04
Apr

Designing the perfect ecommerce website

Posted by Aaron Brockhurst

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Getting carried away when designing and building an ecommerce website is easily done, this is often how a website becomes a complete shambles.  Careful planning is vital to creating something spectacular. Some people spend too much time focusing on making a website look pretty that they forget about functionality and usability. A perfect ecommerce design needs working functions and it must be easy for the visitors to use the website.

Here are few tips to help you through designing your perfect ecommerce store

 

  • Product pages - Remember to make these a priority. As silly as it sounds, it is where some commerce sites go wrong, you could have the most beautiful website but if visitors go on to your product page and cannot find the images or information about the products, then you are not going to have much success in selling them. Include as much detail in your product descriptions as possible and provide clear, high quality images.
  • Colour scheme - Choosing a colour scheme is important when designing your website.  You need to have a colour focus, so that you don't go too crazy and end up with so many colours it hurts your eyes. Choosing the right colours for your website design is a decision that need lots of careful thought.  There is no perfect colour scheme that meets every situation. However, you need to keep it pleasing to the eyes and in line with your organisation's branding.
  • Navigation - A customer must be able to find their way around your website.  You need to provide plenty of navigation options so that users can find there way around the website. It should be clear on the home page where they can go to next to find what they are looking for. It is always advisable to include a search bar, because if a customer become frustrated and can't find what they are looking for, the search bar will be very useful to them.
  • First impressions - Who are you? What do you sell? Why should people choose to buy from you? You should provide the answer to all three of these questions on your landing page because this is the place where you will make that all important first impression, if you don't impress visitors in the first few seconds of them arriving on your page, then why should they stick around or make a purchase? Be clear and concise, you have got to sell yourself, without being to pushy.
  • Images - Thousands of images circulate the web everyday. It comes as no surprise that users now expect images on commerce websites and it is unlikely that a user would go through with a purchase without seeing an image of what they are buying, images increase the time a user browses your website. Images should be of high quality and really show your product off.  You should have an image to show your product from every angle so that people can have the option to look as clearly is if they had it in their hands.
  • Contact - Is it clear to your customers how they can contact you? You know how you feel when you enter a shop and want to ask someone a question.  Customers need to know how they can reach you if they have any problems or questions. Being contactable will improve your customer service, which is important if you want loyal customers and if you would like people to say good things and recommend your website to friends and family.
If you need help or are considering setting up and ecommerce store then give us a call on 0845 258 1208