fonts, font-sizes, colours etc… (Check out this example ‘Live Whisky’ to see how we design websites with consistent branding).
Responsiveness
It’s vital to ensure that your website translates well across various screen sizes. Mobile ecommerce will account for 30% of global ecommerce sales by 2018 (Source: Internet Retailer). Responsive web design will scale a sites appearance to match the user’s screen size.
Loading Times
Media rich sites can be slow to load and this will cause potential customers to abandon your site. Page load times has also become a ranking factor by Google and can affect your SEO. There are some technical elements and optimisation to improve load times. Despite this, the amount and type of media going onto each page should be kept in mind when designing a site.
Hopefully this helps with your ecommerce project. Feel free to check out our ecommerce page to learn more about how we can help you sell more online.
Written by Curtis Williams