6 Critical Design Features for E-commerce Websites
An e-commerce website design has a unique aim. The purpose of an e-commerce Huntsville web design is to attract customer’s attention and lead them to make purchases. An optimized online shopping site will be able to attract a large number of target customers with high conversion rates.
Online users have a lot of options today to make a purchase online. Sites like Kohl, Amazon, eBay, and OLX are successful since they focus on stellar customer experience. The efforts in creating a user-friendly site have resulted in increased profitability for these sites.
In order to beat the competition, you need to hire an Alabama website design company that can design a site with all the must-have e-commerce features. A professional Huntsville custom web design company can create a website that provides a seamless online shopping experience.
1. Seamless Website Navigation
Website navigation is the most important e-commerce website design element. User-friendly navigation will allow customers to find the required products without any hassles. In contrast, a website with a poor navigation feature will frustrate the customers due to which they will abandon your site.
So, the main question is what are the elements of good online navigation?
Sites with good navigation create a clear path for customers to checkout. The customers should be able to quickly find the right product and proceed to checkout. They should be able to buy the required product without having to think, “how do I…?”.
Consider displaying the most important information for customers on the main page. The products should be categorized in the drop-down menu or the page footer.
A great example of an e-commerce site with excellent user navigation is Kohl’s. As you can see in the image below, the main page displays the most important categories. The less important categories are grouped in a drop-down menu. The clearly grouped menu guide customers to the desired specific location.
2. High-Resolution Images
Are the images on your site professional quality? Do the images have a zoom-in option for more detail? If not, you may not be offering the best experience to online users.
You should provide a quality visual experience to online users. Gone are the days when you can include a low-quality image with a price tag and some bullet points.
Online shoppers expect multiple high-quality photos from different angles. Consider the Amazon product pages where most listed products have multiple images with zoom-in feature. Customers can zoom in and get a feel similar to reviewing a product at a brick-and-mortar retail store.
You need to consider technical considerations when adding images. The recommended image size for products is 2048 x 2048 pixels. Avoid uploading images with a very high resolution as they will take a long time to load. The image size of all the products should be the same to maintain a uniform look of the products.
3. Product Search Feature
Make sure that your website has a robust product search feature. The product search feature should allow customers to filter and sort products based on different attributes. For instance, you can have the customers search for the products using filters such as color, price, gender, and size, etc.
Moreover, the customers should be able to sort the search results based on price, popularity, date of arrival, and other attributes. The website should allow the customers to sort products in both ascending and descending order.
4. Recommended Products
Another must-have feature for e-commerce sites is the recommended products. The sophisticated Huntsville custom website design feature allows you to up-sell products. An example is the related products section on Amazon. The website shows what customers also viewed related to a product.
Adding related products feature can allow you to boost online conversion. Consider what customers would be persuaded to buy when buying a product. For instance, customers who buy a smartphone can be suggested to buy a screen protector or other accessories. This is a clever technique to give more options to customers and improve sales.
5. Add Trust Signals
Adding trust signals will make your product offering more credible for customers. The trust signals unconsciously influence the customers to make a purchase. You can gain trust in many ways. One effective trust signal is HTTPS/SSL. The trust signal gives a green signal to customers that the site is secure.
Apart from gaining trust, setting your site on HTTPS/SSL will also result in improved site speed. You can activate the green padlock and HTTPS protocol by buying an SSL certificate. Consider buying the certificate from a trusted Certificate Authority.
The most reliable Certificate Authority sites that issue SSL certificates include Network Solutions, VeriSign, GeoTrust, and GoDaddy. Prices of the certificates range from about $12.49 to $2,000 per year. You should select a certificate that offers the best protection at the minimum cost.
Creating FAQs, Privacy Policy, and Terms & Conditions and other pages also serve as a trust signal.
You should have FAQs, privacy policy and terms & conditions page on your website. The importance of these pages is often understated. Having these pages can help create trust in your online site.
Consider creating custom privacy, terms & conditions and other pages. However, if you don’t have time, you can also create these pages for free using TermsFeed. The site allows you to create End User License Agreement (EULA), Privacy Policy, Terms & Conditions, Disclaimer, and more.
Lastly, you should consider adding a security seal or trust badge to the checkout cart.
Adding the seals can improve buyer confidence. Customers will have more trust and will be likely to make purchases.
So, which seals should you add to your website?
You don’t have to add all the trust badges available online.
An online survey carried out by Baymard Institute had analyzed 2,510 responses and found that the most trust seals include Norton Secured, McAfee Secure, TRUSTe Certified Privac, and BBB Accredited Business.
6. Online Customer Reviews
User-generated reviews are also an important feature for an e-commerce site. Customers on average read about 10 reviews before trusting an online business. Most will only buy from a business with 4 or more stars.
A lot of online business owners think that user-generated reviews can be sale killer. The reality is that the opposite is true.
Negative customer reviews can be beneficial in many ways. It provides you an opportunity to turn negative customer experience into a positive one. This will have a positive impression on online users.
When customers see that negative reviews are not censored, they will believe not view positive reviews as ‘fake’. You can use plugins to add user-generated reviews from sites such as Foursquare, Yelp, and others. Adding user reviews can drive social proof and also help build loyal fans.
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