A website was once considered a fun novelty for a business, but those days are long gone. A website is now as necessary as a business card.
With the ongoing expansion of E-commerce, businesses worldwide have discovered new ways to connect with clients that go well beyond the capabilities of traditional brick-and-mortar commerce. Customers have grown to appreciate the convenience of purchasing online and learning more about their favourite products. Websites are responsible for the "e" in E-commerce.
E-commerce websites enable shops to offer things online while allowing customers to browse, assess, and buy products from their homes. And good website designing means designing the future of E-commerce stores!
Every E-commerce website must excel in aesthetics, functionality, and user experience. Many websites excel exclusively in one of these areas. Some can manage two of them fairly effectively. However, the best websites, which keep users returning for more, have mastered all three of these essentials.
As Milton Glaser once exclaimed, “There are 3 answers to a designing aspect – Yes, No & WOW! And Wow is the one that you should target for."
But what makes the “WOW” in E-commerce website design? Let’s take a look.
According to Storyblok's State of E-commerce 2023 research, 42% of consumers decide whether to stay on or leave a website within 10 seconds and 20% within five seconds. When asked what they value most about the online experience, 50% said visual appeal and 45% stated simplicity.
Unfortunately, just 28% of e-commerce enterprises prioritise website design improvement.
The result? Lost opportunities!
Elisa Bender, the co-founder of RevenueGeeks, explains - “Users don’t prefer challenging web designs; they are fast to proceed with purchases if they know everything at the initial glance. So, we made things simpler for them to increase our sales.”
So, what are the must-have elements of an effective e-commerce website design?
According to Storyblok's survey, visual attractiveness and straightforward design are essential for online consumers. They want a visually appealing, uncluttered design. What does that mean for you? Improve the user experience of your website by carefully employing white space to provide balance and breathing room for other site elements.
White space reduces distractions, allowing users to focus on your offerings and website content, making the buyer's journey easier.
Like Sephora, the company combines much white space, smaller graphics that load quickly, eye-catching product photographs, and eye-pleasing colours.
Not only that but also make sure your site's design is responsive and loads properly and rapidly across devices without requiring users or customers to pinch their screens to change the display!
Sixty-five percent of consumers regard ease of navigation as the most essential factor in the user experience of a website. Your site's navigation should make it simple for visitors to find what they're looking for, or you risk losing business.
As Amore Philip, CEO at Apples & Oranges Public Relations, says - “My initial motto was to make our site highly user-friendly. I met the objective by monitoring budding enterprises & asking them what is most vital when hovering over a website…. I used that in our revamp strategy.”
Put things where people anticipate them to be so they can navigate without interruption. For example, your navigation bar should be in a consistent and easy-to-find location. It can be placed in the header or as a sidebar, with high colour contrast to ensure visibility and prominence.
It is the secret behind Glossier’s site’s success. Glossier offers a clear, simple navigation bar with clear titles and a search bar on the upper right side of the navigation bar. Furthermore, the sticky navigation menus reduce the need for visitors and consumers to scroll back up on long pages.
Your e-commerce website MUST be responsive. Many people buy from their phones or tablets with many mobile devices. On the other hand, shopping on the move needs more responsive E-commerce website designs that work regardless of screen size. Here's how ASOS uses a responsive mobile design to provide its customers with a pleasant browsing experience:
To nail your mobile website design, make sure your pieces are displayed in a manageable way.
Choosing simplicity allows mobile-first customers to browse your website and boost conversions.
By employing responsive design, you will increase accessibility and make your E-commerce website accessible across all devices.
High-quality images are vital for any e-commerce website since they affect customers' purchasing decisions. Take many images of your products from various perspectives and lifestyle photos that showcase your services. It’s all about designing brand narratives where art and identity converge!
For example, offering eco-friendly items, including photographs of your employees volunteering at a national park alongside your products, helps humanise your company and emphasise its environmental commitment.
Customers are more likely to engage and connect with you if they can see what your product or service will look like. Visual search improves your site as well as visual content. Unlike text-based searches, which can lead to hundreds of pages of comparable items, visual search cuts through the e-commerce noise, allowing buyers to examine your options and make purchasing decisions!
