When it comes to ecommerce, first impressions really do count, and when you only have a second or two to make an impact, you need to make sure that your site is looking its best. But it’s not just about looking great, a little bit like when Beckham first opened his mouth to speak (ok so most people got over the voice, but he’s a sporting hero, and so we made an exception!), you don’t want your potential customers to be disappointed by what they experience next.
The ease with which they can interact with your site, quickly find information and get to what they are looking for, without needing to hunt around, the more likely they are to stay on your site rather than heading on back to Google only to try one of your competitors.
Whilst there could easily be an endless list of tips and pointers for ensuring your ecommerce design ticks all of the boxes, I’ve highlighted five key areas that you ought to ensure you pay special attention to:
1. Navigation
Navigation is key to the success of any ecommerce store. Users will often be arriving at your site with one thing in mind, and giving them the ability to find what they are looking for quickly and easily is a must. Your navigation needs to be intuitive so that visitors can navigate through your category and brand structure to quickly find what they are looking for.
On most big name ecommerce stores this will be achieved by not only using a primary navigation but a secondary navigation or facets to allow the user to filter out what they don’t need.
Don’t forget the footer! The footer can play a valuable role in getting your user where they need to be. It’s common to see an extended footer allowing visitors, once they reached the bottom of reading a page, to then browse popular categories, brands, product offers and an ideal time to reinforce your customer service offering and to let the user know they are in safe hands when buying from you. Back up your footer navigation with hard evidence of your popular categories, brands, and products. These can be found by a little bit of data collection through the likes of Google analytics.
2. Visual Optimization
What’s really going to slow your users down in finding what they are after is too much choice. An increasing number of sites are now opting to take a ‘less is more’ approach when it comes to presenting users with choice.
Large ecommerce sites will more often than not mainly promote and advertise on the high level pages, but when it comes down to filtration and the product page itself, you need to ensure you have very few distractions on the page that aren’t relevant. On the product page your focus should be on steering the user towards selecting the appropriate options and proceeding to checkout.
For increased conversion rates this becomes key when taking the user through the checkout process, to the point that it is worth removing everything on the page including replacing the entire primary navigation with a simple back button in order to get the user to fill in the required fields and progress an order through to completion. Don’t block them completely from returning to the site, just in case they’ve forgotten an item, but ensure they are not easily distracted during the checkout process.
Test your pages from a visual point of view. Are the key areas of each page clear to see and not surrounded by clutter that may be distracting and irrelevant to what a user may be searching for? By putting yourself in your customers’ shoes, this will allow you to really understand their thought process and removing clutter this should result in a streamlined user experience.
It’s a tried and tested method to increase conversion rates and if you struggle to do this yourself, consider running focus groups or surveying your site design using an eye tracking technology company – this will quickly highlight any distractions, even those that are only impacting at a subconscious level.
3. Search
Often taken for granted and hidden away in a top corner somewhere, your website search should be the quickest and easiest way for your users to find exactly what they want. Giving the user the ability to find what they want quickly with an effective search will increase your conversion rate and will ensure you don’t miss out on customers who give up trying to find what they’re after through your navigation alone.
A design optimised search facility that is properly architectured makes a huge difference to the user experience. Faceted search, whereby once you perform your search you are confronted with further options to drill down content; for example all results for your search term within a specific category, or in a certain size; allows users to filter down to what they are after as quickly as possible, removing irrelevant results with a few simple clicks. As mentioned before, some of your users are going to be arriving looking for one thing only, so ensure your search bar is as visible as possible and not hidden away.
4. Images
Your product images are arguably the most important visual element of your ecommerce site. These should be optimised high resolution images to allow your users to see as much detail as possible in order to make a buying decision. If resource allows, you should offer multiple shots and zoom functionality per product. A 360 degree view of the product is also a great interactive way for users to get a good visual understanding of what they are buying.
Reducing distractions on your product pages should allow for your product images to be the dominant feature on the page. Buyers want to know exactly what they are buying and sometimes a simple image can answer a whole load of questions they may have about the product. Just be sure to monitor the size of your images on upload as sometimes the rendering of large pages with very high quality images can be a massive hog on download time and the speed in which users will see the page and be able to progress.
5. Responsive design
Responsive design allows you to serve up your website on one URL using the same content and code, to multiple devices. A responsive design will respond to the user’s behaviour and environment based on screen size, platform and orientation. Users searching for products on a mobile device has increased significantly in recent years and continues to do so.
Responsive design allows you to target these users without needing to create a unique mobile version of your store for each type of mobile device. Doing a little research into the statistics on the amount of users that would be using mobiles to browse for your products is a worthwhile task, and more often than not, if you aren’t serving a website that is easy to use on a mobile device, then you will be missing out on a significant amount of sales. Exactly how much will depend on your industry, but with the rapid growth of mobile device usage showing no signs of slowing, it’s not a case of should you cater for it, more a case of how long can you afford not to!
Responsive design bridges the gap between web and mobile browsing, delivering an optimised experience regardless of device and screen size. Many online retailers, if not all ready, will be looking at responsive design as the preferred solution for mobile commerce.
The execution of a responsive design for your ecommerce store should be closely monitored and as responsive design adapts to work for smaller screen devices, the amount of information displayed should be reduced, however be careful not to remove elements that are required in order for users to find exactly what they want. Collapsible menus, fixed tabs and animations can all play a part in a responsive design in order to maintain a good user experience.
So whilst the above is not a comprehensive how-to guide to ecommerce design, it highlights the importance of some of the key areas to consider when reviewing your own ecommerce website design.
If you’d like a review of your ecommerce website design, full service ecommerce agency, Metakinetic, is currently offering a free design review by its creative team free of charge to all Fourth Source readers. Simply email Daniel.ruffle@metakinetic.com for more information.
