Website Design For eCommerce

The design of a website can make or break the customer experience.

If the layout or design of a website is unappealing, 38% of people will abandon it. Furthermore, over 48% of respondents cited website design as the most important factor in determining a company’s credibility.

We gathered some of the best practises to follow because design is one of the most important components of a successful eCommerce website.

“Design is intelligence made visible,” says Alina Wheeler, a top design and branding expert. So let us assist you in your website design Malaysia!

Why do you need these practices?

Here’s why these practises are critical for your eCommerce website:

• ◉ To provide the best possible customer experience: A great customer experience entails making it extremely simple for customers to purchase products from your website while also making it a pleasurable experience for them. These practises will assist you in creating a website experience that your customers will enjoy.
• ◉ To increase sales through conversion rate optimisation: Great design will assist you in converting more website visitors into paying customers, thereby increasing sales and improving business performance.
• ◉ To increase customer retention: You don’t want website visitors or existing customers to leave your website and purchase the same product from another vendor. A great design will help you capture your website visitors’ attention and encourage your customers to be loyal to your brand.
• ◉ To strengthen your brand: Great design speaks volumes about who you are, what your brand stands for, and how you should be perceived. Finally, design is all about effective communication!
• ◉ Building customer relationships: People tend to trust well-designed websites and will want to interact with them more. This contributes to the development of strong customer relationships based on trust.

Best Practices for eCommerce Website Design

#1: Responsive Design

According to Similar Web’s “The State Of Mobile Report,” mobile devices account for more than 56% of consumer traffic to the top US websites.

This emphasises the significance of having your eCommerce website accessible not only on desktop computers, but also on mobile and tablet devices.

Responsive design allows your website to adapt to the device from which it is accessed. All of the elements on the website, including images, video, and text, will be aligned in a way that does not jeopardise the overall customer experience.

Responsive design is also important in terms of SEO. Making your eCommerce website responsive will allow you to provide an exceptional customer experience for everyone.

#2: Homepage Design

Your eCommerce website’s homepage is essentially your storefront. It’s what forms your customer’s first impression of who you are, what you do, and whether or not they should do business with you.

Consider it in the same way that you would a physical store. If you saw a store with an inviting, well-designed front, you’d be more inclined to walk in and speak with the salespeople inside. On the other hand, if the shop front was cluttered, broken, or filthy, you’d avoid it.

A great homepage design entails:

• ◉ An eye-catching first impression that keeps your audience’s interest and attention. You can accomplish this with a strong message, an eye-catching banner image, or a background video; the choice is yours! The homepage must capture your audience’s attention in less than a second, especially since consumer attention spans are shrinking.
• ◉ Building trust with your audience by communicating effectively. Your homepage should immediately convey an image of credibility and authority in your field, as well as tell a story that resonates with your customers.

The Dropbox Business website is an excellent example of a well-designed homepage.

Take note of how the homepage clearly communicates the main benefit of the product, right in the centre. It tells the customer what Dropbox can do for them and gives them one simple option: try it for 30 days or buy it immediately. This is exactly what a business customer expects, so they don’t waste time on the website and know what to expect right away.

#3: Product Pages

An eCommerce website’s primary goal is to sell products or services. As a result, the pages on which products are displayed on the website have a significant impact on whether the product is purchased.

Designing high-quality product pages is an art that must include all of the elements that make it great. Among these elements are:

• ◉ Product Images: To properly display a product, you must take excellent photographs of it! Investing in professional product photography can help you showcase your product effectively.

To impress your website visitors, make sure you include the best product images. Some eCommerce websites also use product videos, which can bring your product to life. Depending on your budget, select images or videos.

• ◉ Product Description: Once you’ve piqued your visitors’ interest with your product images, they’ll want to learn more about it by reading the product description.

Make sure your product descriptions include the benefits the product offers rather than just a long list of features. Using the words in your product descriptions, you can create an emotional connection with your customers.

• ◉ Customer Reviews: No matter how good your product images and descriptions are, it’s the customer reviews that give your customers the confidence to do business with you.

They provide much-needed assurance to your website visitors by sharing what other customers think about your product.

• ◉ Call to Action Buttons: To encourage users to take the desired action, your call to action buttons should combine simple text with colours.

Don’t make them ‘salesy,’ or you’ll turn off your customers, but do make them action oriented and customer focused, so your customers want to click on them.

#4: Shopping Cart Page Design

A shopping cart page is one that is always available throughout the eCommerce website experience. No matter where a website visitor is in the purchasing process, they should always be able to click on the ‘View cart’ button on the website’s interface and see all of the products they’ve chosen in a well-organized manner.

The important thing to remember here is that a shopping cart should allow website visitors to do everything that a real shopping cart would! This includes the ability to add or remove products, check prices, apply any discounts or promotional codes, and know when the products they’re ordering will arrive.

Customers who leave the shopping cart page or leave the eCommerce website without purchasing should be tracked. It is critical that you contact them again via email or advertisement to remind them of their unfinished purchase.