But visual elements alone won’t keep up. And that’s where seamless branding, the heartbeat of E-commerce design, enters! Your e-commerce website should look and feel like your real business.
Otherwise, visitors and consumers would arrive on your page needing clarification on where they are. It all starts with an omnichannel strategy to brand the look of your website. It includes offering a consistent experience on your website, social media sites, blog, and other digital channels with your physical location (if you have one).
Take Purple Mattresses, for example.
Purple Mattresses' trademark colours and fonts are used throughout its physical and online businesses. This branding uniformity extends to the graphics and product videos used on the company's website and the product packing boxes!
MarsDevs Tips - How videos can boost E-commerce conversions!
Your e-commerce website's design substantially impacts the total consumer experience, sales, and business growth. But what do other e-commerce business owners with thriving online stores do differently to optimise for conversions?
One of the most popular UX trends in web design is creating a website that simplifies your customers' lives and directs them to the most appropriate items based on their preferences.
To create this experience, web designers must carefully consider every component of the customer journey and map out the experience, concentrating on crucial elements ranging from the homepage design to the checkout page.
To increase sales and conversions, you must remove friction wherever possible. Websites that provide a more seamless experience attract more customers and enhance conversions when performed correctly!
Navigation is not the end. Users must understand the next steps and know how to navigate your site.
Your CTAs should stand out while being intuitive and seamless to improve conversions. Colours are one technique to achieve this. There is no one-size-fits-all colour for CTA buttons. Samsung, for example, employs black and white on its CTA buttons.
Choose an eye-catching hue that contrasts with the backdrop colour of your site and works well for your brand. Users are likely to click on a CTA that draws attention to itself, increasing your e-commerce conversion rates and driving more purchases.
See how Blume does it.
Blume excels in CTAs, which it uses to offer upsells on its site and popups while guiding customers through the buyer's journey. Ultimately, this easy approach leads to a simple one-click checkout, which increases conversions and sales for the company!
New clients are skeptical. They are unfamiliar with your items and do not believe you will keep your promise. Including trust signals in your site design adds a degree of openness that can dissuade skepticism, especially for startups and small enterprises. Common indicators include:
Website consumers expect lightning-fast page performance in today's fast-paced digital environment. It’s especially true for E-commerce companies, where even a single second of delay may result in lost revenue and dissatisfied consumers.
According to research, a one-second delay in website load time can result in a 7% decline in conversions, 11% fewer page visits, and a 16% fall in customer satisfaction. So, what is web design's role in keeping the digital engine running smoothly? Many.
You can enhance your page speed by following many recommended practices! Images are the biggest component of any online page and take the longest to load, as anyone who recalls dial-up connections will attest. However, a website can only survive with aesthetics.
Fortunately, image editing applications and techniques have emerged that help us streamline our pictures and minimise their impact on loading times. You can also reduce the amount of concurrent requests by asking the server to load just the components visible on the screen.
Furthermore, templates with too many high-resolution photographs and videos take longer to load than simpler designs with just a backdrop and some text. Although your website cannot function without graphics, some visual effects may be duplicated using code - a much more lightweight way!
Here’s how you can develop an E-commerce platform!
Maintaining a seamless, functional e-commerce platform takes work. A professional website design team must often examine the website for flaws. Every online vendor's main aim, especially if they are a startup, is to choose an e-commerce website design that assists them in gaining a reputation.
Certain e-commerce systems need to catch up due to payment processing. You must guarantee that there are only a few steps between placing an order and checking out, or else the customer may abandon the transaction before it is completed.
Also, unnecessary design features and a complicated menu may cause a customer to leave and visit another website. A successful e-commerce website design is always responsive, straightforward, and geared to keep customers returning.
The solution? Adaptive design!
In contrast to a single static page that loads (and looks) the same on all devices or a single page that reorders and resizes content responsively based on the user's device/screen size/browser, the adaptive design encourages the creation of multiple versions of a web page to fit the user's device better. Simply defined, it entails creating a site with circumstances that vary depending on the device, based on various fixed-width layouts.
