Landing on a poorly designed ecommerce site is like walking into a dimly lit retail store where open boxes line the aisles, the shelves are dirty and employees are listening to headphones. You turn around and walk out, right? Same with ecommerce sites. One click of the back button and you’re browsing search results for a sleekly designed, shopper-friendly competitor. In fact, nine out of ten people say they’ve left a website because of bad design.1
Thinking of your ecommerce site as a digital representation of your retail space is a simple way to ensure your web design represents your brand and products well. Is the design uncluttered? Consistent? Does it look like your brand? Speak like your brand? Site visitors should feel welcome, valued and able to request help just as they would in a physical location.
Smart, professional web design:
1. Makes people trust your site
For shoppers to purchase products or services online, they must believe your site is reputable. Not too many people are eager to offer their credit card numbers on a site that looks like the company doesn’t care enough about their customers to invest in a current, secure site. Shoppers also assume that a lack of attention to the design will extend to a lack of attention to customer service should they need assistance.
2. Improves your search rankings
The way website content is visually displayed and published influences how search engines crawl and index an ecommerce store page. Good designers know how to strategically place keywords for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). They also know how to use impactful, quality images without slowing down the page load speed, which also hurts rankings and increases bounce rates.
3. Helps shoppers find what they want to buy
When users get stuck or confused on a site, they leave. Fast. Designing navigation that allows shoppers to move easily through the site and find relevant pages is critical. Considering the User Experience before designing the site creates a much smoother, shorter path to purchase.
4. Works better on mobile
More than half of web traffic comes from mobile devices.2 Today’s web designers must create responsive designs that still look great and function properly on a small mobile screen. Even subtle choices to improve the visibility of buttons or reduce text can have a huge impact on mobile conversion.
5. Increases memorability of your brand
As the digital representation of your retail space, your ecommerce site serves not only to sell, but also to reinforce your brand presence. Customers should experience the same fonts, colors and tone on your site that they do in your social feed, point of sale and all marketing communications.
Keep in mind, executing effective, user-friendly web design requires web development expertise to make sure the site displays and functions properly. Without professional backend programming, a beautiful web store might load slowly, have checkout issues or not deliver the user experience the designer intended.
Whether you’re looking to update an existing ecommerce store or create a whole new online shopping experience, Trone’s web design and development team is here to help. Contact us to discuss your challenges and goals.
1HubSpot, Essential Web Design Stats for 2020
2Statcounter, Desktop vs Mobile vs Tablet Market Share Worldwide 2011–2021