#5: Search Functionality

The search functionality is one of the primary differences between shopping in a physical store and shopping online. Customers who shop offline may not always be able to find what they’re looking for right away. Customers who shop online, on the other hand, can simply search for the product using the search bar.

The search bar functions as a “mini search” engine within your eCommerce website, so it must be well-positioned and visible at all times.

Amazon does an excellent job with this. When you search for Christmas lights on their homepage, they display a variety of available products as well as a Christmas theme banner image, with the search bar remaining visible, accessible, and ready to use.

Amazon values customer satisfaction, and the search bar is designed to help customers find what they’re looking for with as little effort as possible.

#6: Checkout Page Design

The checkout page is the last page a customer sees before making a purchase on an eCommerce website. This page can either encourage them to complete the purchase or drive them away, so it is critical.

The checkout page must provide payment options to the customer and should not allow them to complete the purchase without filling out all required fields. This is to avoid situations in which a customer purchases a product but forgets to leave their address where the product should be delivered, or other situations that may contribute to a poor customer experience.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the page should prompt customers to fill out all necessary information fields, but it should not delete previously entered information because doing so may frustrate customers and force them to do more work than necessary to make a purchase.

All colours on this page should be geared towards making it as simple and easy for the customer to take the desired action and make a purchase as possible.

#7: Out of Stock Items

It is critical that your eCommerce website actively tracks any items that are running low on stock or are about to run out of stock by integrating with your inventory management system.

Items that are about to run out of stock should be marked on your product pages so that both customers and inventory specialists at your company are aware. If an item goes out of stock due to high demand, mark it as ‘out of stock’ and, ideally, mention the date it’s likely to be back in stock or offer the customer the option to leave their email address and be notified.

Keep in mind that design is all about communicating! As a result, informing users whether or not your products are in stock is an important part of this communication.

#8: Branding

It is also important to create a visual appeal that represents your brand when designing. The colours you choose, the language you use, the images and videos you show, and the navigation experience you provide all’speak’ for your brand.

It is critical to ensure that your visual appeal is consistent across all marketing channels. As a result, many brands create a colour palette or design palette that specifically mentions the colour codes and shades they use, so there is no room for misunderstanding when communicating with designers and web experts.

For example, when you think of Apple, you think of the white Apple logo on a black background; when you think of McDonald’s, you think of a yellow “M” on a red background; and so on. Your customers have these colour combinations memorised without even realising it. Make sure you meet this subconscious branding-related expectation.

#9: Social Media

eCommerce website design and social media marketing are inextricably linked. Just as offline shopping can become a pretty’social experience’ if your customers talk about it with their friends, so can online shopping if your customers share, talk about, or show off their purchases.

As a result, including social share buttons on product and checkout pages, encouraging customers to share their shopping experience, provides an opportunity for them to connect with their friends.

Social engagement in the form of likes, comments, and shares improves the eCommerce customer experience and fosters a sense of ‘virality’ around a purchased product.

The screenshot above shows an effective placement of these social sharing buttons.

#10: Building Trust with Certifications

Badges and certifications are another design element that adds credibility to your eCommerce website and immediately builds trust with customers. Using industry-recognized certifications and badges shows your customers that you take your eCommerce business seriously and want to be a long-term player.

Showing SSL certificates, for example, can demonstrate to customers that it is safe to transact with you and that their payment information will not be compromised. You can also use badges and certifications to provide additional assurance of product quality.

#11: Colours

Colors bring life to your design. It is what gives your design layout and design elements life. A subtle difference in the colours you use on your call to action buttons can influence whether or not your prospect makes a purchase.

Dominant colors, such as red or black, can be excellent choices for call to action buttons because they make consumers feel more energised. Green is excellent for representing nature, health, or anything organic, whereas blue is excellent for representing professionalism, trust, and authenticity.

Choose colours that reflect the personality of your brand, create the right customer perception, and inspire action.

#12: Navigability

The best navigation design is one that does not require users to think too hard while navigating a website. Your website’s navigation should be simple and natural to users.

Apple is the master of designing intuitive user experiences because they believe in simplicity, so that even a 10-year-old can figure out where to click to get to their desired page. eCommerce user experience design is no exception, requiring a high level of empathy as well as a thorough understanding of your customers.

We recommend creating customer personas, conducting user research, and creating wireframes for your website to get a sense of how it will flow and feel to your customers.

Wrapping It Up

The more you adhere to best practises in website design, the more likely you are to create an amazing eCommerce customer experience.

A/B testing is a great way to put your website design ideas to the test. You can test two or more versions of the same website/webpage with users to see which one produces the best results. Another tool for capturing where customers spend the most time on your website and which aspects of it they interact with is heat maps, which allow you to double down on what’s working and eliminate the rest. But all this can also be achieve if you look for a web design company to help you with all the heavy work that are good at design website Malaysia.

Have an website idea in mind but dont know where to start? Contact us at Digitalfren and our team of experts that specialise in web design Malaysia will guide you to bring your ideas to life.