Ecommerce websites are being developed by many businesses nowadays since they can be very profitable and are usually affordable to build. Although the majority of companies believe that only driving traffic to an online store front is enough for making sales, that is far from the truth.
The majority of ecommerce websites will fail because many businesses and individuals do not know what they are doing when investing into building an online store. This article will explore the essential best practices that should be followed on the ecommerce web design creation in order for it making a considerable number of sales when it starts receiving visitors.
Effective Ecommerce Web Design Best Practices.
These are the fundamental ecommerce website design best practices for creating a successful (profitable) online store:
Have a simple check-out process
Make sure the check out process is as simple as possible requiring only the essential information for the completion of the sales. Around 23% of online consumers abandon their shopping cart in case they need to create an account for buying something, therefore in order to solve this problem, offer a guest check out option (only requesting payment and delivery information). The simpler the check out process the lower it will be the cart abandonment rate (which is on average 70%).
Make the search field prominently visible
Insert an effective search field on a spot easy to see on the ecommerce website, with that visitors will be able to find easily the products they are looking for and therefore are more likely to buying something. Online consumers do not have patience for keep browsing through a dys functional website until finding what they desire, in case products are not well displayed or easy to find through the search field they will leave and go to abetter ecommerce website.
Create a functional menu bar
The purpose of this best practice is improve the visitors navigation experience. Create a menu bar having as many categories and subcategories as possible. It must stay simple and user-friendly in order to visitors to have a better navigation experience.
Use browsercookies to offer a personalized experience
Use browser cookies to record the historic of the activities of visitors in order to offer a personalized experience for visitors. This best practiceis great to set up automatic display of relevant up-selling and cross-selling offers.
Have high quality visual elements
An ecommerce website needs to be highly appealing in terms of visual elements to attract and retain the attention of visitors. Insert great images for products offered, use the right colors and fonts, get a nice logo, and make sure the overall feel and look of the website is pleasing for the eyes.
Use responsive web design
Use this web design approach in order to have a website that looks great in all the different devices.
Offer live chat
This best practice makes sure that customers will have someone to answer all their questions about products they are interested into buying,but need some assistance before making the final purchase decision.