In this era of technology ecommerce is growing too fast and people are trying to get most out of that. Besides those big fish many individuals are trying to get started with eCommerce. When Do people ask me “ Ash how do you design some great eCommerce stores?” I often told them a lot of ways to make their store conversion driven. But people often don’t get it right. Suddenly I came with an idea to make a document on that as a blog post and today I will discuss about how you can design a conversion driven ecommerce store. I am writing all the things I apply on our agency Digital Develop. There are too many mistakes you could do when you’re designing your ecommerce store and if you can avoid those mistakes then it would be one of the best eCommerce store.
In this article we will discuss about How to design
- Design Layout and Navigation.
- Design Home and Content Pages.
- Design Collection/Category Page for maximum conversions and user interactivity.
- Design Product Page.
- Design Cart & Checkout Process.
And SEO & Social Integration on your store.
Before you dive into design your store you’ve to do some important works and research on your products and audinece. That means you’ve to create a clear contextual persona for your business. I’m going to show you the best way to get a clear and true understanding of a user which formed by the true behaviour of an human. We are not going deep in this area. But you’ve to ask some questions yourself and fill the gaps. So what are those crucial but important questions?
- What are their job title (B2B/B2C) ?
- What are their basic day-to-day responsibilities (B2B/B2C) ?
- How they use the product now ?
- What other products they use in conjunction ?
- How you think your prospective users will use the product ?
Answer these questions and fill the gaps if you’ve any then make a contextual map about what is most important and what is less and then map out everything for the store. Just write those things and examine.
After this steps now you will have a clear idea and goal for your business though you know that you want to sell your products and that’s the main goal but after this steps you will feel the other important part of your business. Don’t be afraid to experiment.
Design Layout and Navigation
Designing an ecommerce store’s layout and navigation is matter of thinking about your prospective users and their entire experience on your store. Your duty is help them to find staff easily on your ecommerce website. It’s lot more than just design and setup a nice looking ecommerce store on web.
There are too many variables to design a layout for an ecommerce store. It’s really depend on how much products you’ve or how much products you will sell on the store, on which product you want to focus on, where people will land first on your ecommerce website etc.
There is no certain way to say that this Pattern will work best or that pattern will work best. We can think about some important thing when we will design an eCommerce store to make it work best for us.
Across the site
You should have a strict navigation rule for your store which will remain the same on every page on your store. The key navigations element such as your company logo, home, top level menus and footers should be present and positioned at the same position across the entire site. A confuse user would never buy from your store and would leave your store for good. So a confusing navigation and layout are not recommended in any situation. Other than that I would suggest three other important elements which you should include in every page on your eCommerce store.
Those are
- Cart Link
- Footer
- Search
Cart Link
Cart is an important element of an eCommerce web design. By clicking on these links it takes users directly to the Cart page or triggers the display of the cart content on a current page in a module.
It’s most important to show this on every page on your eCommerce store. By this, you will encourage your customers to take the most important action which is checking out.
I would encourage you to show a cart summary on cart page or module that if the cart is empty or not. You may see that most eCommerce stores show the number of product added to cart on cart page or in a module. Avoid showing the amount they spend on your store on cart page or in a module. It sometimes discourages people to buy more.
For the cart labeling use commonly use word “Cart” or you can show a shopping bag or a cart Icon there.
Footers
Footer is another important element of an eCommerce store. It’s the place where your users will find those important things such as “Shipping Information”, “Refund Policies” and other important pieces of information about your company. It’s a best practice to add a search page link back there. People often scroll down to the footer to find out the important they have not got in the header. The prominent way to satisfy these users is including a summary of the policy and other important things. It’s a best practice to put payment processor’s logo and trust badges in the footer.
Search
As I said earlier that a confusing user will never buy from your store and sometimes they look for search functionality on your store. It’s the best way to rescue those confuse users and convert them to the buyer by including a search feature on your navigation and like others element it should be placed on the site at the same position.
Unless you’re designing your store for a small range of products (3–5 products) then it’s a must to have a search feature where people will search across your entire catalog. Research shows that nowadays consumers expect a search button on the store as they are impatient. Compare to a store which has not search feature to a store which has is more conversion driven. It also shows that the intensity of buying products. You should also include a search bar on a search result page.
Design Home and Content Pages
To be continued…..