On the other hand, pure responsive web pages change and scale what is displayed on the screen client-side rather than fully optimising it. Adaptive websites ensure that all page elements are optimised.
Take Nike, for example. Nike's mobile website can be found at m.nike.com. The desktop website has a looping movie on the homepage. However, the mobile version has a static frame to save data and hardware resources.
Whether you are new to the online shopping industry or your store currently sells hundreds of goods worldwide, it is critical to learn from other successful E-commerce firms consistently. So, let’s look at brands designing success: E-commerce sites that lead the way!
Let's start with the most obvious corporation. Amazon is the poster child for E-commerce, but why are they so successful? It all boils down to search! Amazon understands that if you can't figure out exactly what customers want, they'll simply go to another website that can.
Their search tools enable them to act like a sales associate, guiding you around the site until you get to the product you’re hunting for and offering other products you might be interested in.
From the heading and copy to the warm-toned editorial pictures, Allbirds' online apparel and shoe store perfectly portrays its principles - simplicity and sustainability.
Nike is another online fashion retailer that might be a great resource. This brand's E-commerce platform perfectly exemplifies the "less is more" idea, from navigation to filter choices. It uses a lot of white space and picture blocks with a simple background to make the products stand out.
Tim Hortons exemplifies an optimal mobile experience by providing just enough information to educate customers without overwhelming the small display on which the site is viewed.
But these brands aren’t alone. Many brands redefined their online presence through design. Let’s look at brands designing transformations: brands that dared to dream!
This site exemplifies how great branding as part of your E-commerce website design can assist in transmitting a company's values and offer a compelling incentive to purchase.
Sticky Lemon's website design is curated, high-quality, and adorable, giving homage to their lovely children's products.
The secret to this E-commerce design's success is simplicity and ease of navigation. Take note of the useful search option and the straightforward, scrolling interface, which places this specialist online store's goods front and centre.
Visitors to the website quickly understand Kaekoo's distinct, warm aesthetic. The hand-lettered logo, elegant photographs, and consistent color palette show this company understands branding.
Check out other inspirational E-commerce web design examples!
Design trends in 2023 will transform how we purchase and sell online, from clean, minimalistic aspects to the immersive delights of augmented reality. In 2023, simplicity is paramount. And here's an eye-opening fact: minimalist design ideally balances assisting people in navigating your site while simultaneously speeding up page loading times.
Then, there is the issue of evolving customer behaviour. Consumer behaviour in online retailers is similar to that in traditional stores. In other words, you must amuse your website visitors and keep them from spending their money elsewhere.
Then there’s AI and Design: Crafting Unique User Experiences! As 2023 has become the year of artificial intelligence, marketers are leveraging the potential of smart chatbots to improve the buyer's persona.
While chatbots don’t immediately influence the design of your webshop, they are an outstanding influence in e-commerce website creation. AR, VY, and XR are emerging to make shopping more fun!
With an effective E-commerce website, you can take advantage of opportunities to improve product recognition and elevate your digital brand. An optimised design promotes product exposure, increases shop traffic, and delivers a tailored customer experience.
Designing an E-commerce website might be difficult, but now that you know the best web design ideas, you have everything you need to create a site that looks great and converts like crazy. So, what are you waiting for? Reach out to MarsDevs and help design the future, one click at a time!
The worldwide E-commerce industry forecasts continuous growth in social commerce, personalization, AR/VR, subscription services, and sustainable ethical buying habits in 2023.
A good E-commerce site design uses appropriate colours, fonts, pictures, words, and visuals to persuade visitors to purchase. Your E-commerce web design must tempt potential buyers, build a positive customer experience & showcase your shop in the most reliable way possible.
One possibility is that the rising use of artificial intelligence and machine learning in E-commerce will be the next big thing. Personal assistants or chatbots might be used to make tailored advice, or machine learning algorithms could be used to optimise marketing and sales techniques.
