Ecommerce Design Tips to Guarantee More Sales

Ecommerce Design Tips to Guarantee More Sales

 

When it comes to ecommerce sites, looks definitely matter. In fact, looks are the single most important factor to securing a sale. Websites that look amateurish, unappealing and untrustworthy will drown in the vast sea of the internet marketplace. Why would a customer buy a product from you rather than a similar one from Amazon?

Follow these website design tips and watch the sales roll in. Make these changes yourself or if you need a little help, have a chat with a specialist web design and development team about your ideas and they’ll bring them to life.

 

1. Homepage Design

If your potential customer lands on your homepage and sees dodgy design, no call to action, no clear indication of what you sell, and cannot immediately click through to your products ... then they’re going to click return in haste.

An effective ecommerce homepage will include the following:

  • Your products in action (portrayed in high-quality images)
  • Your unique selling point – why should people buy from you and not look elsewhere?
  • Your top benefits – free shipping, discounts, sales, etc.
  • Headlines that show how your service benefits your customer. E.g. ‘For the best hair day you’ve ever had’
  • Attention-grabbing call to action buttons that pull through sales

The key is to create desire around your products through images and draw the eye to how to buy them. Your buying links should be the focus of the page. Think stand-out colors, capitalization, and central placement.

 

2. Use of Color

This point is pretty simple but is often neglected. A good color scheme is essential for A) looking pretty and B) directing customers towards links.

Use this simple formula:

  • Neutral background color, preferably a light one (black rarely works)
  • Contrasting, easily readable text color
  • Bright, attention-grabbing link colors

Think white background, black text, and your choice of the rest of the rainbow for your links.

Or for a bit more fun, maybe a blue background, with white text, and yellow call to action buttons.

Remember the classic Microsoft Word layout – white page, black text, blue underlined hyperlinks. The reader is automatically drawn to those stand-out links.

 

3. Trust = Sales

In the competitive world of ecommerce, you’re asking potential customers to make a commitment to you and no one else. You want to be exclusive. You’re asking them to give you their hard-earned cash in return for products they love, as opposed to other bigger sites that need no introduction or persuasion of brand value. Commitment requires trust – if they’ve never purchased from you before, how will they know they will love your product?

Fostering this relationship begins with looks. Shallow, right? But a site using outdated fonts, low-quality images and terrible layout design is going to turn you off immediately for simply looking untrustworthy.

Show prospective customers you’re trustworthy by…

  • Featuring reviews and testimonials from happy customers
  • Proudly displaying any mention or endorsement of your products from well-known publications and authority sites
  • Links to your social media
  • Correct grammar throughout the site, detailed product descriptions and guarantees/promises of quality
  • Contact button for any queries (which are promptly responded to)
  • Up-to-date design – if you don’t think you’re up to this yourself, hire a designer

Only when customers know you’re the real deal can a love story begin!